The 2019 HKIFF features a four film
Li Lihua retrospective showcase
Barber Takes a Wife (China, 1947)
- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Li Lihua: Four Treasures Restored program
- Huang Zuolin, director
- Starring: Shi Hui, Li Lihua
Before
what was touted as the Asian premiere of the restored version of this
cinematic offering that was released in Chinese cinemas two years before
the 1949 Communist Revolution, film critic/scholar Law Kar "treated"
the audience to a 20 minute talk. You'd think that since Barber Takes a Wife
is part of the HKIFF's Li Lihua retrospective program, he'd say quite a
bit about its lead actress. Instead, he actually only mentioned her in
one sentence; talking much more about the company behind the film
(whose founder's descendants have had a hand in the movie's recent
restoration) and other bits of trivia, such as the film's portrayal of
barbers having caused a strike by barbers in Shanghai, where it's set!
Fortunately,
this Wenhua Film Company production does actually feature Li Lihua
quite a bit more -- even though its main character is indeed a barber
who does the kinds of things that aren't exactly exemplary but do lead
to funny developments that make this now 72-year-old comedy an
entertaining watch still in 2019. Handsome, charming and super popular,
and known to many by his call number at the hairdressing salon where he
works, "Number Seven" (Shi Hui) is asked to take part in what amounts a
con job by a customer whose business could do with a large cash
infusion.
After
the barber lets on in a conversation that he'd like to make more money
than his barbering job can get him, the businessman tells him about a
newspaper ad placed by a Chinese heiress, just returned from the US, for
a husband. With the help of the businessman, Number Seven fakes an
identity as a wealthy company director, with an economics degree from
Oxford University to boot, and goes off to court the lady in question
(Li Lihua) -- little realizing that she, too, has faked her identity
and, in fact, neither is an heiress nor has ever set foot outside of
China. Oh, and she is a widow with a young child too!
There's no two ways about it: many of the actions of Barber Takes a Wife's
main characters are morally questionable. Given the economically
uncertain and troubled times though in which the people portrayed in the
film lived though -- one which such high inflation that a meal for four
people at a fancy restaurant could cost over 150,000 Yuan! -- their
attempts to acquire wealth can be somewhat understandable, even if not
laudable. In addition, the characters played by the movie's charismatic
leads are so charming that many of their actions actually end up making
one smile, if not outright laugh -- and making it so that audience
members can't begrudge them a happy ending against the odds!
My rating for this film: 7.5
Bright Day (China, 1948)
- Part of the HKIFF's Li Lihua: Four Treasures Restored program
- Cao Yu, director and scriptwriter
- Starring: Shi Hui, Li Lihua
One year after playing the leads in Barber Takes a Wife,
Shi Hui and Li Lihua appeared together in another Wenhua Film Company
production. Rather than play a pair of would-be lovers this time around
though, they are cast as an uncle and his niece whom he and his wife
have raised since she was five years old (presumably after the death of
her biological parents, who are never mentioned in the movie)! And at
the helm of Bright Day is the legendary playwright, Cao Yu, whose sole foray into the world of cinema this was.
Considered
a milestone of post-Second World War Chinese cinema, the film centers
on a kind lawyer who can't help but interfere into the affairs of less
fortunate folk, even if this involves pitting himself against powerful
folks and outright thugs. While this drama is pretty earnest, its hero
is an easily likeable man with a frequent twinkle in his eye along with
edible goodies to dispense to orphaned children and the like who helps
to make sure that things aren't all dark and depressing -- even after
his good friend, the director of an orphanage, is blackmailed into
selling the orphanage and putting his charges along with himself in dire
straits.
Set in China just one year before Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang regime were driven out by the Communists to Taiwan, Bright Day
is another film where economic troubles looms large in people's lives.
Rather than accept that this means that the line between right and
wrong inevitably gets blurred in such times, however, Cao Yu has made
his stance clear: that is, that there recognizably is a difference
between good and bad; and good can as well as should prevail and even
triumph always, though it it's true enough that it can take quite a bit
of an effort and long journey to accomplish it.
Something else that is of little doubt is that Bright Day
belongs to Shi Hui, an actor whose cinematic output I hope to be able
to see much more now that I've been charmed by him on two consecutive
evenings of HKIFF screenings. And while Li Lihua is on screen for far
less time than in most of the films I've seen her in (starting from The Fate of Lee Khan
one evening in a New York City arthouse theater more than two decades
ago), she does leave an impression playing a character is far more girly
and conventional than the ones which made her a legend.
My rating for this film: 7.5
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