Released at midnight on July 10, the musical The Rooftop, directed and including performances by Taiwanese singer Jay Chou, grossed 130 million yuan ($21.2 million) in Mainland China by August 5, breaking the box office record for Chinese musicals.
However, Perhaps Love, directed by Peter Chan, established the best record. In 2005, the film, claiming to be “the first true Chinese musical”, hit 30 million yuan ($4.9 million) at the box office after its release on December 1. The daily box office receipts surpassed those of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that was shown during the same period, thereby making the film the first romance topping the rank of highest grossing films for the weekend box office results in Mainland China.
As a matter fact, the total box office revenue in Mainland China for the year of 2005 was 2 billion yuan ($0.33 billion) while the box office revenue for the first half of 2013 reached 11 billion yuan ($1.79 billion). Considering ticket prices, attendance and inflation, “the indisputable highest grossing Chinese musical in history” is Perhaps Love.
As to the historical development of musicals in China, the genre of musical is neither rare nor unusual.
In fact, neither Perhaps Love nor Berlinale prize winner The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, 2005), deserved the title “the first Chinese musical”, though they could compete for the title of “the first musical with an independent narrative”.
The same as in Hollywood and Bollywood, the emergence of sound films brought China a new genre: musical, to be more specific, singing films, appeared and became the main source of Shanghai film entertainment for a time.
Nevertheless, unlike filmmakers in the United States during the Great Depression, Chinese filmmakers regarded fighting in the war and national salvation as their own obligation. They did not want to show audiences a fantasy life on the big screen to escape from reality. Instead, they hoped Chinese people to gain strength and courage from stories of people overcoming hardship with expectations of a better life. Popular soundtracks were highly appreciated as propaganda.
The Phantom of the Opera, an adaptation of a Broadway musical, and Song at Midnight (1937) directed by Ma-Xu Weibang set the record of successive screenings for 34 days with high attendance rate at each session. The composer and lyricist of the original soundtracks, Xian Xinghai and Tian Han, became pioneers in the history of Chinese music. Tian Han wrote March of the Volunteers, which later became China’s national anthem for movie Heroic Sons and Daughters (Wu Zhaodi, 1935); the composer Nie Er once worked in Lianhua Film Company and wrote a series of classical songs, such as Graduation Song for Fate of Graduates (Ying Yunwei, 1934), Song of the Big Road for The Big Road (Sun Yu, 1934) and New Woman for film New Women (Cai Chusheng, 1935).
Compared to sound films, the development of Chinese color films lagged far behind that of the United States. Real musicals didn’t appear in China until the 1960s.
With the guiding ideology to promote the nation’s unity in China, the musical film genre began to receive special attention as it was able to further represent ethnic minority groups’ special talents for singing and dancing.
Changchun Film Studio produced the musical Third Sister Liu (Su Li, 1960) based on Zhuang ethnic folk music. Musical Five Golden Flowers (Wang Jiayi, 1959) produced by Changchun Film Studio and Ashima (Liu Qiong, 1964) produced by Shanghai Film Studio used traditional music and dances of Bai and Yi ethnic minorities respectively. Although these films seemed to be produced in the name of politics, they all featured love stories with happy endings and lively characters. Folk songs and ballads were performed in a way which was close to audiences at that time so they were well received.
Owing to the authorities’ support, Chinese musicals in that period were great in artistic value and audience reception.
Instead of the traditional narrative model, Ashima reflected the inner world of the characters and the romantic story lines with different colorful dance sessions as well as a combination of pas de deux and pas de trois, leaving audiences a strong impression. In 2010, director Zhang Yimou even boasted, “We could make a 3D version of Ashima to defeat the hit film Avatar.”
In Hong Kong during the same period, staying away from political and class struggles, the Shaw Brothers films produced Love Parade (Doe Ching, 1963) and Les Belles (Doe Ching, 1961). They imitated Hollywood musicals in every respect including luxury scene settings, mise en scene, costume designing and choreography, etc. In addition, the quality of their production was not at all inferior to Hollywood musicals and many soundtracks were passed down and are still sung by people today. However, this did not last long as teen musicals starring Josephine Siao and Connie Chan Po-chu, etc., movie idols of a younger generation, soon surpassed the Shaw Brothers’ musicals.
The short wave of Hollywood imitation films was highly related to a unique genre in China – Chinese Opera films.
Before the popularization of films in China, watching Chinese Opera and listening to bookshow were common people’s major recreations. The popularity of famous opera singers, such as Chen Yanqiu and Mei Lanfang, were more popular than today’s Hollywood stars. However, watching Opera in theaters was an entertainment for the wealthy while common people could only afford to listen to it on the radio. Since the ticket price for a Chinese Opera film was cheap and such a musical was vivid, this genre attracted numerous Opera fans.
Therefore, the early Chinese films all used singing and spoken parts of Chinese Opera: the first sound film in China Sing-Song Red Peony (Zhang Shichuan, 1930), the first color film Happiness Neither in Life Nor in Death (Fei Mu, 1948) and the first color film in post-1949 China The Romance of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (Sang Hu & Huang Sha, 1953).
