Long Live the Missus! (; pinyin: Tàitai Wànsuì) is a 1947 Chinese romantic comedy film known as one of the best comedies of the civil war era. The film was directed by Sang Hu (桑弧) with a screenplay written by the famous Chinese literary figure Eileen Chang; the pair also collaborated on the 1947 film Unending Love (Bu Liao Qing, 1947). The film was produced in Shanghai by the Wenhua Film Company. Long Live the Missus! offers a satirical depiction of the lives of women, male-female relationships, and the institution of marriage in 1940s Shanghai.
The film is an example of how the writer Eileen Chang interpreted the Western comedy of manners for Chinese audiences. An English-subtitled version of the film, based on a translation of the filmscript by Christopher Rea, is available on YouTube.Chinese Film Classics online course, Module 8: Long Live the Missus!: https://chinesefilmclassics.org/course/module-8-long-live-the-missus-1947/
Cast Jiang Tianliu (蒋天流) as Chen Sizhen, protagonist, capable housewife, and dutiful daughter-in-law; Zhang Fa (张伐) as Tang Zhiyuan, Sizhen's husband, initially a banker who later starts his own company with his father-in-law’s money; Shangguan Yunzhu (上官云珠) as Shi Mimi, the mistress of Zhiyuan; she is already married, but her husband uses her to scam money from other men; Wang Yi (汪漪) as Tang Zhiqin, Zhiyuan's younger sister, who is romantically interested in Sizhen’s brother and ends up marrying him; Han Fei (韩非) as Chen Sirui, Sizhen’s younger brother, and Tang Zhiqin’s romantic interest who ends up marrying her; Lu Shan (路珊) as Sizhen's mother-in-law; Shi Hui (石挥) as Old Mr. Chen, Sizhen's father, a wealthy old man who is seduced by Shi Mimi’s friend, Linlin; Lin Zhen (林榛) as Sizhen's mother; Cui Chaoming (崔超明) as Lawyer Yang, Zhiyuan’s good friend, who prepares the legal documents for the main couple’s divorce and the young couple’s marriage; Sun Yi (孙仪) as Maid Zhang, who works in the household of Shizhen's mother-in-law; Su Yun (苏芸) as Ma Linlin, Shi Mimi's friend and seductress; Cheng Zhi (程之) as Brother Shi, Shi Mimi's husband who pretends to be her brother in order to use her to scam other men; Tian Zhendong (田振东) as Old Mr. Zhou, Zhiyuan’s friend who invites him to Hong Kong in search of business opportunities; Jin Gang (金刚) as Shopkeeper, from whom Chen Sirui buys pineapples to gift to his sister’s mother-in-law; Cao Wei (曹韦) as Deputy Manager Xue, who embezzles money from Zhiyuan’s company, leaving him bankrupt; Gao Xiao'ou (高笑鸥) as New Friend, who Sizhen and Zhiyuan witness as the next victim to fall to Shi Mimi’s cons.
Plot The movie is set in 1947 and China is amid a civil war. Chen Sizhen is a married woman in a middle-class Shanghai family whose well-intentioned white lies meant to help family members turn out to be increasingly counter-productive, resulting in events that harm her marriage and eventually, her family finances. Her husband, Tang Zhiyuan, an ambitious but utterly incompetent bank clerk, launches a business with the financial support of his father-in-law, which Sizhen helps him secure. Blinded by the stability provided by his short-term financial gain, he falls prey to the seduction of a gold digger, Shi Mimi, and neglects his new company. As a result, his deputy manager embezzles all of his money, and the company goes bankrupt. Despite his infidelity, he blames Sizhen for his misfortune and demands a divorce. Mimi and her husband attempt to drain the rest of Zhiyuan’s money, but Sizhen forestalls the extortion attempt by outwitting Mimi and thus bails her husband out of trouble. As a result, a grateful Zhiyuan changes his mind and wishes to cancel his proposed divorce. Nonetheless, Sizhen decides that she wants to go through with the divorce. At the last moment, however, Sizhen changes her mind and recommits to her marriage at the lawyer’s office. As the reconciled couple celebrate at a café, they spot and observe Mimi using her seduction methods on a new man.
Production Screenplay
Eileen Chang (Zhang AiLing (张爱玲)) was already a well-known essayist and novelist in China before entering the film industry. She became a screenwriter because she was “blacklisted from publishing after Japan’s defeat" due to her relationship with the top collaborationist official Hu Lancheng.Rea, Christopher (2021). Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (pp. 198-216). Columbia University Press. Filmmaking then became an alternative way as both self-expression and employment since the film industry was struggling during the postwar period and was more tolerable of talents and celebrities' moral problems. In the 1940s, Shanghai's film industry experienced high demand for domestically produced romantic tragedies and transplanted Hollywood love stories in local settings. Chang was aware of this trend, and noted that Chinese films at the time were "practically all on the subject of love… Love which leads to a respectable marriage”. This film, addressing the topic of love, has been associated most strongly with Chang’s philosophical vision expressing the plight of Shanghai's middle-class women within the home and her relationships (romance, marriage, and family).
