The film:
A Chinese take on the screwball comedy, featuring an over-eager-to-please upper class housewife, her unreliable spouse, and a glamorous seductress in Civil War-era Shanghai. Shangguan Yunzhu steals the show as the homewrecker “Mimi,” as does Shi Hui as the hilarious Old Mr. Chen. The tightly-plotted screenplay is by Eileen Chang, one of modern China’s most celebrated writers and author of the story “Lust, Caution.” Shangguan Yunzhu also appears in Spring River Flows East (1937), Crows and Sparrows (1949) and (with her daughter, Yao Yao) in Wanderings of Three-Hairs the Orphan (1949).
Taitai wansui
Directed by Sang Hu 桑弧
Screenplay by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing 張愛玲)
Studio: Wenhua Film Co.
Cast: Shangguan Yunzhu 上官雲珠, Shi Hui 石揮, Wang Yi 汪漪, Zhang Fa 張伐, Lu Shan 路珊, Jiang Tianliu 蔣天流, Han Fei 韓非
English subtitles translated by Christopher Rea
Learn more:
See the video lectures and other materials on the Long Live the Missus! (1947) module of the Chinese Film Classics online course.
Watch the first collaboration between director Sang Hu and screenwriter Eileen Chang: Love Everlasting (1947).
