Songfest
Essentially a low-budget remake of the previous year’s The Shepherd Girl, Songfest drives the folk musical idea into the ground by failing to find any new ideas in the genre.
Swapping the excellent Juile Yeh Feng for the barely palatable Margaret Tu Chuan is only one of Songfest’s many faults. The singing is badly dubbed, the story is barely fleshed out, and the lead couple irritated me enough that I wished them eternal misery.
Songfest does have some redeeming qualities; the music is more varied and its male lead, Chiao Chuang, is capable of acting (unlike Kwan Shan in Shepherd Girl). The singing competition between Song Yu Lan (Margaret Tu Chuan) and a half-dozen suitors is fantastic, bizarre and hilarious. After defeating a series of singing ringers, Yu sings against a motley crew of Chinese caricatures.
If only Songfest had ended there, instead of tacking on another fifteen minutes of pointlessness. Even then the movie only manages a sparse 75 minute running time.
Songfest essentially killed the folk musical. As far as I know it would be two years before Shaw would try the genre again with 1967’s Moonlight Serenade.
Ian Whitney
Published: 2006-06-02