On Movies and Stuff

by

SS Lau

I was reading Tony's Article on film history and analysis, and it brought on me a memory on films and people Tony mentioned in his article. I have actually seen some of the Chinese movies that Tony saw as a kid, such as 一江春水向東流 and八年離亂. Boy, I was a real young kid then.

I also remember 陳雲裳 as the lady general. Movie of that era were kind of stiff, but with very proper themes. Since these early Chinese movies, I became more of a western movie fan.

As I mentioned before, I saw a lot movies with Peter Tong when we were at Pui-Ching, but hardly any Chinese films at all. My interest in Chinese movies was rekindled by 大醉俠 back in the 60s. That was the Chinese movie which marked the beginning of a new era. Then came 龍門客棧 . This was another break-through Chinese film. of Course, before these films there had been a time during which I saw quite a few Japanese 武俠片. 三船敏郎 everyone's favorite. My Chinese film days ended after 大醉俠 and 龍門客棧, and restarted in 90s with 大紅燈籠高高掛. "Red lanterns rising" was a remarkably engaging movie with such a conventional theme. The female lead, Gong Li 鞏莉, certainly made this a very pleasurable movie. I have yet to see any movies by Wayne Wang ( the director mentioned in Tony's article), although " Chan is missing" and "Dim Sum" were quite legendary. The last Chinese movie I saw a few months ago was 風月, which was quite a good film.

We shouldn't forget, of course, 唐山大兄and 猛龍過江. These were the Bruce Lee 李小龍 movies which made him an international star and brought on a second wave of Hong Kong-made but internationally distributed Jackie Chan 成龍 films years later. I like Jakie Chan action movies which bordered on being comic. I regret to say those Jackie Chan movies I saw were all in English.

On a personal note, my cousin, 劉紹貽, class of 1957, was in兒女經 and not in 一家春, as Tony had remembered. His role in this movie, which he got by audition, propelled him into stardom with the "Red and Blue Drama Club" and became a favorite of 關柴(關存英),second only to 鍾景輝 . He may have gotten me started in the "Red and Blue Drama club" and may also have gotten me a non-speaking role in my first Pui-Ching play.

My cousin was a good student at Pui-Ching, in spite of the his rather close association with a bunch of free souls who were small-part actors and movie-set workers, hardly the academic type. His movie role, even only for an one time experience, may have impacted his life. He was apparently not intoxicated by his dreams of being a movie star, but he may been able to devote his energy to more tangible endeavors. He wanted to go to Germany for college and started learning German while at Pui-Ching. He never got to go, ending up at Caltech receiving a B.S. in physics, and a ph.D. at UCLA after working for a number of years. My cousin is no longer with us, so much for the "Red and Blue Drama Club", Caltech and physics.