Last December, Deltamac, Taiwan's largest film distributor, took Shaw Brothers classics that had been sitting in vaults for 40 years and projected them once again onto the silver screen at the Breeze Center in Taipei. At first, Deltamac didn't have high expectations for the box office, but in their very first week these old films unexpectedly met with an extremely enthusiastic audience response. Each showing sold out, and even the front rows were full. The total box office take surpassed any of the first-run Chinese-language releases in the theaters at the same time. Their run at the Breeze Center's Ambassador Theaters was extended for several weeks.

"We didn't expect that it would stir up a craze for old Chinese films," says Deltamac's general manager Chen Ching-piao, "and that not only old fans, but youngsters too, would really take to them." Having ignited this wave of nostalgia for old films, Deltamac took advantage of the opportunity to sell some of the old films on DVD and VCD. They plan to release 713 films on VCD and DVD over the course of the next five years, with 15 to 20 films coming out in a typical month. That's more than comes out of Hollywood's eight largest studios.

The Shaw Brothers logo and slogan, "If it's Shaw Brothers, it's got to be good," as well as the accompanying music, are seemingly unforgettable.

Run Run Shaw

Shaw Brothers' forerunner was Shanghai's Unique Film Productions, which was established in 1925. Runje Shaw, the eldest brother, served as chairman, and his three younger brothers--Runde, Runme and Run Run--also worked for the company. Among the films Unique produced were Heroine Li Fei Fei, Iron Fan Princess, and Pearl Pagoda. Seeking new markets, Runme and Run Run Shaw took old films from Unique and brought them to the cities and towns of Singapore and Malaysia in 1928. Back then there was very limited entertainment in Southeast Asia, and Unique's movies really gathered crowds. The brothers started by traveling around showing the films where they could, and they ended up investing in movie theaters and amusement parks. Eventually, they had large holdings there. Along with the local Loke family's Cathay Organization and the He Brothers' Kong Ngee Company, the Shaws' company constituted one of the three big cinema chains in Singapore and Malaysia.

Before the war with Japan, Runde Shaw had come to Hong Kong to produce films, most of which were filmed in Cantonese. And on the eve of the war, Unique brought its equipment and money from Shanghai to Hong Kong, and changed its name to Nanyang Studio under the leadership of Runde. In 1951 it changed its name once again to Shaw and Sons (Runde Shaw had 10 sons), which shot films in Cantonese and Mandarin. Because Shaw Brothers had a large number of theaters in Southeast Asia, it had to produce Mandarin films for the overseas Chinese market. Once the mainland was lost to the Communists, the large population of Southeast Asian Chinese was relying entirely on Hong Kong for these Mandarin films, so Shaw Brothers shifted its emphasis to Mandarin films. Ultimately, however, the change of course would put them at a disadvantage when compared to the other major Hong Kong studio MP&GI (Motion Picture & General Investment Co., Ltd.), which was producing a lot of Cantonese films.

Runde Shaw was a loyal and honest head of the family, but he was very much an old-school businessman. From owning one small theater to running a large chain, he worked with diligence and frugality. Yet his was a character ill-suited to the fast pace of the movie industry and he never had much success in making films. Run Run Shaw was an entirely different kind of businessman. A film buff who worked in his youth as a cameraman at Unique, he also possessed a lot of business savvy, which can be seen by his decision to leave Shanghai with Runme to build a cinema empire in Singapore and Malaysia.

Run Run Shaw

Conditions were ripe for the film industry in Hong Kong: As the city was rapidly modernizing, the industry was booming. And unlike the film industry in Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, in Hong Kong it operated largely free from government interference. Yet when they lost out to the competition, Shaw and Sons left the movie production business in 1957 to devote itself to the management of theaters and the distribution of foreign language films. But then Run Run Shaw and the fifth brother Runme returned to Hong Kong from Singapore to take over leadership, and Shaw and Sons changed its name to Shaw Brothers. It invested a lot of capital, recruited leading lights, cultivated new talent, strengthened film production and expanded its markets. The younger Shaws revolutionized the way that the family did business.

People in their forties and fifties are sure to recall some of the nearly mythical events surrounding in Shaw Brothers movies: For example, The Love Eterne was sold out at Taipei's China, Far Eastern and Capital cinemas for more than two months running and 930 screenings, shattering Taiwan's box office record for any film--whether Chinese, Western or Japanese. And when Ling Bor, one of the film's stars, came to Taiwan, it created pandemonium, with more than 200,000 fans turning out to see her at various locations.

Shaw Brothers also revolutionized the martial arts genre. Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman, which starred Jimmy Wang Yu, was the first film to gross HK$1 million, and it also scored big in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. In the 1970s, director Chu Yuan stirred up a wave for martial arts films with a string of blockbusters. For many years running, a Chu film adapted from a Ko Lung novel and starring Ti Lung was sure to be showing in Taiwan's theaters during the Chinese New Year. These films were always top box-office performers.

