Song at Midnight
6.6 /10 1 Votes
Director Ma-Xu Weibang Music director Xian Xinghai Duration Language Mandarin | 6.6/10 IMDb Genre Horror Screenplay Ma-Xu Weibang Country China | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 1937 Writer Gaston Leroux (play), Weibang Ma-Xu Cast Menghe Gu , Ping Hu , Jin Shan (Song Danping)Similar movies The Phantom Lover (1995) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Song at midnight
Song at Midnight (simplified Chinese: 夜半歌声; traditional Chinese: 夜半歌聲; pinyin: Yè bàn gē shēng) (also known as Midnight Song, Singing at Midnight or literally Voice of Midnight) is a 1937 film directed by Ma-Xu Weibang. Often referred to as the first Chinese horror film, Song at Midnight is a remake/adaptation of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera, though the film injects a significant political subplot involving the leftist revolutionary movement to the original story.
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The film stars Gu Menghe, Zhou Wenzhu, and Jin Shan as the disfigured anti-hero Song Danping. Ma-Xu made one sequel to Song at Midnight in 1941 during the war. Both films resurfaced in the West at the Udine Far East Film Festival in 1998. Since then, the film has been shown at various film festivals around the world, notably at the 62nd Venice International Film Festival's "Secret History of Chinese Cinema" retrospective.
Reputation
Today the film is well regarded, and was named as one of the best 100 Chinese films by both the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2005, and by Asia Weekly in 1999.
Song at Midnight has also been remade four times. The first remake, translated as The Mid-Nightmare is a two-parter by Hong Kong director, Yuan Qiuxia, released in 1962 (part I) and 1963 (part II). It stars Betty Loh Ti and Lao Zhei. The second remake, also called Song of Midnight, was made in 1985. A third remake directed by Ronny Yu was released in 1995, under of the title of The Phantom Lover. Pop singer Leslie Cheung played the lead role of Song Danping. The film was remade for the fourth and final time in 2005 as a television series.
Cast
DVD release
As part of their Chinese film retrospective, Cinema Epoch released Song at Midnight on Region 0 DVD on May 8, 2007. The DVD includes subtitles in English.
An earlier DVD edition by the Guangzhou Beauty Culture Communication Co. Ltd was released on December 1, 2006 in the United States.
References
Song at Midnight WikipediaSong at Midnight IMDb Song at Midnight themoviedb.org