The art of fantasy filmmaking has developed hand in hand with the flowering of world cinema almost from its inception over 100 years ago. Early artists like Georges Melies in France experimented with trick photography in short science fiction and “magic” films. Visual manipulations used in still photography, like multiple exposures, transferred easily to film, while new techniques in camerawork and editing were discovered. Any breakthrough in special effects was quickly analyzed and adopted by the global network of production studios newly formed in the opening decades of the 20th century. Film has always been an international medium; filmmakers have always studied each others’ work for inspiration. In the case of what are now known as “B-movies” or “exploitation films,” well, they’ve been with us for a long time too. The film genres of horror, fantasy, and martial arts may have been ignored by scholars until fairly recently, but these movies have always found an enthusiastic audience.
SONG AT MIDNIGHT (1937). Written and directed by Ma Xu Weibang. Produced by Zhang Shankun. Starring Gu Menghe, Hu Ping, and Shan Jin.
Before World War II and the rise of the Hong Kong film industry, Shanghai was the center of Chinese movie-making (see my earlier entries for more information). In the decade from 1920 to 1930, movies went from being a minor novelty to an enormously lucrative business that also possessed the power to shape and sway public opinion. Inevitably, political forces in China moved to control it in the 1930s. Most of the commercial studios that specialized in action and fantasy films shut down or moved south. One entrepreneur who stayed in Shanghai was Zhang Shankun. In an industry dominated by leftist reformers, Zhang was one of the last showmen.The director Ma Xu Weibang was another holdout from an earlier era. Ma Xu (his unusual surname appears to have been the result of adoption into his wife’s family) started out as an actor at the prominent Mingxing studio. The only surviving record of his early work, a list of titles, reveals a career arc that paralleled the trajectory of commercial filmmaking in Shanghai: lurid melodramas like THE PLAYBOY (1925), LOVE AND GOLD (1926), and REPENTANCE (1926) followed by wuxia pian, swordplay films, such as HEROINE OF THE SEA (1929) and AMAZING HERO OF THE DESERTED PAGODA (1929). He occasionally directed films, starting with STRANGE PERSON IN THE REALM OF LOVE in 1926, and continuing with projects like DEVIL INCARNATE (1929) and PRISON OF LOVE (1934). Ma Xu’s propensity for sensationalism set him apart from other Shanghai directors in the 1930s, when social realism was the norm.
In 1936, Zhang Shankun produced what is considered China’s first true horror film, SONG AT MIDNIGHT. (Zhang also produced MULAN JOINS THE ARMY (1939), the subject of my last entry.) Ma Xu Weibang wrote the screenplay, based on “Phantom of the Opera,” a French novel adapted into a Lon Chaney film in 1925, and he also directed the picture. SONG AT MIDNIGHT shows a sensibility heavily influenced by the American horror films of directors Tod Browning (DRACULA, 1931 and FREAKS, 1932) and James Whale (FRANKENSTEIN,1931). Earlier Chinese ghost and monster films (shenguai pian) relied on Taoist spiritual imagery, but SONG AT MIDNIGHT drew on the new international vernacular of chiaroscuro and Gothic decay, albeit in a Chinese setting. Ma Xu’s screenplay diverged from the original in making the young singer coached to stardom by the phantom a male, who would then inherit his mentor’s romantic and political obligations. The two villains, in keeping with the prevailing leftist and anti-feudal trends, are brutal and corrupt landlords.
Light and shadow in SONG AT MIDNIGHT.
SONG AT MIDNIGHT is the work of a true artist. The images have an unearthly beauty, all velvety black pierced by smoky beams of light. The pacing can drag a bit for modern audiences, but scenes like the one where a hunchbacked caretaker leads a newly arrived opera troupe down a long cobwebbed hallway to their newly rented theater, and we see their carefree expressions slowly turn to dread, are masterful. The film’s pacing picks up quite a bit at the end, where a brief fight between hero and villain ends with the phantom chased through the village by a torch-wielding mob.
The film was released in February of 1937, accompanied by a brilliant publicity campaign devised by Zhang Shankun, who rented an empty lot next to one theater and built a funeral pavilion with a coffin inside – the lid opened with a hidden mechanism, revealing a livid corpse inside. Another theater had its entire facade covered with a portrait of the phantom, green light bulbs glowing in the eyes. Rumors soon circulated that a child had died after seeing the display. Ads for the film ran with the tagline, “Please don’t take your children!” SONG AT MIDNIGHT sold out every screening for a month.
Both Zhang and Ma Xu relocated to Hong Kong after World War II. Zhang was instrumental in the founding of the Great Wall studio and then revived his original Shanghai company, Hsin Hwa. Ma Xu had made a sequel to SONG AT MIDNIGHT in Shanghai in 1941. Once in Hong Kong, he made THE HAUNTED HOUSE for Great Wall in 1949, and continued to work in the genres of horror and suspense until his death in 1961. He also directed a couple of swordplay films, OUR MATCHMAKER, THE SWORD (1954) starring Yu So-chau, and LADY RED BROOM (1956). In the mid-1950s, he began to specialize in films made in Amoy dialect, a language native to Fujian province. These films found a market in Singapore and Taiwan. One of his last productions was WINE, WOMEN, AND MONEY (1957), a tale of insurance fraud starring Grace Chang. In 1995, Ronnie Yu remade SONG AT MIDNIGHT as THE PHANTOM LOVER with Leslie Cheung in the leading role.
This entry was originally posted on September 23, 2007.
Related Topics:horror • Ma Xu Weibang • Zhang Shankun
