Six Suspects
Director: Lin Tuan-chiu
Year: 1965
Rating: 5.5
I have to admit to knowing next to nothing about Taiwanese cinema of the
1960's. Not that I don't want to but much of it is shrouded in mystery because
so many of the films are lost and of those that remain not many have been
released with English sub-titles. There has been some progress towards restoring
some of these films but as far as I know there are only a handful or two
that have received this treatment and they are shown mainly at special showings
or film festivals as a sideline. This film and the next one were streamed
over the Internet for a few days and I was able to watch them.
In the 1960s Taiwan was under the strict rule of the Kuomintang who had fled
the Mainland in 1949 to settle and eventually take over Taiwan. There was
a great degree of censorship and anti Communist propaganda in their films.
But the vast majority of the films being produced were still in the Taiwanese
Hokkien language but that was undergoing change as well and the last film
to be made entirely in Taiwanese was in 1981. This film I assume was in Taiwanese
since it certainly wasn't Mandarin and I see no fingerprints of the government
on it. There certainly seems to be no propaganda in it and it surprisingly
portrays a fairly immoral society by focusing on one steel corporation (representative
perhaps of the new Taiwan driving towards modernization?) in which everyone
is up to something - either affairs or embezzlement or corruption. Nearly
everyone seems to be bedding someone they should not be. And when not doing
that they are drinking in small bars, brothels and gambling houses all the
time. It is by no means a flattering picture of Taiwanese society.
And then there is of course blackmail and murder. Tenn Kong-hui (Wai Wang
- who went on to play a lot of villains in Shaw Brothers films) is a bit
of a sleaze. A shady character who can smell out scandal in a glimpse. He
begins with his ex-girlfriend Tai-giok (Hsia Chin-hsin) who is having an
affair with the fiancé of the chairman's daughter - and she is having
an affair with the Chairman. The fiancé also has some more crumpet
on the side and is taking under the table money from construction firms to
make decisions in their favor. The brother of the chairman (Lai Te-nan) is
also messing around with a bar girl at the White Peony Nightclub - and his
wife (Chang Ching-ching - One-Armed Swordswoman) may be doing the same with
her cousin. It is basically Peyton Place. Tenn decides to blackmail them
all at one go - and when he turns up dead no one is surprised. The cops begin
to nail down everyone's alibi and eliminate them from the six suspects one
by one.
Not the most thrilling of films unfortunately. It plods along from one suspect
to the next. The first half is the creep getting the goods on everyone and
blackmailing them and the second half is the investigation. One thing I learned
is that when conducting illicit affairs Taiwanese don't close the blinds
and they have very large keyholes to look through! What I appreciated most
was just the opportunity to see a film from this period, the depiction of
Taiwanese society and the outdoor scenes - rickshaws! I love rickshaws.
