The Pearl Phoenix (1967)
Huangmei Opera movies like The Pearl Phoenix are unique to 1960's Hong Kong culture, a product of the Swinging Sixties but considerably more in touch with their Chinese roots. This one is complete with a gender-bending tale where the male lead is played by female and the female lead poses as a man, plus movie queen Li Ching and the singing voices of Ivy Ling Po and Jing Ting. Sit back and enjoy!
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I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
This Shaw Brothers cross dressing Opera Film, made in the wake of the success of Li Han-hsiang's THE LOVE ETERN (they claim nearly a million viewers) is less filmic and lacks variation of tone - though an evil step mother offering a choice between a sword and a silk cloth as ways of having the heroine off herself, does stand out in the playfulness.The film appears to be the B team at work, with star Ivy Lin Po only contributing voice tracks, and it's unlikely that it will be remembered as a major item. The numbers don't catch the Western ear the way the best of these do. It does however assert itself as the plot unfolds.We do get Shaw's art department in full cry, contrasting the vivid colours of the studio-built settings with a few subdued back lot exteriors, which show up late. This, and some familiar faces among the character players, connects the piece to the famous Chivalry adventures influenced by the opera tradition.