The Swallows Return was tailor-made as an opera by the genius librettist Tong Tik-sang for Fong Yim-fun and her co-star Yam Kim-fai, who team up together again for this film version. While the period setting is changed from historical to contemporary in an earlier 1953 adaptation, it is returned to the original's historical era this time around. The starring of Fong with Yam also presents the performances in forms closer to the original, thus preserving precious records of the classic opera.

Fong and Yam had played lovers in over 20 films, working together as many as six times in 1958 alone. Here, they play not only husband and wife but also mother and son. Luk (Fong) marries General Lee (Yam) but is abused by his mother, who falsely accuses her of infidelity and kicks her out, allowing her to visit her son only once a year. Luk struggles for the next 18 years to raise her daughter, who unwittingly falls in love with her biological brother…The film is a showcase of virtuoso acting.

Fong, ever adept at playing the suffering daughter-in-law, embodies her character with compelling pathos, offering a blatant contrast with the mean mother-in-law, played by the veteran Poon Yat On in one of his many cross-dressing roles. And Yam, playing both the husband torn between wife and mother and the rash son who misjudges his own mother, seamlessly switches from one character to the other.

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