Madame White Snake
             
Director: Shiro Toyoda
Year: 1956
Rating: 8.0
Aka: Legend of the White Serpent

In nearly every country in Asia there are folktales of snakes which can take on the female human form. And films from India to Hong Kong to Korea to Japan have been based on this. The most famous story is that of the White Snake, one of China's four main folktales. There have been various versions of this in film and on TV - the first was produced by the Shaw Brothers in 1926 when they were still based in China. Shaw Brothers produced another version with Linda Lin Dai as the title character in a Huangmei Opera in 1962. Then of course the wonderful Green Snake with Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong in 1993. A lesser known one but a favorite of mine is the Jade Leung film Phantom of Snake in 2000.  This one is a co-production between Shaw and Toho set in China but with an all-Japanese cast and spoken in Japanese.



The folktale goes back centuries. The basic gist is that a white snake spirit in the water digests a magic immortal pill and takes on powers. Later she sees a man about to kill a green snake and saves it by transforming into a woman. The green snake is grateful and they become sisters. Years later she meets the man who threw the pill into the water when he lends them an umbrella in the rain and they fall in love. But a Taoist monk - who according to the folktale was once a terrapin in the same waters that the snake spirits were - wants to reveal her to the husband. When he succeeds the husband dies of the shock. What? I have been having great sex with a snake? But the two snakes go to heaven and get the cure to bring him back to life. He still loves her. Which is the way it should be. No doubt the Culture Warriors on the Right would be upset but if a man and a snake are in love, is it anyone's business? Let them be. But the religious right of any era has to interject their morals. In ancient China or today.



The film is absolutely gorgeous. The colors are deep, saturated and full and dazzling. The period sets are just beautiful with lovely detail, lakes, homes, streets and outside scenes of lush flowery landscapes - all shot in the studio in Japan. Shaw had co-produced another film with a Japanese studio - Princess Yang Kwei Fei in 1955 with Daiei. At the time the Shaw Brother's main business was still in Singapore and they were in no position to shoot a film like this. In 1946 Runde Shaw had returned to Hong Kong after the war was over and took over his old film company Nanyang and re-named it Shaw Studio. He decided that they would start making their films in Mandarin because he felt there was a bigger overseas market for those and Hong Kong was now a beacon for those fleeing the Communists. There was also a large Cantonese film industry to compete against. From 1952 to 1957 Shaw produced about 70 Mandarin films but they did not do that well against two other Mandarin studios - MP & GI (Cathay) and Great Wall (a left leaning studio). Run Run came over from Singapore in 1957 to run the movie business and bought a plot of land to build the famous Shaw Studio. The glistening artificial look of the indoor sets of this film is certainly something that Shaw would emulate within a few years in their studio.



The film begins when Xu Xian (Ryô Ikebe) is being taken in a small taxi boat and it begins to rain. He sees two women on shore asking for a ride and he directs the boatman to do so. These women are Madam Bai and her servant Xiao-Qing (Kaoru Yachigusa). They are thankful and invite him to their home which is stunning with its fountain and flowers. She drops a pearl on top of a flower blossom in the fountain and blows it towards him. As sexual as it sounds. She declares her love for his pure heart and though he declares that he is not worthy being a poor man, she doesn't care and gives him money to end his apprenticeship. Unfortunately, our two girls stole it from a bank the night before and Xu Xian is arrested and they do a quick getaway - and the lovely house has become a decaying dusty wreck.



That should have probably given him a clue that something was amiss. But it is usually ghosts who pull that trick. He is let go to live in another town working for a relative - and guess who shows up. They convince him it was all a mistake and he is overtaken by passion and picks her up and carries her to the bed. In the folktale she gets pregnant. All goes well after they are married - yes, business is bad selling medicine but Madame Bai takes care of that by poisoning the town's water supply. As she explains to her maid, I do it for love. Well, in that case. There are duels between her and a monk and she creates a tidal wave that killed people. But again, she did it for love. The film is very formal but there is a sexuality laying right beneath the surface - between the couple but the maid seems to be sexually frustrated watching them get it on. 



Madame Bai is played by Yoshiko Yamaguchi better known in the West as Shirley Yamaguchi. She had some life. Born in Manchuria to Japanese parents - her father worked for the South Manchuria Railroad. Growing up she learned Mandarin and appeared in Chinese films as Li Hsian-lan. She became a star in the Manchukuo film industry usually billed as Chinese. One of the films she made in 1940 called China Nights in which she plays a debased Chinese woman in love with a Japanese man got her so much hate that the song she sung in it, Suzhou Serenade was banned later. At the end of the war, she was sentenced to death by firing squad for being a traitor by the government and only escaped because her Japanese identity was proven at the last minute. She left China and moved to Japan where she took up her acting career. She made a few films in Hollywood, using the name Shirley - Navy Wife, House of Bamboo, Japanese War Bride and appeared on the Red Skelton Show. She retired in 1958 and became a host on TV and then in 1974 was elected to the Japanese Parliament. She passed in 2014.

Note - the Shaw information came from the book The Shaw Screen.