A Poor Lover's Tears

The quintessential image of the old Tsim Sha Tsui train station against the Victoria Harbour tells us at the outset that this is a film about Hong Kong and also one about migration. Pak Yin played an émigré factory worker from the Mainland who gets promoted to the manager's secretary because of her looks, a nominal role useful only as the manager's plus one at social events. Tears initially follows the cliché of a vulnerable woman's escape from evil's clutches only to completely subvert it: a woman who doesn't believe in the family protocol of love is a rare breed in 1950s cinema; even rarer is the absence of moral judgment of her. How this adaptation compares to Mong Wan's original novel is a topic worthy of further studies. Perhaps what strikes the modern-day audiences as the stuff of legend and lore was accepted as an ordinary tale of survival by readers and audiences in turbulent times.

Date	Time	Venue
12/3/2017 (Sun)#	2:00pm	Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive
19/3/2017 (Sun)	5:30pm	Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive

# To follow with seminar

The contents of the programme do not represent the views of the presenter. The presenter reserves the right to change the programme should unavoidable circumstances make it necessary.