Art house: HK’s first Putonghua feature, Orphan Island Paradise

In the history of Chinese cinema, few Hong Kong productions represented the hopes and dreams of mainland filmmakers more eloquently than Orphan Island Paradise.

The classic film tells the grim story of the people of Shanghai as they fight invasion during the early stages of the Sino-Japanese war, when the foreign concessions administered by Western powers formed an "orphan island" still free of Tokyo's direct intervention. Yet such was the sensitivity of expressing overtly anti-Japanese sentiment that director-writer Cai Chusheng made the movie in Hong Kong - and, in the process, produced one of the then British colony's first Putonghua features and one of the few whose print has survived into the 21st century.

Even then, however, there's no direct mention of Japan in this tale of a nightclub chanteuse who clandestinely works with the underground to sabotage plans by traitorous collaborators. After all, with Britain still a neutral nation at that point, not to mention there being Japanese troops at the Guangdong border, there were certain lines the filmmakers could not cross.

Amid such restrictions, it is amazing how Cai managed to nudge that line leftwards so that the message that emerges on screen is not in the least bit obscure and, equally amazing, is spiritually indistinguishable from the Communist-influenced dramas he directed in Shanghai before the outbreak of war.

Despite the film being shot mostly on studio sets or at generic exteriors, there is little doubt as to the scenario's locale - special care was taken to establish the milieu by opening with a musical number that utilises a back screen projection of a montage of Shanghai shots.

The film depicts both the best and worst of Shanghai's denizens. Scenes of revellers tangoing in a ballroom are neatly balanced with the torture inflicted on those who do their nationalistic duty. The territory traversed is similar in many ways to that of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, albeit minus the latter's nuance, depth, carnality and budget.