Tso Kea
Centered around the seizure of a family's property, police investigate a series of knife murders.
The sins of the patriarch filter down to the next generation in Tso’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, Ghosts. Eighteen years after he was sent overseas by his suffering mother (Wong), the son (Cheung) of an affluent household returns as a shadow of himself – both physically and spiritually – before unwittingly falling for his philandering father’s illegitimate daughter (Ha), conceived through the rape of a housemaid. No doubt ironically titled, Motherhood presents a restrained subversion of the Cantonese family melodrama tradition.
Morris the Tailor seeks to get even with Gilbert, Earl of Chen who has stolen a set of expensive clothes from him. Morris bumps into Princess Jenna and the two fall in love at first sight. But the king voices his opposition since Morris is from the grassroots. Gilbert suggests that Jenna's aunt adopts him as her foster son. In a split second, Morris is elevated to a royal and becomes the king's son-in-law.
My Kingdom for a Husband is more than just a film, it's a phenomenon. A huge hit, it spawned a sequel and inspired many imitations that offer the same blend of Cantonese opera and Hollywood. The film was adapted from the Cantonese opera Xuangong Yanshi by the megastar Sit Kok-sin, which was in turn adapted from Ernst Lubitsch's 1930 film Love Parade. MP & GI's version is a major production of the studio, with lavish sets, sumptuous costumes and glorious musical numbers, made possible by Cathay's generous budget. Tso Kea puts his literary seriousness aside, letting loose instead his mastery of mise-en-scene to create a spectacle that never ceases to tickle our fancy.
Han Xiangying temporarily resides at her classmate Fan Daini's resplendent mansion. Mrs Fan eggs her on to attend a party at which she is raped by a rich businessman. It turns out that Mrs Fan is in fact a procuress exerting control over her three daughters of the ruined family. Han manages to escape the clutches of Mrs Fan with the assistance of the honest young man Gong Liqun.
Tso Kea was adroit in adapting film and literary classics from the West, organically transplanting stories and characters onto Chinese soil and nurturing them to glorious fruition. Love Lingers On is based on the gothic novel Wuthering Heights and Tso shepherds Emily Brontë's tale of profound passion, thwarted love and bitter vengefulness with a perfect balance of broad narrative strokes and delicate orchestration of mise-enscene. He wisely concentrates on the lead characters' simmering mental troubles, greatly enhanced by stars Cheung Ying and Mui Yee, who overcome glaring age differences with their characters to bring life to this saga of vivid emotions.
A 10-year-old Bruce Lee stars as Kid Cheung, an orphan boy who sells comics in a little stall in the slums to survive. He and his two siblings are looked after by his Uncle Ho, a teacher. When the wealthy Hung Pak-ho surveys the slums to build a school for orphans, he is robbed by the vicious Blade Lee and his gang. Cheung helps Blade Lee escape and earns his friendship, but Uncle Ho convinces him to return the gold necklace Lee stole. Hung rewards Ho by hiring him as his private secretary.
