The film:
ABOUT THE FILM
Yihjanmae (A Spray of Plum Blossoms)
Yi jian mei 一剪梅
Directed by Richard Poh (Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼)
Screenplay adapted by Jeffrey Y.C. Huang (Huang Yicuo 黃漪磋)
Production Manager: Lay Min Wei (Li Minwei 黎民偉)
Starring Lily Yuen (Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉), Lim Cho Cho (Lin Chuchu 林楚楚), Wang Tse-lung (Wang Cilong 王次龍), Raymond King (Jin Yan 金焰), Kao Chien Fei (Gao Zhanfei 高占非), Chen Yen Yen (Chen Yanyan 陳燕燕), Liu Chi-chuen (Liu Jiqun 劉繼群), Sze Ko Fei (Shi Juefei 時覺非), Wang Kwei-ling (Wang Guilin 王桂林), Lily Chow (Zhou Lili 周麗麗)
Based on the play The Two Gentlemen of Vernona, by William Shakespeare
Studio: United Photoplay Service (Lianhua)
Date of release: July 23, 1931
105 minutes, silent film with bilingual Chinese-English intertitles
English subtitles translated by Christopher Rea
Subtitles created by Tamar Hanstke
Shakespeare in Canton! In this adaptation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine (Jin Yan) and Proteus (Wang Cilong), recent graduates of the military academy, are commissioned as officers in the employ of General Sze (Wang Guilin). The general’s daughter, Silvia (Lin Chuchu), falls in love with Valentine, whose sister, Julia (Ruan Lingyu), forms an attachment with Proteus. Silvia and Valentine’s happiness is threatened, however, by Churio (Gao Zhanfei), the high-born suitor favored by the General, as well as by Proteus, whose wandering eye leads him to become so smitten with Silvia that he slanders Valentine as a traitor. The banished Valentine takes on a new role as the wrong-righting vigilante leader “Yihjanmae,” or A Spray of Plum Blossoms. Meanwhile, Silvia exposes Proteus’s inconstancy to Julia, and Valentine, foiling the brutish Churio, orchestrates a reckoning that prompts Proteus to confess his betrayal and the General to declare an amnesty. In the end, love and harmony is restored, and all rejoin the ranks to fight for China.
Star power is on full display in this Lianhua production, simultaneously released on five screens in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing on July 23, 1931. The film transplants the Bard’s comedy of reconciliation to the 1920s stronghold of the Chinese Nationalist Party in southern China; advertisements touted stars, romance, and national defense (and air conditioning). Released just a few years after the success of the National Revolutionary Army’s Northern Expedition (1926-1928) against warlords, the setting calls to mind the famed Whampoa Military Academy established in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1924. Canada-born screen veteran Lim Cho Cho leads the cast as the “masculine” Silvia, alongside budding talents Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan and a host of Lianhua stalwarts. Poetry and patriotism win the day, with flashes of novelty (horsewomen!) and comic relief. Director Richard Poh directed Ruan and Jin in Love and Duty (1931) that same year, and later made another film about a woman warrior: Hua Mu Lan (1939).
Learn more:
Learn about the male lead Raymond King (Jin Yan) and then-emerging star Ruan Lingyu.
Watch Song of China (1935), starring Canada-born Lim Cho Cho (Lin Chuchu), and her son.
Watch Hua Mu Lan (1939), directed by Richard Poh.
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