How movie Painted Faces tells story of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung at Peking opera school

Painted Faces is a dramatised biopic of Yu Jim-yuen, the master of the China Drama Academy, a Peking opera school in Hong Kong attended by actors Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung Kam-bo and Yuen Biao among others. A touching story, it was directed by the late Alex Law Kai-yui and written by his partner, Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting. Sammo Hung plays Master Yu, while Hung, Chan and Yuen are all played by younger actors. The Post spoke about the film with expert on Hong Kong cinema Frank Djeng, who provides the commentary for its forthcoming Blu-ray video release by Shout Factory. Why did Hung decide to get involved in the film? He has often described his treatment at Yu’s Peking opera school as brutal. He wanted to do it as an homage to his master. A lot of people back then knew the story of Sammo, Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao, but not many knew the story of their master. This was a chance to show that. Sammo has mentioned in interviews that although Master Yu was a very strict disciplinarian, he loved his students a lot. He was a fatherly figure for them, kind of like their adoptive father. It’s also a comment on how culture was quickly modernising in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Sammo saw that Mabel’s script was really talking about the decline of Beijing opera in Hong Kong. At that time, it was still quite common for families to send their kids to such opera schools to get educated. But in the film, we see that with the rising popularity of movies, Beijing Opera was declining. The film shows the fall of Beijing opera in Hong Kong. Master Yu realised that the time for traditional Beijing opera guys like himself has passed, and he was trying to tell that to his students. He knew that it would be good for them to go into movies and become stuntmen so they could make a living. His decline is depicted as a tragic fact of life. Hung gives a very actorly performance with no action scenes. Why did he take that approach? At this point in his career he wanted to get known as a more serious actor, and this was a showcase for his dramatic skills. He wanted to show that he could do more than kung fu, more than stunts, and he did other films with dramatic acting like Eight Taels of Gold and Paper Marriage. Is Painted Faces an accurate representation of life at the school? I think the opera school scenes are probably accurate, as Sammo was involved himself, so I think he helped to keep Mabel and Alex on track. But there are some dramatic flourishes in the film – I think Yu’s scenes with Cheng Pei-pei’s character are probably made up to add a bit of romance to the film, as they wanted to attract a female audience. They added other dramatic elements as they needed to fill out the story to make it work as a film. Alex Law mainly worked as a screenwriter, but his directing is excellent. He structures the film tightly, like an American movie. Alex and Mabel were a real-life couple from Hong Kong who met while they were studying film at New York University. After they graduated, they came back to Hong Kong and started making films. They were influenced by American films, and by the French New Wave. But they always brought a local flavour to their films. The kids who play the child and the teenage versions of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao are very good, even though they seem to be unknown. I don’t know where they found them, but they put in great performances. Sammo anchors the film and they all work around him. Alex and Mabel had a knack for finding good child actors, as they did it again in Echoes of the Rainbow, where they found a great actor called Buzz Chung [Shiu-to]. Painted Faces is a beautifully nostalgic evocation of life in the 1960s. Where did they find the old buildings like that in 1988? It really represents post-war Hong Kong well, but some of it was actually shot in Macau. They just could not find streets in Hong Kong that looked like older Hong Kong any more. The scene where all the kids are riding the bus free was shot in Macau, for instance. In the film, Master Yu and his students also perform at the old Lai Yuen Amusement Park in Lai Chi Kok when it was at its height. Yu really did take his students there to perform, so it was a nice touch that the filmmakers could film those scenes in the actual place that it happened. They would perform operas there to hone their skills. Audiences found these scenes at Lai Yuen Amusement Park nostalgic – I went there as a child, and it was nostalgic for me to see it! Cheng Pei-pei, who plays Yu’s romantic interest, had pretty much been out of filmmaking since the early 1970s. Audiences were genuinely surprised to see her, as she had been out of the limelight for quite some time. She married in 1970, and then retired. She moved to the US, went to college and started her own production company there. She divorced in 1987, and was at a low point when she made Painted Faces. She puts in a fantastic performance, though. Another martial arts legend, Lam Ching-ying, gives a great performance as the ageing Beijing opera performer who is forced to turn to stunt work. Lam represents how the times are changing. He cannot make a living as a Beijing opera performer any more, so he has to do stunts in films to get by. His health is not good and his body is not tough … but he has to learn all these new skills to survive. He has a nervous breakdown on the set of the film within a film. It showed how hard the changing times hit some people. An accident on the set pushes him over the edge, and he loses his mind. Life was unforgiving for this character. It’s very odd to see a co-production between Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers. How did that come about? I think Golden Harvest were worried about recouping their costs at the box office, as it was a drama with no action, so they asked Mabel and Alex, who had good connections at Shaw, to spread the burden. In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

How movie Painted Faces tells story of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung at Peking opera school

1988 Hong Kong film follows Yu Jim-yuen, the master of the Peking opera school in Kowloon whose pupils included Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung