南洋三部曲 (The Nanyang Trilogy)
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南洋三部曲 (THE NANYANG TRILOGY) is a triptych of films filmed in Singapore and Malaysia that was produced by the Kong Ngee Company in 1957. The titles contained within this trilogy are MOON OVER MALAYA (椰林月), BLOOD STAINS THE VALLEY OF LOVE (血染相思谷), and CHINA WIFE (唐山阿嫂). These films were notable in their time for jumpstarting the careers of teen idols Patrick Tse Yin, Pasty Kar Ling, and Nam Hung. Long elusive, the digital restoration of these films was spearheaded by the Asian Film Archive beginning in 2017. Gartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to distribute these newly-rediscovered classics of Cantonese cinema to cultural institutions worldwide.
The three films in the “Nanyang Trilogy” are wenyi films: love stories intertwined with family dramas. Film historian Stephen Teo writes that “running through the narratives is a strong didactic and social subtext about family ethics and responsibilities. In general, the films produced by the Kong Ngee Company were preachy… in a roundabout way. Embedded in the wenyi form, didactic messages tended to be literary and poetic in manner, extolling the values of modern, civilized society as opposed to anachronistic or militaristic virtues of traditional society.”
The Kong Ngee Company was founded initially as a distribution and exhibition operation in 1937 by brothers Ho Khee Yong 何启榮 (1901—1966) and Ho Khee Siang 何启湘 (1904—1979), along with their friend 张梦生 (Zhang Meng Sheng) and his son-in-law 张梦贤 (Zhang Meng Xian). The company was one of the main importers of Chinese films from Shanghai that were theatrically released at the Jubilee (光华戏院) and Atlantic (大西洋戏院), among other theaters in Malaya. After the civil war in China (1945—49), many Shanghai film companies to move to Hong Kong. As noted by the Asian Film Archive:
The birth of a New China after 1949 and the political change in Mainland China resulted in the closure of its market from the rest of the world and the number of Chinese film productions dropped drastically. As the number of cinemas in Singapore and Malaya increased, the demand for Chinese films also rose. To maintain a steady supply of films for screening in their chain of cinemas, theatre owners who were also film distributors invested in the Hong Kong film studios to produce Cantonese or Mandarin films. These theatre owners included Cathay Organisation, Malaya Hong Kong Theatres Limited and Kong Ngee Company Limited.
As a result, the Kong Ngee Film Production Company 光艺制片公司 (香港) was formed in 1955 by the Ho Brothers, and film directors Chun Kim 秦剑 and Chan Man 陈文, to produce as well as distribute and exhibit films. Kong Ngee became one of four major Cantonese film production companies in Hong Kong, with the others being Union (中联), Overseas Chinese (华侨) and Sun Luen (新联).
The Kong Ngee Company began shooting the “Nanyang Trilogy” towards the end of 1956. All three films are set in Singapore and Malaya (the latter name was in current usage at the time). Both were British colonies, though in 1956, when the films were shot, British rule was about to end in the Malayan Peninsula. Malaya gained its independence in 1957, and while Singapore remained governed by the British, it too was destined to become a fully independent nation. (Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, thus marking its formal independence from Britain, but it was ejected from the Federation in 1965 and became an independent country in its own right). As noted by film historian Stephen Teo:
In the dialogue of all three films, the term [“Nanyang”] refers to Singapore and Malaya, though the Chinese generally use it to refer to Southeast Asia as a whole. That “Nanyang” is practically synonymous with Singapore and Malaya in the trilogy signifies their amorphousness as national entities during this period. Malaysia did not of course exist then and both Singapore and Malaya were, like Hong Kong, colonies of Britain. The trilogy evokes a nostalgia that alludes to this common colonial experience… The term “Nanyang” reinforces this commonality in an abstract fashion, allowing the Chinese, particularly those residing in Hong Kong, seemingly borderless access to Singapore and Malaya. Thus, the Nanyang Trilogy can be seen as an early example of cross-border or transnational cinema. Nanyang is therefore significatory of transmutable nations and boundless borders, a transnational state of globalism under colonialism. Independent nation states were a nascent thought and still to be born. The term “Nanyang” also points to the target audience of the films: the Chinese migrant communities, essentially working class and dialect speaking, with sentimental attachments to the mother country Tong-shan (or Tangshan in Pinyin) who had not yet evolved the national identity of either being Singaporeans or Malayans (and later Malaysians). The portrayal of Singapore and Malaya as ambivalent spaces depict the two countries as one transcendent entity.
The three films featured in this collection were restored in Italy and Singapore between 2017 and 2018 by L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with the Asian Film Archive. The new digital restorations of the “Nanyang Trilogy” titles are accompanied by a 118-page PDF booklet, published by AFA, which delineates the founding and history of the Kong Ngee Company, the making of the “Nanyang Trilogy,” and the Trilogy’s historical significance and cultural impact over 60 years later.
血染相思谷 (BLOOD STAINS THE VALLEY OF LOVE) (Singapore, 1957, Chun Kim 秦剑 & Chor Yuen 楚原)
The first entry in the Kong Ngee Company’s “Nanyang Trilogy”, 血染相思谷 (BLOOD STAINS THE VALLEY OF LOVE) is a hybrid wenyi (literary)-thriller-ghost story, In it, a young Malay woman named Solina, played by Molly Wu Kar, falls in love with a Chinese man named Yip, whose Mother warns him against consummating the romance for fear that the woman might cast a hex on him. When Yip informs Solina that he will be traveling to Hong Kong to visit his sick aunt, she becomes jealous and threatens to place a curse on him, which has the power to bring about the death of any woman who falls in love with him.
椰林月 (MOON OVER MALAYA) (Singapore, 1957, Chun Kim 秦剑 & Chor Yuen 楚原)
In 椰林月 (MOON OVER MALAYA), Ngok Ming is an idealistic young man, passionate about promoting and developing education in Malaya. He approaches a wealthy Chinese businessman to raise funds for building schools and meets his daughter, the young heiress Cho-lin. After a whirlwind romance, Ngok Ming and Cho-lin get married. However, Ngok Ming struggles to balance his passion for education and performing his duty of managing the family business. As conflicts between the characters escalate, Ngok Ming and Cho-lin are forced to make decisions that will change their lives forever.
唐山阿嫂 (CHINA WIFE) (Singapore, 1957, Chan Man & Chor Yuen 楚原)
In 唐山阿嫂 (CHINA WIFE), Keung Chung-ping plays Ah-gau, an impoverished man who leaves his wife, So-ching (Nam Hung), and baby in Macau to travel to Southeast Asia and join his cousin (Patrick Tse) in search of better employment. A series of fortunate events propel him into high society, and soon he falls in love with a tycoon’s daughter, Ming-chu (Patsy Kar Ling). Greed causes Ah-gau to change his name to erase traces of his former life. Abandoned by Ah-gau, So-ching suffers in poverty and decides to journey to Singapore to search for her husband.