Dir/Scr: Wong Kam-yan (aka Wong Hok-sing)
Prod Co: Grandview (U.S. Branch)
Cast: Wong Hok-sing, Leung Bik-yuk, Luk Wan-fei, Tang Pui, Liu Kei-wai
1947 | Colour | D Beta | Cantonese | 94min

Many Cantonese opera practitioners fled overseas during the war. Chinese American Joseph Sunn Jue established the Grandview Film Company in Hong Kong during the 1930s and continued making films in USA during wartime by collaborating with opera practitioners in exile there. The first Cantonese film shot on then state-of-the-art Technicolor 16mm film stock, the story revolves around opera singer Man-ha (Leung Bik-yuk) who drowns herself in vices in San Francisco. Her constant absence from stage almost leads the theatre to bankruptcy; but fortunately she becomes penitent and saves the theatre in the end. Writer-director-actor Wong Hok-sing, an opera performer himself, staged a spectacular play-within-a-play at the end, not only to promote the art of Cantonese opera but also to boost solidarity among overseas Chinese through difficult times.