Another big moment was the controversial film The Golden Lotus, made by Li Han-hsiang, a director for Shaw Brothers before leaving to form the Union Film Company in Taiwan, who would later return to Shaw Brothers. Li also directed a series of Qing Dynasty court dramas, including The Empress Dowager, The Last Temptress, and The Voyage of Emperor Chien Lung, all of which are much discussed films among cinema fans.

Despite the company's impressive record with films, the sidebars to the Shaw Brothers story weren't all tales of champagne and roses. Take, for instance, the demise of actress Lin Dai. A winner of the prize for best actress at the Asian Film Awards, she committed suicide in 1964 and set off a wave of suicides and suicide attempts. Actresses Tu Chuang, Li Ting, Le Ti, Mo Chou, Ting Hao and director Chin Chien numbered among those who followed in her footsteps. Fans were shocked.

Igniting Chinese film

With Run Run Shaw fearless in the face of competition and intent that his studio should win the title of "first in film," Shaw Brothers would frequently steal movie ideas from other studios. The Love Eterne, Between Tears and Laughter, The Seven Fairies and The Dream of the Red Chamber were all films that other studios were either shooting or preparing to shoot before Shaw Brothers jumped in to beat them to the punch.

Meanwhile, the studio was wholly unforgiving of actors or directors who broke their contracts. It always sued. Li Han-hsiang helped build the Shaw Brothers empire with such films as The Kingdom and the Beauty, The Magnificent Concubine and The Love Eterne, but when he left Shaw Brothers in 1963 to found Union in Taiwan, Shaw Brothers immediately went into attack mode. Likewise, when Jimmy Wang Yu, who achieved fame with One-Armed Swordsman, wanted freedom from his contract, he too was sued. And when the A-list star Kuan Shan wanted to leave Shaw Brothers for Union, Shaw Brothers forced him to abandon that plan. Infighting of this ilk made for media feeding frenzies.

Along with the sordid entertainment industry news that Shaw Brothers served up, it also acted as the biggest "dream factory" for film buffs. The studio's movie magazine Southern Screen was a top seller in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Today, issues are hot collectors items. In the history of film in Taiwan, the Shaw Brothers represent the most important chapter: Shaw Brothers' box-office success emboldened Taiwan's film industry, and the number of films made in Taiwan rose year after year.

In 1949, when the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan, the film industry here was having a tough time of it. According to the The Chinese Film Industry (published by the Chinese Cinema Culture Society), from 1949 to 1965 the number of films produced a year in Taiwan never even reached ten (including those produced by Hong Kong companies).

After 1963, when The Love Eterne caused a sensation in Taiwan, the number of films that Shaw Brothers released in Taiwan rose year after year, which in turn led to a greater number of theaters showing Chinese-language films. In 1966, 25 films were produced in Taiwan. The number rose to 46 in 1967, 116 in 1968, and 289 in 1973. It more or less maintained that level through its record year of 292 in 1978. That's more than one film every two days.

Dream factory

Early on, there weren't theaters devoted to Chinese-language films, but after the Minghua Company was established to act as Shaw Brothers' agent in Taiwan, three first-run theaters--the China, Far Eastern and Capital--opened that were devoted entirely to showing Shaw Brothers films. Later on, the Kuochi corporation opened another chain of theaters, which included the Children's, Greater China, and Treasure Palace. These showed Hong Kong movies produced by Cathay and Lianbang. Then, with Shaw Brothers films performing better and better at the box office and having longer and longer runs at the theaters, there still weren't enough screens. Minghua opened five new theaters: the International, Chiaosheng, Huasheng, Tahsing, and Fuhsing. In addition to showing Shaw Brothers films, they also screened second-run Chinese movies. Unexpectedly, with the founding of Shaw Brothers Taiwan and the dramatic growth of independent film production companies, once again there weren't enough theaters. And so there was a fourth wave of theater openings, including the World and Kuosheng. These brought the total to more than 20 theaters showing nothing but first-run Chinese-language films. Just a few years earlier people in the industry would never have even dared to dream of this kind of success. It allowed the government to back off from its policy of forcing theaters to show more Chinese films.

Shaw Brothers met with incredible success in Taiwan. According to the books The Chinese Film Industry and Directors and Masterpieces of 1960s Chinese-Language Film, once The Love Eterne got the ball rolling, Shaw Brothers had five or six films every year among the top-ten grossing Chinese-language films in Taiwan. The company's slogan "If it's a Shaw Brothers film, it's got to be good" was implanted deep in filmgoers minds.

Apart from raising the box-office receipts for Chinese-language films, Shaw Brothers also made great contributions in opening up new production avenues for Chinese film--especially in raising the quality of martial arts films. Without a doubt, the current wave of Chinese-language martial arts films can be traced back to King Hu's Come Drink with Me. In earlier martial arts films, those of The Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery era, the martial arts fighting looked fake, and the pace was exceedingly slow. Audiences were bored. Come Drink with Me, however, blazed a new trail with its fast pace and nearly non-stop action that kept viewers at the edge of their seats.

