慈母頌 (1956)

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慈母頌 (1956)

A Hymn to Mother

Reviewed by: dleedlee
Date: 10/06/2004

Mother deserves more! Not bad, not terrible, but also not above many others. Not once did I want to shed a tear for Mother here.

** Spoiler/Synopsis **<br>
Local tyrant Shu Ken interrupts Do-Sang and Wai Ching’s wedding banquet. Shu Ken had his own eyes on marrying Wai Ching. He frames Do-Sang for robbery and murder, tortures him to death in jail. Wai Ching, now pregnant, still will not marry him even when he threatens to kill her baby. She puts him off until the baby is born. Instead, Wai Ching flees with her newborn baby to start a new life.

As the boy, Nim-Cho, grows up, Wai Ching keeps moving hoping to find a decent place to raise her son, eventually for revenge. The two finally land in Hong Kong. Now selling vegetables and barely getting by, she runs into her old schoolmates. Kwan Wei gets her a job in his father’s office and proposes to her but Wai Ching declines.

Nim-Cho, now grown up and about to graduate from college, meets Yiu-Fun. Her parents, it turns out, is Shu Ken, now living under another name, having killed her mother’s lover and himself having to run away to Hong Kong. In the climatic conclusion, Shu Ken gets his just desserts and Yiu-Fun discovers that he is not her father but the killer of his true father, thus allowing the young couple to marry.

Pak Suet-Sin as Wai Ching is ostensibly the heroine of this feature. To me, she doesn’t lift the story into the level of grand melodrama. She is best in the film when she struggles to raise her young son on the proper path. Cheung Wood Yau bookends his appearance, first as the father, then as the son, so his efforts become diluted as neither character gets enough time to really develop. Lee Pang-Fei as Shu Ken performs well as the evildoer. Cheng Bik-Ying appearing late in the film as the son’s girlfriend is always a welcome sight to these eyes. Yip Ping as her mother is ever reliable and a stalwart performer. Chan Lap Ban makes a brief cameo as a crabby (when is she not?) neighbor. The child actor playing the younger Nim-Cho is very good.

Worth watching but not exemplary.

Reviewer Score: 5