108: Song at Midnight

Ye ban ge sheng

CHN  118m  Dir: Ma-Xu Weibang  

Song at Midnight is often considered the first Chinese horror film but that doesn't seem like a fair description. It's more a human tragedy than it is a terrifying horror film.

It's actually based on The Phantom of the Opera, albeit very loosely, taking some elements from the novel as inspiration for it's own story. The film opens with a theatre troupe arriving at a delipidated theatre which had once been the stage for famous actor Song Danping, long since dead. Actor Xiao’ou struggles with his lines and stays behind to rehearse where he is helped by Danping, not dead after all. Danping eventually tells his story of how he was once a revolutionary and how at the hands of a love rival he was attacked and had acid thrown at him, causing a horrific disfigurement. 

It's the flashback sequence which was by far the highlight of the film for me. It's a really interesting idea to pitch the phantom of the opera not as a nightmarish figure but as a tragic figure. His story is a proper tragedy and the moment he releases his bandages for the first time and reveals his distorted face, executed in a far more convincing way than the Lon Chaney version, is so well made. 

I like how the film is inspired by earlier western cinema. It happily pinches some elements from the 1925 Phantom of the Opera and also is heavily inspired by German expressionist cinema, most notably Nosferatu. There's plenty about the ending that is similar to the ending of the 1931 Frankenstein with both 'monsters' being chased down by an angry mob. It's really admirable how they built on what had come before but managed to tell a completely new story. 

As with all the best horror films, there's an element of social commentary about the film. Danping was literally a left-wing revolutionary and the film ends on a note suggesting Xiao’ou will also become the same. The Chinese government of the time were strict about censorship (nothing changes) so the filmmakers did well to make a film which avoided censorship yet still managed to contain the strong political message. 

I think that the film is never quite a good as the nigh-on half an hour flashback sequence and could certainly have pressed on with the plot further. I do wonder if I felt that partly because not being a Mandarin speaker I couldn't get quite the same beauty out of the songs, which have since remained popular standards in China. It's also frustrating as a modern viewer that the film could desperately do with a restoration. 

All in all a really fascinating film. I didn't love the whole thing but it has it's moments and the flashback sequence in particular is stunning.