Taming Of The Princess (醉打金枝) (1958)

Taming of the Princess is a Hokkien period opera film based on a popular Chinese story about the Tang dynasty General Guo Ziyi’s son, Guo Ai. The story unfolds that Guo Ai had rebuked and hit his wife, Princess Sheng Ping, who had deliberately missed her father-in-law’s birthday celebration because she felt it was beneath her status to attend. The haughty princess complains to her father the emperor, expecting him to exact punishment on Guo Ai for what she regarded as abuse. The wise and benevolent emperor devises a plan to teach both Guo Ai and his daughter a lesson.

There were three Amoy-dialect films shot entirely in Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s. Two of them – Love Deep As The Sea (directed by But Fu, 1954) and Lovesickness Sent from Afar (directed by Yao Ping and Hsu Chiao Meng, 1955) – were produced by Singapore companies. The third film, Taming of the Princess, was financed and produced by a Singapore film distribution company, Hong Kong United Co. Ltd. It is the sole surviving local Hokkien film from the 1950s as the other two films are presumed lost.