It's Always Spring
Director: Evan Yang
Year: 1962
Rating: 6.0
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."
