Dirs: Hu Siao-fung, Lin Huan (aka Jin Yong)
Scr: Hsu Sing
Prod Co: Great Wall
Cast: Hsia Moon, Feng Lin (aka May Fung Lam), Yu Wanfei, Li Tziang
1960 / Colour / D Beta / Shaoxing Opera / Chinese subtitles / 111min

 

1955's  The Book and the Sword  turned Jin Yong the novelist into a sensation but didn't stop Lin Huan the filmmaker from continuing to work on celluloid. Cha-Lin-Jin sat on the director's chair for the first time in 1958 with  The Nature of Spring  but would direct only one more film in his illustrious career, the Shaoxing opera adaptation  Bride Hunter . He and codirector Hu Siao-fung maintain the art form's original practice of using an all-female cast, with screen goddess Hsia Moon crossing gender to play the scholar Zhou Wenbin, who, in keeping with the original's delicious play on sexual identity, wagers with his friend to parade through New Year festivities dressed as a woman! Needless to say, trouble ensues. So beautiful is he/she that the town bully can't help but kidnaps him/her, forcing him/her to be his bride. Taking on her first cross-dressing role, Hsia is delightful with a breezy, happy-go-lucky performance, playing a man pretending to be a woman, at times singing in a feminine voice with a supposed masculinity. So popular was Bride Hunter that Great Wall, the film's production company, went on to make a series of Shaoxing opera films to capitalise on the success.