As film scripts were rarely written by women in this period or even in early Chinese film history, and as the only surviving script of the two that Chang wrote that year, Long Live the Missus! embodies the "role of female creators in the anti-film mechanism of 'male gaze' and the 'female writing' against the symbolization of women".Ji Hua-yue(2018)."电影类型、性别视角与形象构建：中国早期喜剧电影中的女性形象（1949年以前）" [D].中国艺术研究院, P45 It was the director’s idea to make the movie into a comedy, and Chang choose the women’s life as the center core of this comedy. As she wrote in 1944, "I would rather write nothing except the trivial matters between a man and a woman. There is neither war nor revolution in my work." It marks Eileen Chang’s signature style of a tragic comedy with a bitter-sweet ending where the characters would experience a "little reunion," but no grand finale like the audience typically anticipated. In a review of her own film Long Live the Missus!, Chang says the character "Sizhen's happy ending isn't all that happy." She elaborates that the idea of "a bittersweet mid-life probably means there will always be small pains interwoven in the happy moments, but there are moments of comfort."
Sizhen's choice to reconcile with Zhiyuan might be seen as controversial, especially because the "women's question" was at the forefront of the discussion during the Republican Era. Sizhen is not portrayed as the strong female lead who advocates for her independence and pursues love. Just as Eileen Chang said, "I did not affirm or protect Chen Sizhen. I only mentioned her as such a person." The way Chen Sizhen's character as the protagonist is portrayed is exactly the starting point and foothold of all comedy effects of “Long Live the Missus!” as a comedy film. More importantly, referring to Sizhen only as a person, Chang refuses to discuss the women's problem as "a reductive binarism of women against men, us against them, good against evil." Such refusal has provided Long Live the Missus! the opportunity to subvert the mainstream discussion and cultural discourses at the time. Chang does not depict Sizhen as a mere female victim hurt by men, and even portrays Sizhen as an individual who has the ability to establish relations inside and outside of the family. Chang explains her heroine: "cleverly deals with people in a fairly large family. Out of consideration for the interests of the whole family, she nurses various grievances. But her suffering is almost nothing compared with the agonizing sacrifices Chinese women made in the old times... We should not look at her as a victim of the social system, since her behavior is out of her own free will." Chang is aware of the discussion of the woman's question since the May Fourth Movement, and the women who suffered because of the social system, yet she believes that Long Live the Missus! could explore more potentials of the portrayal of female characters and stories.
The themes and subjects of Long Live the Missus! are similar to those of Chang's wartime writings like Love in a Fallen City looking at the private space of love, marriage, family, and domestic conflicts. Long Live the Missus! integrates the Hollywood style comedy of “pursuit of happiness”, Chinese traditional love stories, and tragic romance that involves courtship, marriage, and threats of divorce.
Director Sang Hu considerably lightened the tone of Eileen Chang's original script of the film. Chang's original intention for the film was to create a more humanist film, affirming basic human nature in the form of a "silent drama." However, to ensure its box office success, the film was made to be a "Hollywood-style comedy with coincidences and witty dialogues."Hoyan, Carole (August 1996). "The Life and Works of Zhang Ailing: A Critical Study." University of British Columbia, PhD Dissertation. pp. 253-255
Historical Background
The “War of Resistance Against China” started in 1931 and ended in 1945. This invasion caused China’s economy to experience hyperinflation between 1937 and 1949 due to the three governments (the Nationalists, the Japanese, and the Communists) all issuing their own currency. The price of common commodities rose constantly, and the unemployment rate skyrocketed. The hyperinflation was analogous to a never ending plague during this time. It wasn’t until 1948 when "the People’s Bank of China was established [and] the Communists replaced almost all of their local issues with a unified paper money called “People’s Currency.”” The Chinese hyperinflation ended in 1949.
Long Live the Missus! was produced the same year that the storyline was set in, and as such, issues represented in the film often resonated with the current events of 1947. For example, there are multiple scenes in the film that show the hyperinflation; for example, when the house maid asks for a wage increase due to the inflation.
Sound
The sound technicians of this film are Shen Yimin and Zhu Weigang. Shen also worked on Miserable at Middle Age in 1949 with director Sang Hu.
Sound effects, mainly non-diegetic ones, are another dimension that has enhanced the film's comicality. On several occasions, the use of sound accompanies Sizhen's laughter-arousing white lies to intensify the comic result or increase the contrast. In the scene where she lies about the broken bowl, every time Sizhen tries to remove the broken piece, there is background music coinciding with the visual image. Her second lie, regarding Zhiyuan's means of travel, comes with the same uplifting and cheerful tune when Zhiyuan boards and disembarks the plane. Similar to Sizhen's lies, Shi Mimi's purposely leaving a handkerchief with her lipstick stains on it in Zhiyuan's suit pocket is carried out with funny melody. Later, when Sizhen accidentally pulls it out, the same music appears, but only to lead to the irony that Sizhen even decides to cover up Zhiyuan's affair in front of the maid.
Set Design
Set Designer Wang Yuebai is an art director and production designer employed by Wenhua Film Company. He is known for his involvement in Night Inn, and The Secret of the Magic Gourd in 1963. Like Shen Weigang, Wang also collaborated with the crew again in Miserable at Middle Age.
Costume Design
The Costume designer is Qi Qiuming, who also worked on Night Inn and Miserable at Middle Age.
Casting
The leading cast members include Shangguan Yunzhu, Jiang Tianliu, Zhang Fa, and Shi Hui, all of whom had originally performed in stage dramas during the war under Japanese rule. The film had initially planned to let Wang Danfeng play the supporting actress. However, she failed to participate in the filming, and the character was adjusted to be performed by Shangguan Yunzhu.
Budget