Even though every region in China has its own dialect and its own type of opera, stories of wide recognition and melodious vocal music could easily break the barriers between different regions. After the Cultural Revolution, Cantonese Opera (Yueju) film A Dream of Red Mansions (Cen Fan, 1962) was re-released in 1978 and its audiences in the Mainland totaled 1.2 billion. Malaysian Chinese director Tsai Ming-liang once said that he obtained his very first impression of films from Cantonese Opera film Chasing the Fish Spirit (Ying Yunwei, 1959).
In 1950s, there were around 200 Cantonese Opera films produced in Hong Kong every year and for every three Cantonese films, there was a Cantonese Opera film. In 1958, Cantonese opera films made up half of 160 Hong Kong-made films. Although there were some classical films, such as Tragedy of the Emperor’s Daughter (Cho Kei & Lung To, 1959), The Purple Hairpin (Li Tie, 1959) and Tragedy of the Poet King (Lee Sun-fung, 1968), most of these Cantonese Opera films were produced with a small budget without taking filming techniques into consideration, mostly just a record of stage performances.
International Film company Shaw Brothers, transferring from Shanghai to Hong Kong, noticed the attraction of opera films to Chinese audiences and the weakness of Cantonese Opera films: modest settings and scrubby costumes so they revitalized Chinese films in Hong Kong with large-scale Hollywood-style musicals and Huangmei Opera films.
Huangmei Opera film is based on stage performances of traditional opera, integrating filming techniques and acting methods in modern films, vocal music of the age, gestures of folk dances and realistic setting and art designs in narrative films.
The unique genre swept East Asia from the end of the 1950s to the beginning of 1970s: there was barely a single film that was not a Huangmei opera film. This genre not only had a strong impact on the development of Chinese films (Ang Lee said Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was inspired by Li Han-hsiang’s The Love Eterne), but also played a vital role in the process of the internationalization of Chinese films as Li Han-hsiang’s The Empress Dowager was produced to explore the overseas market.
Huangmei Opera films fell apart after the senior leaders of Motion Picture & General Investment Co. Ltd. died in an air crash and another senior leader, Li Han-Hsiang left Shaw Brothers. However, its unique expression and many arias still remain in the memories of the fans today. Produced by Wong Kar-wai and directed by Jeffrey Lau, Chinese Odyssey paid homage to Li Han-Hsiang by having Tony Leung and Faye Wong perform the famous aria in Li’s 1959 film The Kingdom and the Beauty.
After the 1980s, with the Reform and Opening up and later the return of Hong Kong and Macau, opera and folk music gradually disappeared from the public’s sight and was replaced by pop music. Since then, the status of musicals in China has become somewhat awkward.
Modern pop music originated from western classical music, a totally different category from traditional Chinese music. Naturally, the development of Chinese pop music lagged behind. What’s more, China started to feel the impact of the Japanese Karaoke culture since 1990s, and most of those catchy songs were of little artistic value.
Hong Kong New Wave emerged in 1979, Taiwan New Wave Cinema started at the beginning of the 1980s and a revolution of cinema in Mainland China had just begun. Therefore, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan entered the period of displaying realism and individual styles, quite incompatible with traditional musicals.
During the period from the mid-1970s to 1995, the Chinese musical market contracted, as did the Hollywood musical market. Only Bollywood could meet Chinese audiences’ demand for musicals.
On Zhihu, the Chinese Quora, for the question “how would you comment on Life of Pi?” someone joked, “This is the only movie that I have ever seen which stars an Indian actor but does not include anyone suddenly jumping into song and dance.” Receiving 503 likes, this answer became the most popular response, demonstrating Chinese audiences’ common impression of Indian Bollywood films.
Despite the language barrier, Caravan (Nasir Hussain, 1971) appealed to a large Chinese audience thanks to the exotic costumes, singing and dancing, ingeniously conceived storyline and distinct dramatic conflicts. Since then, Indian films featuring “singing and dancing” came into China witnessing the growth of a new generation of cinephiles in China: Noorie (Manmohan Krishna, 1979), Khoon Bhari Maang (Rakesh Roshan, 1988), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (Mira Nair, 1996), Asoka (Santosh Sivan, 2001) and Jodhaa Akbar (Ashutosh Gowariker. 2008), etc..
At present, since young audiences are used to the intense narratives in Hollywood films, they have been criticizing Indian films for music and dance that are sometimes irrelevant to the storyline and regarding it as a waste of time. In fact, considering Chinese cinema’s development from 1940s to1990s, this is a nation with little musical legacy: it seems more sensible to sing pop songs in Bollywood-style than the Broadway-style singing unfamiliar to most local audiences.
The Phantom Lover (Ronny Yu) was remade in 1995 with big stars like Leslie Cheung and Wu Chien-lien. It received wide acclaim from music critics and film critics; moreover, its theme song Endless Embrace became rather popular. Unfortunately, general audience found the western style of vocal music not so amiable and the box office revenue of HK$13 million ($1.67 million) failed to meet expectations.