Martial arts renaissance

But strictly speaking, although Come Drink with Me reinvented the martial arts film, what truly marked the revival of the genre was Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman, which starred Jimmy Wang Yu. Film critic Tsai Kuo-jung explains that One-Armed Swordsman not only had a new, fast, action-packed style, but it also had a new kind of hero. In the film, Wang Yu is injured and disabled, but then works hard to overcome his disability, achieving a high level of kung fu but vowing not to pick up a sword again. Nevertheless, in order to save his master and fellow disciples, he jumps into the fray at the last minute. In Assassin, Chang Cheh creates a hero with a filial heart. In the film, Wang Yu's character does whatever his mother says until she passes away. After her death, he devotes his life to serving his nation and friends. He is a loyal, patriotic and filial hero. From this you can see that martial arts films aren't just about fighting, killing and revenge. With new themes and techniques, these films took the old martial arts practitioners of China and projected them anew into the minds of film fans.

From the lists of that era showing the top ten grossing Chinese-language films, it is clear that Ling Bor's musicals and Chang Cheh's kung-fu flicks were far from the only Shaw Brothers hits. The Blue and the Black (adapted from a Wang Lan novel), The Misty Lake (adapted from a Chiung Yao novel), the war film Sons of the Good Earth, the romance Song of Tomorrow, the comedies Spring Blossoms and Spring Pond, and the musicals Hong Kong Nocturne and The Millionaire Chase were also box office hits. Shaw Brothers triumphed in many genres. For instance, it redefined Chinese-language comedies. Previous comedies had been entirely slapstick, whereas the comedies made by Shaw Brothers were warm and funny, getting people to let down their defenses and laugh.

Bright stars

Tu Yun-chih, a former Shaw Brothers screenwriter who wrote the book Seventy Years of Chinese Film, explains that the studio at its peak had more than 1000 employees and 145 actors under contract. It typically had four to eight films at any given time under production, producing 50 films a year that were shown in Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines.

From 1964 to 1970, Raymond Chow, formerly head of publicity for Shaw Brothers, took over responsibility for production. This was a very important period for the studio, when Chow aggressively recruited talent, expanded production facilities, increased output, raised quality, and developed ties to other industries. Shaw Brothers laid the foundations it needed to grow. In 1963, after Li Han-hsiang took a lot of talent with him when he left, Chow took over the production of many half-finished films and in short order had the company on track again toward even greater heights. Shaw Brothers would meet with success after success until it dominated the industry.

In 1970 Raymond Chow left Shaw Brothers to found Golden Harvest, an independent Hong Kong studio. The company became a new force in independent film. Cooperating with the Cathay Organization of Singapore, in its first year the company struggled, but in its second year it made Bruce Lee a star, and used Chinese kung-fu films to open up the international market. It followed this up with films by stars such as Michael Hui, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, all of which were also hits. Golden Harvest's success directly threatened Shaw Brothers.

After the founding of Golden Harvest, many competitors in the Chinese-language film industry, both in Hong Kong and Taiwan, emerged. While their studio facilities and scale of production were no match for Shaw Brothers, they were creative, with inexhaustible ideas, and their production quality gradually overtook Shaw Brothers. After Raymond Chow left, Run Run Shaw's wife Fang Yi-hua took over the reins of production, and "economizing" became the studio's principal concern. But by economizing they had to cut the number of films they produced, and the company began to fall from its starry heights.

The end

In 1986, after Shaw Brothers had finished filming an adaptation of Chang Ai-ling's novel Love in a Fallen City, the company announced that it would cease production and would lay off its entire staff. Shaw Brothers rented its studios to the Hong Kong television station TVB to use for shooting dramatic serials, and it rented its theaters to D&B Films. The various Shaw Brothers theaters and distributors in other nations were sold off, and the Shaw Brothers film kingdom, which had been so vibrant for six decades, fell silent. The days of grandeur were gone for good.

Chang Cheh, who made his mark as a director with hits like One-Armed Swordsman and Assassin, wrote before he died: "Without Run Run Shaw, the film industry in Hong Kong never would have taken off so fast. His contribution to film in Hong Kong can't be ignored." David Chiang, a former Shaw Brothers actor who won an Asian Film Festival award for Vengeance, points out that Shaw Brothers was a studio with a system. Whatever it did--whether signing contracts with artists, or shooting, distributing or publicizing films--it did according to a set of rules. In the process, he says, it established a model for Chinese film. "There couldn't be a studio like Shaw Brothers today," he says.

Although the Shaw Brothers empire has long collapsed, many of those who grew up with Shaw Brothers films, such as Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai and Jackie Chan, are now at the forefront of Chinese film. With their hard work and continued success, Chinese film is sure to emerge once again.