Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan) (1986)

 

Do Ma Daan

When I think of Hong Kong movies, martial arts is what comes to my mind. Lots of wires, kung fu and sword fighting that looks more like dancing than mortal combat. What I do not think of is comedies. Maybe for good reason, comedy translates very poorly, but “Do Ma Daan” (“Peking Opera Blues”) is such an entry on the List. Whether it is successful I think depends on the viewer.

It is 1913 and China is politically a mess with warlords coming and going and revolution brewing under the surface. General Tsao (Kenneth Tsang) has just ousted General Tun and is into some hanky panky with foreign bankers. His daughter, Tsao Wan (Brigitte Lin), is secretly a revolutionary and want to steal the documents to help the revolution. In this endeavour she is helped by Pak Hoi (Mark Cheng), another revolutionary. Sheung Hung (Cherie Chung) is a courtesan of General Tuns whose quest for a treasure of jewellery leads her to (and past) Tung Man (Cheung Kwok Keung), a soldier and cross paths with Wan and Hoi. The local opera house is the eye of the storm and here the acrobatic daughter, Bai Niu (Sally Yeh), of the owner fall in with the other.

Somehow a lot of things seem to happen, getting the documents, avoid being taken by the secret police, getting in and out of the opera house and getting entangled in the various armies. Beside the quest for the documents, there is Hung’s quest for the jewellery, Niu’s ambition to act in the all-male opera troupe and some romantic combinations.

It should be mentioned here that Peking opera is quite different from western opera. Like in very different.

It was very difficult to find this movie. The version I eventually dug up had English dubbing, complete with English names for the characters but acted on a budget. The dubbing was so bad that a large share of the comedy was the involuntary sort coming from these terrible voices. A movie like “Kung-Pow” is having a lot of fun with this sort of dubbing, but the real thing is... quite an experience.

Another large share of the comedy comes from the martial arts. No Hong Kong movie without martial art and in an action comedy like this one we get plenty. Much, if not most, is so exaggerated that it is funny. It is hard to tell if it is intentionally comedic or just becomes that way in a movie that does not really care if things make sense. The parts that definitely play for comedy work poorly though and that is not very surprising. A lot gets lost in the cultural translation.

It is rather incredible how much plot, action and characters “Peking Opera Blues” manages to squeeze into its 105 minutes running time. It is a very fast movie, quickly moving into the next scene. Look away for a moment and you are lost.

This is an odd mix of helpless amateurism (in large part due to the ridiculous dubbing) and very skilled physical acting and pacing. I am caught between ridiculing and admiring the movie and it ends up in this strange zone where I cannot tell if this was a good movie or not. I did enjoy watching it, but often for the wrong reasons and so I believe it is very much up to the individual viewer.

The Book is gushing about “Peking Opera Blues” and I am happy I only read the entry after watching the movie. What I actually watched was not bad, but very different from what the entry would have lead me to expect.