LONG LIVE THE MISSUS!
(太太萬歲)
dir. Sang Hu, 1947
China. 112 min.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 1 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 10 – 5 PM
MONDAY, MAY 13 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30 PM

Chen Sizhen is a married woman belonging to a middle-class Shanghai family. Her husband, Tang Zhiyuan, is an ambitious but incompetent bank clerk, looking to launch a business with the financial support of his father-in-law. Blinded by the stability provided by his new (albeit, short-term) financial gain, he falls prey to a gold-digging mistress, neglecting his professional and personal responsibilities to the point of bankruptcy. Zhiyuan blames Sizhen for his misfortune and demands a divorce, unaware that Sizhen may be the only one able to save her family’s business, marriage, and good name.

As domestic film production slowed during the war, Western (wenyi) film and literature began to grow in popularity, with romantic comedies and melodramas among the most popular imports. For new screenwriter Eileen Chang, whose earlier fiction work typically challenged the social conventions of Chinese society, a film in the vein of a Hollywood screwball comedy was a natural fit. Chang’s script is rife with the romantic conflicts, contradictions, and coincidences that similarly characterized many of Hays-era Hollywood’s “comedies of remarriage”, while providing incisive commentary on the pressure and expectation to conform to traditional family roles— daughter, wife, mother, in-law— as the country barrelled into the modern post-war era.