Glory of Life

Les Belles

Dir/Scr: Doe Ching
Prod Co: Shaw Brothers
Co-starring: Peter Chen Ho, Fanny Fan Lai, Mak Kay, Kao Pao-shu
1961 | Colour | DCP | Mandarin | Chi & Eng Subtitles | 113min

For the film’s magnificent dance sequences, the production employed a thousand dancers and filmed in colour to create a sense of scale and grandeur that is only fitting for the canvas of the glorious Shawscope. The result is an impressive production which is absolutely comparable to Hollywood standards. Spending eight months to train for her role as a dancer, Lin Dai not only showed off her talent in Western dances like the cancan, the pasodoble, the mambo and the cha-cha, she also performed Asian dances like Malay and Thai folk dance. To perform the classic Peking opera about the tale of Lady Meng Jiang, Peking opera diva Feng Juhua was hired to train Lin. In addition to her dazzling dance performances, Lin also gets to show her romantic comedy chops in the subplot involving her character’s odd-couple relationship with the dance troupe leader (Peter Chen Ho), who turns out to be the pen pal she’s been enamored of. Showcasing her talents in both dancing and acting, Lin won her third Best Actress award at the 8th Asian Film Festival with this film. The film was also a winner of Best Film Editing (Keung Hing-lung), Best Sound (Wang Yung-hua), Best Music (Yao Min), Best Art Direction (Mo Lanshi) at the 8th Asian Film Festival, and Best Director (Doe Ching) and Best Music (Yao Min) at the 1st Golden Horse Awards.

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