It's Always Spring
In a 95-minute film that has nine songs performed
you don’t expect much time left for an intricate plot and that is certainly
the case in this 1962 Cathay musical. It is primarily a vehicle for two
of its biggest female stars – Cathay’s two in-house sultry sex bombs -
Julie Yeh Feng and Helen Li Mei. Not only do they get the lion’s share
of the acting screen time, but Julie gets to sing her own songs while Li
Mei is dubbed by Winnie Wei Xiuxian. On the soundtrack though Li Mei sings
her own music and you can find some of her music available on the Internet
for sale*. So this is a film primarily for fans of either of these two
actresses or fans of Yao Min who was one of the top songwriters of the
day.
The writer of this little soufflé was none
other than Chang Cheh with a script as far away from heroic male bonding
as one can imagine. He was one of Cathay’s writers before he left for the
Shaw Brothers in 1963 where he eventually got the opportunity to direct.
One has to wonder how the history of Hong Kong cinema might have changed
if he had been allowed to direct these urban female oriented films for
Cathay or if he had gone to them with this crazy idea, “how about letting
me direct a male driven masculine sword fighting film?” and if they had
agreed. Later - much too late - Cathay did try to move into the martial
art arena but Chang was long gone. Chang came to Hong Kong to work at the
request of Helen Li Mei in 1958 and then later joined up with Cathay in
1960 and wrote scripts for “Song without Words”, “The Girl with the Golden
Arm” and “You Were Meant for Me” as well as for this film. He also apparently
wrote some of the lyrics in the songs!
Though this seems ready made for a diva drama
of combating giant egos – think Joan Crawford and Betty Davis in these
roles – the film only edges around the corners but refuses to be little
more than a tame exchange of competing songs with everyone playing by the
rules. Aileen (Julie Yeh Feng) is a well-known singer from Singapore who
has come to Hong Kong in search of employment – one suspects that there
must be reasons for this – a broken heart, a scandal perhaps – but none
of her background is ever revealed. When the press asks her if she prefers
Hong Kong men to Singaporean men, she replies, “Men from Singapore make
good husbands, while men from Hong Kong make good lovers”. She brings with
her a younger coltish sister Xiaolin (Zhang Hui Xian - ("Fairy, Ghost,
Vixen") who is also an aspiring singer and hits high on the adorable scale.
With the help of connections, she gets the shipping magnate Xu (Roy Chiao)
to assist her in obtaining a job at a hotel nightclub where she meets the
bandleader, Zhengsheng (Kelly Lai), who immediately falls for those big
eyes and full figure.
Problems arise though when Haiyin (Helen), the
“Hong Kong Singing Queen” gets wind of this – Xu is her man and Zhengsheng
is her brother – and she sees this “other” woman encroaching on her both
professionally and personally. So she goes to the manager of the nightclub
and insists that she be hired to sing instead of Aileen – but in a bind
he hires both women and has them sing on alternative evenings. This is
good for us as we get to hear a series of songs over the film sung by both
actresses. But no one here ever gets really nasty – I was looking for a
“buckle your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride” scenario – but everyone
plays it with kid gloves. Li Mei and Chiao have a nice mature chemistry
that was also revealed in the film “Death Trap”, but the chemistry between
Julie and Kelly is thinner than the air in the Andes – he is like a shy
frat boy putting his head in a volcano. There are a number of Cathay supporting
players on board – Tien Ching as Haiyin’s number one fan, Liu Enjia as
Aileen’s fan, Wu Jiaxiang as the television manager, Cheung Kwong-chiu
as the flower deliverer and a few others that I wish I could identify as
I see them in a lot in these Cathay films (two of them on the left and
right pictured below).
This didn’t strike me as one of Yao Min’s better
scores – “Air Hostess”, “Cinderella and her Little Angels”, “Les Belles”
struck me as more tuneful – but there are a few fine numbers here – the
Won Ton song, the terrific duet with Julie and her sister and the ribbon
song in which Helen twirls this long ribbon for great visual effect. Both
actresses are good singers and you can find CDs of Julie’s work though
I have yet to come across anything of Helen’s. Yao Min was sadly suddenly
to die in 1967 at the age of fifty and right before the Shaw’s began their
string of terrific musicals.
My rating for this film: 6.0
* Thanks to Malcolm Tay for this information
on the music. He also provided a link to hear Li Mei sing.
"If you're interested to hear what Li Mei's
actual singing sounds like, paste this URL into your
browser and press "Enter":
mms://202.172.229.226/RadioRSI/chinese/RSI_C_0530Sun2030.asf
If you have Windows Media Player, the player
should be able to play this. This is a streaming audio file of a
Li Mei segment on Radio Singapore International,
which has a weekly, 30-minute special on old Mandarin pop.
It's conducted in Mandarin, unfortunately,
but the songs are all sung by Li Mei."
