Art house: Festival Moon highlights inequality in Hong Kong, past and present

"The film's main character is a moon cake." That's the apt assessment by Festival Moon scriptwriter, Shen Ji, of his tale's chief dramatic ingredient. Under the skilled direction of Zhu Shilin, the delicacy at this 1953 movie's centre is a bittersweet confection divorced from its traditional cultural roots and transformed into a symbol of the corruption and inequality of Hong Kong's capitalistic system.

The inaugural production of the left-wing Feng Huang studio, this classic of 1950s Putonghua-dialect cinema took a neo-realistic approach to the plight of office clerk Chen Mingsheng (Han Fei). Rather than celebrate the usually joyous holiday, the Chen family is forced to forego genuine necessities in order to buy expensive gifts for such undeserving souls as an arrogant boss (Wen Yimin) and a greedy landlord (Shi Lei).

Though heavy-handed in its depiction of the callous rich and virtuous poor, the film's performances are so heartfelt and the detail so vivid that the picture is entertaining as well as ethical. Han gives a beautifully modulated portrayal, matched in understatement by Ella Kiang (aka Jiang Hua), a member of the first generation of Hong Kong-fostered Putonghua movie talent, in the role of his wife.

Festival Moon is a window on how much and how little our community has changed in the past six decades. The Chens are educated members of the middle class, yet their housing conditions are appalling. The chasm between the "haves" and "have-nots" is as unconscionable in the mid-20th century as it is in the first two decades of the 21st.

Ironically, back then it was the film world's left wing that railed against the system. This is doubly ironic in light of the differing fates of Festival Moon's participants: those who remained in Hong Kong enjoyed lives of relative stability while returnees to the People's Republic — including lead actor Han, a major Shanghai star who moved back to the mainland before the drama's premiere — were subjected to harsh persecution during the upcoming Anti-Rightist Movement and Cultural Revolution.

As far as I know, the last public screening of Festival Moon with its original Putonghua soundtrack intact was at a retrospective over 30 years ago. Regrettably, the print was not preserved. Still, we can count ourselves fortunate that another copy of the film was discovered, albeit dubbed into Cantonese.