Dawn Will Come
In 1963 Shaw Brothers released The Love Eterne, the haungmei diao film that broke box office records and helped cement the studio’s reputation. In 1964 Shaw Brothers followed by releasing at least 5 more haungmei diao films (is The Amorous Lotus Pan a haungmei diao? I’m still not sure). In 1965 they released another 5.
But in 1966 that number drops to 2. From there it would trail downwards, even as Shaw increased the number of films they made per year, until fading completely in 1969.
I’m guessing there are a lot of reasons for this decline. The older audience that liked these films became less important to Shaw as the studio focused on younger (and more male) audiences. Older Shaw directors like Li Han-Hsiang, who made some of the best examples of the genre, were leaving to work in Taiwan.
And as I’ve mentioned in my other reviews of haungmei diao films, the genre values repetition. And having 5 very similar films a year is going to wear audiences out. Ask Marvel about that.
By 1966 only one director at Shaw seems to have any affection for the genre, Kao Li. He directed 7 of the studio’s haungmei diao films, and stuck with the genre until 1967’s The Mirror and the Lichee, after which he left the studio. Or the studio left him. Hard to say.
In films like Dawn Will Come it’s clear that Kao Li is bumping up hard against both the limitations of the genre and of the Shaw Brothers studio. In the previous year’s The Mermaid, he made a delightful haungmei diao that used special effects to inject liveliness into a familiar story. So he was clearly trying to keep his movies fresh.
But in Dawn Will Come, a melodramatic tale of murder and tragedy, where weather and nature play a significant part, Kao Li struggles against the constraints of the Shaw studio. The massive rainstorms that trap our heroine with the villain are puny, with a sprinkler clearing being swung from side to side just off screen. The snow that leads the villain straight to his prey is pretty, but thin, and lacks the intense cold that the scene needs.
The dramatic summit of the movie takes place by an icy river; and, with no icy river running through Shaw Movietown Studio, they try to recreate it with some truly terrible miniature work and some very very awkward editing.
In a genre defined and limited by repetition, Kao Li clearly wanted to try some new things. But the limitation of the studio (or the budget they gave him) frustrate those attempts here. Just as they frustrated Li Han-Hsiang and King Hu, who left Shaw Brothers to go film on location in Taiwan.
I might feel those frustrations a little more keenly with this movie, as I think it’s otherwise quite good. Unlike many haungmei diao it’s relentlessly bleak. (spoiler ahead) Its ‘happy’ ending involves a father decapitating his son. (spoiler over). And the two female leads do a good job of leaning in to their melodramatically sad stories. I don’t know that male lead Lui Ming is amazing, but you know right away that he’s a real ass, which is sufficient.
But the attempts to go beyond these performances and make the movie something special don’t quite work. Definitely to my frustration, and probably to Kao Li’s as well.
Ian Whitney
Published: 2024-09-10