The Seven Sisters

Don't mess with the Seven Daughters of Tsoi!

How's this for an unusual lineup: Patricia Lam Fung, Cantonese jade girl, just after her departure from Shaw Brothers; Amoy actress Xiao Juan, shortly before her reinvention as Ivy Ling Po, Shaw's queen of huangmei opera films; American-born Cantonese star Chow Kwun-ling, in one of her last movies; Ouyang Shafei, veteran actress of the Mandarin screen; and an 11-year-old Nancy Sit, years before she donned her first pair of go-go boots. The 1962 Cantonese film The Seven Sisters (aka The Seven Daughters of Tsoi aka Seven Playful Women) has them all.

The following synopsis appeared in Screenland No. 27 (December 1961). A scan of the original article is available here.

"THE SEVEN SISTERS"

Lap Tat Company's current comedy "The Seven Sisters" is an excellent piece of entertainment. But it also points out, quite seriously, to contemporary parents how to handle the love and marriages of their grown-up daughters.

The seven sisters are all daughters of Au-yang Sha-fei. The eldest Chau Kwan-ling is efficient business-wise. She has been taking care of the family business since her father died, never realizing that she is getting older and older, and not yet married. The second sister Mei Lan is more lucky; she is ready to marry a musician. The third sister Patricia Lam Fung is too shy and modest, trying all the time to match her eldest sister and Soo Siu-tong, who is secretly in love with her. The fourth sister, an expert on love, plays with fire and is almost burned. The fifth sister is not grown-up yet but trying all the time to convince others that she has. The sixth and the seventh, fortunately, are still too young to cause trouble, or the problem would be even more complicated.

Here are seven more lobby cards. I love the pointing motif that runs throughout the set.








I don't know whether to feel envious or sorry for the hapless fellows who marry into this matriarchal clan!

Name those Fortunes!

Okay, kung fu fans! Who can name all of Master Yu Jim-yuen's "Little Fortunes" in this photo from The Birth of Yue Fei (1962)? I'll start off with the easy ones: Sammo Hung (standing in the middle, looking a bit bewildered) and Mang Hoi (top row, far right). Which one is Jackie Chan? I'm tempted to say the scowling fellow in the top row, far left. But I have a hunch he might be one of the little shrimplings.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Master Yu's China Drama Academy, the training ground of a generation of stuntmen, fight choreographers, and action stars who revolutionized martial-arts movies. Try imagining Hong Kong cinema without Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, and you'll realize the depth of their influence. And those two big shots are just the tip of the iceberg. Die-hard fans will have their own personal favorites, whether it's Yuen Biao or Yuen Wah.

Next month the Hong Kong Film Archive is presenting a small retrospective to celebrate the early films of Master Yu's students. It will include two other films from the early 1960s featuring the "Little Fortunes" when they were kids.

For a fun read, check out these reminiscences of the "Seven Little Fortunes", which appeared in translation all summer long at HKSAR Film No Top 10 Box Office.

And finally, here are two clips: the first is from Seven Little Valiant Fighters (1962), which will be shown in the Hong Kong Film Archive's retrospective, and the second is from Dragons Forever (1988), featuring Sammo, Jackie, and Yuen Biao in a hilarious three-way scuffle.

Behold the Banned!

You don't even know what this is, but you know you want a look.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you if this was the work of the film censorship board of Singapore or Malaysia, nor if the movie itself was censored or just this particular lobby photo.

What... do you really want to see it?

I don't know if it would be in your best interest. There was a good reason that this abhorrent image was banned some forty-odd years ago. Why risk opening a Pandora's box of degeneracy?

From your ravenous eyes and twitching hands, I can tell that you are not dissuaded. You are hell-bent on gambling away your moral well-being for a taste of the forbidden.

Very well then... behold the banned!

Hold That Pose, Josephine!

If you think holding a smile for the camera is hard, try holding one of the poses in this lobby photo for Ma Yongzhen from Shandong (1965). Yep, that's a teenage Josephine Siao in the background, grappling with martial-arts choreographer Han Yingjie — 28 years before she played Jet Li's kung-fu fighting mom in Fong Sai Yuk!

Hong Kong Leftist Noir

As promised, here's a look at a film that actress Shi Hui made for the left-wing Great Wall Motion Picture Company. These images are taken from lobby cards for The Young Heiress (1959).

According to a synopsis from the Hong Kong Film Archive's online catalog, Shi Hui plays the illegitimate daughter of a rich man. Before his death, he acknowledges her as the inheritor of his estate. The rich man's wife, aided by a group of thugs, tries to prevent Shi Hui's character from claiming her inheritance. In the end, she triumphs over the greedy wife and, desiring only the recognition as her father's daughter, donates the money to an orphanage.

The Young Heiress seems fairly typical of the crime films popular in Hong Kong cinema in the late 50s and early 60s. I've never seen the film, but I suspect that there is nothing that would mark the film as leftist beyond a generalized class consciousness. However, it would be interesting to compare it with the crime movies that the apolitical yet right-leaning Shaw Brothers was making at the time.





Here is a flyer for The Young Heiress. Notice how various images from the film stills are creatively used in the design.