Photo dealer Arnold and his wife Frieda live in harmony and wealth with their ten-year-old son Peter in Bonn, when Arnold's brother Paul and his wife Vera turn up to get his share of the family business. A scuffle leads to Peter falling down a flight of stairs breaking his neck. Although it is clearly an accident, Arnold is prepared ready to pay Vera a sum of money to forget about the rumble.
Centring on the legend of the four ancient Chinese heroines, the film was a novelty for audiences at the time, as the singing performance was in Cantonese and used huangmei operatic rhythms—a popular trend in the 1960s, yet it retained traditional flavours by using operatic luogu percussion in the battle scenes.
As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.
Two young boys, play hooky from school in order to explore an ultramodern world's fair. They take in the many marvelous scientific and industrial exhibits, obtain literature, eat food, and generally run amok.
There's nothing like a good, opulent, gaudy musical to lift the spirits, but when it's a 1960's Hong Kong musical orchestrated by a Japanese director and composer, it breaks through the ranks as a classic of campy kitsch.
"In my film I suggest that there is no greater mystery than that of the protagonists. War and Love are simply equated for what they are; the aftermath is inevitable, and a normal human condition, for which like the ancients one can only have pity and understanding.
Comments
Have you watched Till the Happy End yet? What did you think about it?