In 1997, a Cantonese musical Snow Wolf Lake starring and produced by Hong Kong top star Jacky Cheung and a rock musical Kiss Me Nana produced and composed by a Taiwan music talent Tom Chang garnered huge interest for musicals in Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively. Regrettably, their influences were limited to the specific regions.
Chinese musicals have never been as popular as early Chinese Opera films.
New Legend of Madame White Snake, broadcasted in Taiwan in 1992 and imported by CCTV the following year, was a surprise exception. This TV series, adapted from one of the four famous Chinese tales named The Legend of the White Snake, retained melodic features and expression of Huangmei Opera films and integrated them with the popular singing techniques. Not only did it become the most watched TV series of the time but it also swept across Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Since the TV series was produced, it became the most popular show during summer holidays and it ranked the No. 2 in terms of the frequency of rebroadcasting (it was rebroadcasted every year except in 2007 and 2008 due to the issue of copyright). In 2009, there were 6 TV channels rebroadcasting it in concession. CCTV also rebroadcasted it twice: in 2004 and 2013 respectively. Its popularity was enduring and its music known to all.
Based on the above analysis, it is not difficult to realize that non-opera musicals should feature plots and stories, while music can only act as the vehicle to add color to the core content. This hidden rule has not changed from the 1930s to the present.
Simple plots with sharp dramatic conflicts, catchy songs with beautiful melodies and spoken parts are the predetermined conditions of a successful musical in China. With more linguistic and cultural barriers, foreign musicals should present accessible songs with catchier melodies to create relevant atmosphere or just to express the characters’ emotions, instead of using songs to interfere with the development of the storyline.
Based on these theories, it was somewhat senseless for the China Film Group to select the cancan as the promotion highlight of Moulin Rouge!. Meng duan hua du, the Chinese translation of its title was a bigger disaster – something completely irrelevant to the original title. Consequently, lots of fans did not watch the film despite their long anticipation. As for Les Misérables, its tags like “a great writer”, “literature” and “history”, scared many potential audience who do not appreciate art films that much. Some audiences could not stand watching actors singing out all the lyrics, and others were too preoccupied with subtitles to enjoy the soundtracks just in case they might miss some plots.
Actually, Dreamgirls, denied by the China Film Group, seemed to have a specific target audience and a promising box office performance even without any well-known movie stars, such as Nicole Kidman and Huge Jackman. The reason is that it is a musical similar to Perhaps Love, which was released a year earlier than Dreamgirls, ranking as the 8th highest grossing film in 2005. In the movie, a group of renowned actors demonstrated the struggling life of a superstar and the loss of love. All the arias were pop songs with different styles, properly decorating the story-telling.
The Rooftop, another romance and nostalgic musical, was criticized for the poor combination of arias and plots that made the film feel more like a Bollywood musical or an over-length music TV video.
Filmmakers, somehow, do not to worry about dances in the musical. After all, there is no barrier for body language. Japanese and Korean pop singers have often become popular in China overnight thanks to cool dance movements in their music videos.
Dancing is a popular leisure entertainment among modern Chinese people, especially young people. Indian dance, belly dance, flamenco, tap dance and Jazz all have lots of followers with Latin dance and hip-hop the most popular ones. Pop male singing groups with neat group choreography (The Little Tigers) or showing off highly difficult dance skills (Energy) are not uncommon in the Chinese market. Idols like Show Luo and Jolin Tsai are more famous for their dances than their music.
Chinese people like seeing new highly difficult dances but there was not many films featuring dances after Ashima, thereby leaving an empty space in the musical genre.
In 2010, Step Up, a movie combining street dance and ballet, topped the weekly box office in Hong Kong. In June 2012, British musical Street Dance 2, mixing street dance and Latin dance together surpassed Brave with NT$ 20 million ($0.67 million) takings and became that week’s highest grossing film in Taiwan. In August 2013, Step Up 4 topped the weekly box office in Taiwan. Who could say that audience in mainland China is not hungry for an entertaining musical?
Realizing Mainland China’s demand for musicals, Disney chose two giants SMG and Huayi Brothers as partners to re-produce High School Musical into a new version tailored for the Chinese market. However, the film was denounced due to meaningless lyrics, forgettable melodies, average performances of leading characters, mediocre choreography and a copycat of the original plots with no adjustment to the Chinese logic. It failed at the box office and received 3.5 /10 only on Douban, a website crowded with movie goers.
Les Misérables failed in China and the Disney High School Musical: China (Chen Shi-zheng, 2010) was universally condemned, but Chinese audiences have never said no to an amazing musical. Indian films that insist on “suddenly jumping out to sing songs and dance” became popular once again among the young generation in China because of a recent film, 3 Idiots (Rajkumar Hirani. 2009).
Some would declare: Hey, but the people here do not wear shoes! It is you who should decide whether there is no market, or quite the opposite, there is a tremendous market. How about making the right shoe and find a competitive salesman?