The Greatest Wedding on
Earth
Director: Wong Tin-lam
Year: 1962
Rating: 8.0
A few minutes into
this 1962 Cathay release I felt a sense of disappointment when I realized
that this wasn’t a true sequel to the classic film, The Greatest Civil War
on Earth. One might easily have assumed it would be since it is directed
by the same person (Wong Tinlam), has all six of the major actors returning
and “Civil War” ended with two couples in love and seemingly headed for the
marriage alter. The two feuding families in Civil War sneaked affectionately
under my skin and I was looking forward to their story being continued. As
it turns out, this film revolves around two entirely different families,
but from a thematic perspective it covers much of the same “us vs. them”
territory and the actors take on much the same personalities as in the previous
film.
Both films use two families to symbolize the antagonism within Hong Kong
between the natives and the large inflow of refugees from the Mainland – split
into the Northerners and those from the Canton region. This was a real issue
in the early 1950’s as Hong Kong was almost overrun by the massive stream
of Mainlanders coming into Hong Kong due to the civil war that took place
in China after 1945 and then the imposition of Communist rule upon that country
in 1949. More than 2,000,000 refugees (referred to officially by the British
government as “squatters”) moved into the city at this time, more than quadrupling
Hong Kong’s population.
As in any city overrun by refugees, Hong Kong was not prepared for this
onslaught of people and did not have enough housing, schools and social services
to deal with it. For a number of years the British policy was to do nothing
for these refugees, simply letting them fend for themselves. This created
social and economic conflicts as many of these penniless refugees not only
spoke a different language but also had different customs and different tastes.
Many of the Northerners were from the Shanghai region – including much of
Shanghai’s film community and their business entrepreneurs who considered
Cantonese “as uncouth provincials”*. This influx of both film people and the
now large numbers of Mandarin speaking populace led Hong Kong towards developing
a dual language cinema - that during the 1960’s and 70’s was to tilt
heavily towards Mandarin with the popularity of the Cathay films and the
soon to be domination of the Shaw Brothers. By the time this film was made
in the early 60’s many of these “regional” conflicts had settled down and
the film could thus look at these antagonisms in a humorous manner.
These films comically explore these cultural differences by having two family
heads come in conflict with one another over everything, but in the end the
message that clearly emerges is that they are all Chinese and must learn to
live together in this small crowded city. The families in this film consist
of the Northern one with the father (Liu Enja), his wife (Wang Lai) and their
two grown up children (Kitty Ting Hao and Kelly Lai Chen). On the other side
of the fence we have the patriarch (Leung Sing-bo), his wife (Ma Hsiao-ying)
and their two adult children (Christine Pai and Cheung Ching). When
Liu Enja opens a competing restaurant – with Northern cuisine – across the
street from Leung, tempers and insults fly with a regional tint to them (in
“Civil War” they opened competing tailor shops). Both fathers are adamantly
against their children marrying anyone but someone from their own cultural
background.
Not surprisingly, Kitty falls in love with Cheung not knowing that their
fathers hate one another but certainly realizing their opposition to marrying
outside of their culture. So they both try and pass themselves off in front
of the other parents as being either Northerners or Cantonese – but eventually
this ruse falls apart when the parents meet - and all hell breaks loose.
It is of course only a matter of time before Kelly meets Cheung’s sister –
and in a very sweet scene they are literally star struck with each other and
just stare at one another for hours in the grip of total young love.
Most critics seem to deem this Eileen Chang scripted follow-up a lesser
film than the first “Greatest on Earth” film (there is one more called The
Greatest Love Affair on Earth) and it not very originally covers much of
the same story with minor changes, but I actually found the comic elements
in this one to be much funnier than in the first. There are many scenes which
play out wonderfully slyly here – Kitty pretending to be able to cook a Cantonese
dish (turnip cakes), Cheung trying to pass himself off as of Northern origin
with his woeful Mandarin, the dowry scene with two lists of gifts as long
as the father’s arms and the terrific scene in which the two fathers battle
each other in a restaurant (Leung pretending to be a disciple of Wong Fei-hung
and some of the scene scored to Dick Dale surf music!) while the waiter (Tsang
Choh Lam) looks on and adds up the damage. Language itself as one would expect
plays a large role in the film as both Mandarin and Cantonese are mixed constantly
– and both are often teased – as in Leung’s character’s name sounding like
“nonsense” in Mandarin, while Liu’s character’s name sounds like “insanity”
in Cantonese. Whoever did the subtitles did a fine job in depicting these
play on words to a non-Chinese speaker as myself. Though certainly the offspring
and their romances get a large share of the screen time, it is really the
two fathers who carry this film with very funny performances and great comic
timing as they bounce off one another like old cranky friends.
* Quote and figures from "A Borrowed Place – The
History of Hong Kong" by Frank Welsh
The DVD is all-regional even though it states
Region 3 – like all the Cathay films.