From the mid-1950s to 1964, two companies in the highly competitive Hong Kong film market reigned supreme: the Shaw Brothers, and Cathay, headed by the ambitious and urbane Loke Wan Tho. While the Shaws concentrated on serving as Hong Kong's cinematic candy counter, serving up the popular action melodramas that would shape Western notions of what Chinese movies are all about, Cathay prided itself on its prestige productions and sophisticated comedies and musicals that its chief executive saw as part of an effort to modernize Chinese society. Sadly, Loke Wan Tho died in a 1964 plane crash that also took the lives of several of his top executives, and Cathay never recovered from the loss. In its final week, the New York Film Festival is honoring the memory of the studio's golden period with Chinese Modern: A Tribute to Cathay Studios, running October 10 through the 16.
Grady Hendrix writes that the program doubles as a tribute to Chathay's great forgotten star, Grace Chang. She was the beneficiary of Cathay's special interest in providing strong opportunities for actresses, creating a new model of independent women for Chinese audiences. One film here, the 1957 Mambo Girl, reportedly grew out of Loke Wan Tho's seeing the actress dancing in a nightclub, and deciding that the sight was too good to not build a movie around.) For an actress like Chang, the downside of working at Cathay may have been the lack of anyone to play against; according to Hendrix, "Actors at Cathay were an endless gallery of nobodies, with the faces of civil servants and spines of spaghetti, no match for the radiant screen goddesses who surrounded them." One sad effect of the Cathay retrospective is that it shows how many vibrant, talented Chinese actresses were left stranded when Cathay was no more and the macho Shaw Brothers aesthetic became the dominant flavor out of Hong Kong. — Phil Nugent
