Cheung Chi-Suen

A Hong Kong drama

Tang Wan-tung, the son of a Southeast Asian Sultan is a student in Hong Kong. Only Uncle Mui, his guardian, knows his identity. Tang is known as "student prince". He organises an embassy variety show. Tang invites Lai Tsi-king, who has a lovely voice, to perform in it, but it ruins her chance to study music abroad. Lai’s parents want her to marry Tung Fook-si, the son of a merchant. Lai asks Tang to act for her parents, like a prince courting her. Her parents are convinced, but Tung is not fooled. Tang smuggles Lai out to perform in the embassy. Lai's performance earns her a chance to study overseas, but her parents will not support her. Tang borrows money from his father, but is refused. He pawns his father’s ring to help Lai pay the tuition. Tung takes his father's ring and sells it. Tung's father alerts the police. The rings turn out to be a pair. The police think Tang stole the diamond ring, but Mui tells the truth. Tung is arrested and Tang and Lai have a happy ending.

Orphan Lee Dan-hung is made a scapegoat by her cousin Chor Kwai-ping. Facing drug trafficking charges, Lee is released on parole with the doctor To King-chung as guarantor. Lee works as a sanatorium nurse. The modest caretaker, Matriarch To plays matchmaker for her son To Ngan-sing and Lee. Ashamed of her past, Lee listens to the doctor's advice and keeps the Tos in the dark. Chor returns and coerces Lee into colluding with smuggling ring by threatening to kill her newborn daughter. The reluctant Lee is arrested in a police raid together with the gang members but is later acquitted. With a reputation to defend, To toughens his heart and expels Lee. Lee leaves for Borneo with a touring opera troupe but a yearning for her daughter brings her back several years later. Feeling for the upset in-law, Matriarch To grants her stay until his son's return from business in a few months' time. When To returns, he decides to make up for the wasted time by bringing Lee and her daughter home.

Kam Fan and Wong Ching-ping have a peaceful married life, until Ping's mother is serious ill. They desperately need a large amount of money. Fan tries in vain to raise money, he thus intends to use their daughter's school fees for the medical fees. Ping is against it and works as a song girl to earn money for her mother's medical expense. Her grudging husband Kam Fan uses a bed sheet to partition the bedroom into halves and even demands a divorce. After some mediation by their lawyer and neighbours, Wong finds a teaching job at an orphanage, but Fan still opposes it. Ping is so angry that she moves to live in the dormitory of the orphanage. Fan has to look after their daughter alone, making everything a mess. Later, their daughter catches a cold and has a high fever after an outing with Fan. Ping cannot set her mind at rest and goes home to take care of her daughter. The loving couple reconciles, for the sake of their daughter.

Cold Nights features great performances by both Pak Yin as a tough minded “new woman”, Shusheng, and Ng Cho-fan as her weak husband, Wang Wenxuan, whose spirits have been crushed by the Sino-Japanese war.

Reporter Yu Mong-yuen is recovering from a leg injury in his fiancee Man-wah's apartment. Bored, he looks out the rear window and observes the life of the neighbouring building. Among the tenants are a sugar-daddy and his mistress, a middle-aged man wants to marry a young girl, but she is in love with his son. Finally, she hatches a plot and makes the man agree to her marrying his son ; a sly fortune-teller ; a lively gym, a rich widow quarrels with the trainer of a gymnasium because his dog has bitten her cat ; and an opera school, a woman signs, leaning on the balcony, and a man tries to strangle her. In fact they are rehearsing an opera…… One evening, Wah is on the night shift, and Yuen watches the opera troupe rehearse to the end. Under the influence of drugs, Yu mistakenly believes that a divorced man has murdered a taxi dancer. He alerts the police, but the whole thing is nothing more than a misunderstanding.

Chan Siu-hung is forced to become a prostitute, with the police following hot on her heels. Ching Chi-ko comes to her defence by claiming to be her husband. Chan is put up at Ching's roof hut named the 'Seventh Heaven' and the two gradually fall in love. Soon the war breaks out. Ching is drafted to do hard labour by the Japanese army. When the war is over, the crippled Ching returns and lies to Chan that he is already a married man, hoping to persvade Chan to marry someone else. Nonetheless, Chan's devotion overwhelms Ching.

The sophistication of 1950s Hong Kong cinema is vividly illustrated in this film of limited budget and resources. Cantonese opera star Sun Ma Si-tsang plays a country boy who looks exactly like Sun Ma and is asked by a rich girl to impersonate the star, to help her stage an opera. The self-reflexive humour generated by the absurd situation not only provides delicious parody of celebrity culture but also comments subtly on class inequality and the perils of urbanisation. Sun Ma, who also appears as himself in a stage performance, is complemented beautifully by the brilliant comedian Yee Chau-shui as his sidekick and Hung Sin Nui, another opera superstar, as the spoiled and precocious rich girl.