Watch Song at Midnight For Free

Just what I expected

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

SONG AT MIDNIGHT is a creaky old reworking of Gaston Leroux's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, with the story transferred across to mainland China, where it gets additional political subtext and meaning. It's a stand-out movie because it was China's first horror picture, and already it has imagery and a look familiar from later Chinese cinema: facially-deformed "baddies", cobwebby sets, a plot spurred by human greed and envy. The film is notable for being very derivative, copying bits and pieces of various Universal classics like Dracula and Frankenstein as well as Phantom; it also happens to be slow-paced with dialogue scenes that really test the patience. However, it deserves plaudits for the make-up and set design alone, and it has bags of atmosphere which makes it a must see for any lover of classic horror cinema.

Wanna know something funny about this movie? The Phantom-like character in this movie is called Song and the sort of Raoul character is called Sung and the Phantom teaches Raoul how to sing. So Song teaches Sung how to sing. Yeah, I know these are Chinese names but come on, that had to be more than a coincidence. Anyways, onto the movie. Since I do not speak Chinese, I watched a subtitled version that actually had better subtitles! No walksn foxes here! So I didn't have a problem in knowing what was going on although some of the subtitles seemed a little weird, that was most likely a language thing. With so many changes to the Phantom of the Opera story, this is very loosely a version but it does feature a disfigured musician that falls in love with a singer so I guess that's all you really need. Overall, this was an enjoyable flick but it does have a few issues. First off, the first half of this movie is very slow and honestly bored me a little. However, once Song is scarred by acid, the movie really picks up and becomes a fun watch. Song's makeup is also very well done and is certainly the best of the acid disfigurements. Plus, the scene where he sees his recently disfigured face is probably the most poignant scene in the whole movie and makes the whole "deformity is an injury" thing I'm not very fond of, much more tolerable. I also think that Song and Xia have a very genuine relationship and I liked how he was willing to sacrifice his happiness for hers. Though at the same time, that is done out of his own insecurities about his face which is a bit odd to me. They were so obviously in love, I don't think Xia would reject him because of something as shallow as his face. Oh well, maybe that's touched on in the sequel, which I haven't seen yet. Aside from that plot-hole, the story itself is pretty good and the characters are endearing enough. However, and this might just be a culture thing, I don't really get why it's considered the first Chinese horror film when it really doesn't seem to be scary or even remotely creepy. It seemed like more of a romance and drama film than horror.

This is artistically a well made and good looking movie but due to its different techniques and approach being used, that's different from the western way of film-making, this movie is also a hard one to watch in parts.The first halve of the movie is mostly hard to follow. Basically all you see are people walking around and talking. It's often hard to fully understand what is going on and were the movie and its story is heading to. It however soon becomes obvious that this is a movie that is based on the well known Gaston Leroux novel; The Phantom of the Opera. But no, you can't really regard this movie as a Chinese version of The Phantom of the Opera. It's more a reinterpretation of the novel and it picks some different angles with its story. This is a fairly unknown and rare early Chinese production and also very little about this film is actually known. It nevertheless is listed at many places as you movie you simply have to see and I can understand why, even though this movie is not completely a successful one really as a movie.Time has not always been kind to this movie and some of the movie its quality has been lost. The quality and used techniques of this movie makes the movie seem older than it in fact really is. I'm not only talking about the types of camera's being used by also the editing, camera positioning and overall directing style. Also the music and sound often doesn't sound right and seems out of place and as if it got added in a much later stage. movie got made in the '30's, it looks more like it had been made 20 years before that. Asian movies in general often look older than they really are due to its techniques. It's for instance also the reason why most Akira Kurosawa movies look as if they were made in the '30's, while in fact they were made in the '50's. Of course this has changed, since the world now is much smaller.The second halve of the movie is definitely the best when it mixes its (romantic) drama with horror elements. The movie and its story then soon starts to get truly powerful and the movie becomes an even bigger pleasure to watch.It was already a pleasure to watch this movie due to its visual look, even though time hadn't been kind on the overall quality of the movie. It using fine, almost at times expressionistic looking sets, which probably had more to do with the budget restrictions of the movie. The movie is artistically more interesting to watch than movie-wise really.It's acting is obviously over-the-top and also one of the reasons why this movie is more outdated looking and feeling than it's 1937 release date would suggest. The actors obviously weren't movie actors but who can blame them, since in the '30's China there of course really wasn't a movie industry. It also got made in the same year as the second Sino-Japanese war started between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan, though there already had been some fighting going on between those two, years before the actual war started, so no big surprise really that this movie got made with limited resources and both cast & crew involved obviously didn't had much experience yet in the movie business, though director Weibang Ma-Xu on a very regular basis, had been making movies since 1926 on and continued to do so till his early death in 1961.It's an interesting movie to watch.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

It would be nice to see Weibang Ma-Xu's other films. He was a busy director logging up credits till the sixties. This is his film which got most attention, though Chinese intellectuals were apparently dismissive of it. Now that the circulation of mainland DVDs has made the pre-WW2 Shanghai films accessible, SONG AT MIDNIGHT turns up in a battered but watchable copy and is unusually intriguing.Even without sub-titles, the story can be followed. Viewers are helped by familiarity with the "Phantom of the Opera" origins and Ronny Yu's accomplished re-make which drew on another half century of technique and a bigger budget. You can also see the influence of the Lugosi Dracula here but this is a much better film.The plot has a traveling operetta company arrive at the run down provincial theatre. Their juvenile is having problems but he is coached to triumph by a mysterious hooded figure, who a flash back reveals is a star disfigured by the local power cartel, when he romanced the daughter of an influential family. The young performer sings under the window of the phantom's old love now deranged, who takes him for her former lover. When his old nemesis menaces the ingénue of the company, the Phantom attacks him and is burned in a tower building by an angry mob. This is not a film that coasts on subtlety.The film making, while not polished, gets by and is full of imaginative touches and striking images. The actor playing the phantom was thought of as one of the country's best at the time and it is interesting to see his work here.This is certainly more entertaining than much of the more purposeful work that makes it into critical histories. Anyone with a serious interest in film should seek it out.