The Peerless Beauty
Dir: Li Pingqian
Scr: Lin Huan (aka Jin Yong)
Prod Co: Great Wall
Cast: Hsia Moon, Ping Fan, Jiang Ming, Su Qin, Betty Loh Ti
1953 / B&W / D Beta / Mandarin / Eng subtitles (In Part) / 107min
Scr: Lin Huan (aka Jin Yong)
Prod Co: Great Wall
Cast: Hsia Moon, Ping Fan, Jiang Ming, Su Qin, Betty Loh Ti
1953 / B&W / D Beta / Mandarin / Eng subtitles (In Part) / 107min
Before Louis Cha was Jin Yong the novelist, he was Lin Huan the scriptwriter.
The Peerless Beauty
was Louis Cha's debut screenplay, written for Great Wall and tailored made for the company's top star Hsia Moon. The Warring States-era drama took ten months and six drafts to finish, as Cha-Lin-Jin cleverly fills the gaps in real history by reimagining the story of Lord Xinling's rescue of the Zhao kingdom from the perspective of a native peasant girl Ru Ji, who becomes the Wei kingdom concubine to help the Lord take control of Wei's armies to go against the Qin kingdom. This skillfully-crafted character study and historical epic portrays the legendary figure as an intelligent, loyal woman, who rises to the occasion at a tumultuous time. Fans of Jin's literature may notice that the relationship between Ru Ji, Lord Xinling and the king of Wei foreshadows character dynamics in
The Book and the Sword
, the author's first martial arts novel.