HKU Bulletin September 2007 (Vol. 9 No. 1)

10 11 Through the Lens of History: The Surprising Beginnings of Cantonese Cinema D r Lee Pui Tak is not your typical historian. Far from poring over fusty texts and dusty documents he spends his time watching movies. “I thought this would be a good way for a historian to choose from the historical texts because it would attract students’ attention and it’s full of sources,” said the Research Assistant Professor in the Centre of Asian Studies. An historian of modern Chinese history, he said, “For example, from watching films I can tell you about urban history as well as cultural and social history.” Lee tells of the extraordinary reaction to the suicide of Chinese actress, Yuan Ling Yu, in Shanghai in the 1930s. Yuan, one of the leading film stars of the era, poisoned herself after she was involved in a love triangle with her boyfriend and ex-husband. “The pressure of the media intrusion was too much for her. Her private life was disclosed and she was a very shy person and couldn’t cope with the gossip,” said Lee. “But her action had a great impact on other women i n Shanghai. The cases of suicide escalated after her death as other women fol lowed her example. So this had a big social impact.” Interest ingly, Lee stresses that the ear l iest Cantonese films were neither produced by Cantonese movie makers nor made in Hong Kong. They were, in fact, made by Shanghainese producers in Shanghai. “In the 1920s Shanghai supported a very healthy Cantonese population of about 300,000 people. Most of these were compradors and wealthy merchants. They made up the middle and upper classes of society. So everything they subscribed to was Cantonese. And at the time the most popular form of entertainment was not film, but opera – Cantonese opera. “The Shanghainese film makers, which included men like Sir Run Run Shaw, became some of the earliest pioneers in film. The earliest films had no sound, but the Shaw brothers made the first talkie movie and brought in the Cantonese opera element to beat their rivals,” said Lee. “The first Cantonese film with sound was the musical The White Golden Dragon or Bai Jinlong . It was hugely popular all over the country, even in Hong Kong. After that, Shaw brothers produced more Cantonese films and recruited Cantonese people, not just movie stars but also the camera people, artists, fashion designers. The Cantonese imported al l the latest machinery to make films and run cinemas. So the Shaw brothers had a very successful bus iness wi th thei r company Unique Film Production.” But compet i t ion, a clean-up campaign in the industry, and the Second Sino-Japanese war drove the Shaw brothers to Hong Kong where they contributed enormously to the fledgling movie industry. “In the 1930s many Hong Kong producers modeled their own films on the Shanghainese ones. So they took the same story, tried to recruit the movie stars from Shanghai as well as the camera people and produced their own,” said Lee. Meanwhi le on the Mainland, the National ist government launched the nat ional language campaign to promote a single-language nation and demanded that filmmakers stop producing Cantonese films, thus forcing Cantonese to fall out of favour and sounding the death knell for Cantonese cinema on the Mainland. But the Cantonese diaspora continues to play its part in the industry by supporting locally made films and soap operas in Chinatowns across the globe. RESEARCH