Even though I cry in my soup every day about the injustice of not being able to see the early films of Patricia Lam Fung (who was known as the "Jewel of Shaw"), I console myself with the fact that Celestial is still sitting on a treasure chest of titles that are sure to be released sooner or later. It was rumored that they were going to be rolled out at the end of 2009. Obviously that didn't happen, but the release two weeks ago of Ann Hui's Shaw film Starry is the Night (1988) has got me crossing my fingers again.
Here are some of the Shaw movies that I'm hoping will pop out of the oven by year's end:
The Second Spring (1963)
This one was made by Lo Chen, one of Shaw's four "Ace" directors (the other three were Li Han-hsiang, Tao Qin, and Yueh Feng). As you can see, it stars the great Li Lihua. It also features Margaret Tu Chuan, who famously threw a fit at the 1963 Golden Horse Awards when she won Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The petulant Miss M evidently felt that her character was not a supporting role and that she therefore deserved Best Actress. Seems like the princess had her eye on the throne. But as I've mentioned here previously, the tale of little Miss Margaret did not have a happy ending.
The Black Forest (1964)
Shot on location in Taiwan, this big-budget romance between a lumberman and an aboriginal girl put Margaret Tu in the upper echelons of Shaw's galaxy of stars, alongside established movie queens Lin Dai and Betty Loh Tih. Also featured is Fanny Fan and a young Taiwanese star by the name of Chiao Chiao. These three ladies find themselves competing for the love of leading man Paul Chang Chung (who passed away just this last month).
Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore (1965)
This cosmopolitan confection was a co-production between Shaw Brothers and Filipino filmmaker Albert Joseph. Tao Qin, Shaw's master of musicals before Inoue Umetsugu took over the reins in the second half of the 60s, directed the Chinese version (starring Peter Chen Ho as a jet-setting womanizer), and Albert Joseph directed the Filipino version (with Néstor de Villa in the leading role). The three geographically discrete girlfriends were the same in both versions: Landi Chang, Angela Yu Chien, and Filipina actress Maggie dela Riva.
Squadron 77 (1965)
More than 40 years before The Message and Lust, Caution, Shaw Brothers made this spy thriller set in occupied Shanghai. Li Lihua stars as the woman who is thrust into the role of nationalist freedom fighter when she discovers that her husband is a collaborator with the Japanese.
Downhill They Ride (1966)
Filmed on location in the snow-capped mountains of Taiwan, this appears to be an early entry in Shaw's campaign to reboot the wuxia genre. Set in Northeast China during the early Republican Era, it stars Paul Chang Chung as a gun-toting knight-errant who helps defend Pat Ting Hung and her fellow villagers from a gang of bandits. In a contemporary review, it was disparagingly described as a hybrid of "Japanese samurai and American cowboy films... transplanted into the Chinese soil", but that actually sounds pretty good to me.
Stay tuned for more of Shaw's buried treasure!
