More than a decade after the founding of the People's Republic of China ushered in a new era in Chinese cinema, the Shanghai tradition still flourished on Hong Kong celluloid. With its focus on love and a positive portrayal of educated bourgeoisie, Father Takes a Bride (1963) was a compendium of elements once the staple of mainstream fare but condemned after 1949 as being reactionary.
Many of the talents responsible for those features - people such as writer Eileen Chang Ai-ling - came in for criticism and relocated to the then British colony.
The style and perspective Chang gave to such pre-1949 Shanghai classics as Long Live the Mistress (1947) and Sorrows and Joys of a Middle-Aged Man (1949) is evident in the screenplays she crafted for Hong Kong's Motion Picture & General Investment (MP&GI) from 1956-1964.
Father Takes a Bride revisited themes she dealt with in Sorrows and Joys (in which a widowed teacher's plans for remarriage meet with his children's disapproval), but shifted the spotlight to the younger generation.