The film that saved Hong Kong’s Cantonese cinema, Chor Yuen’s House of 72 Tenants recalled

It also revived the fortunes of Cantonese-language films in Hong Kong, which audiences had abandoned in the late 1960s in favour of the slick Mandarin-language productions made by Shaw Brothers, which also co-produced Chor’s film.
“The film broke the Hong Kong box-office record of the time,” Chor recalled in the Hong Kong Film Archive’s Oral History Series. “Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon [1972] made HK$5.3 million, whereas my film grossed HK$5.6 million. [Studio boss] Mr [Run Run] Shaw was so happy he got drunk.”
Chor’s film also kept Lee’s 1973 release Enter the Dragon, which only took HK$3.3 million, from the top spot.

Shaw and Chor’s decision to make the film in Cantonese, rather than in Mandarin, played a big part in its success.

As Hong Kong has always been proud to be a Cantonese-speaking city, the dominance of Mandarin-language films during the 1960s and early 1970s can seem confusing.

Bruce Lee (right) in a still from Enter the Dragon (1973). Photo: Golden Harvest

Cantonese-language films were dominant until the 1960s – social dramas and martial arts movies aimed at a working-class audience. But in that decade, Shaw’s Mandarin-language films, mainly huangmei diao (regional opera) musicals and wenyi (literature and art) romances, became popular.

Shaw distributed its films across Asia to cater to the Chinese diaspora, and back then that was a largely Mandarin-speaking demographic, so Mandarin-language films served the company’s wider interests.

Shaw’s Mandarin films had much higher production values than their Cantonese-language counterparts and their more sophisticated stories appealed to the new middle class that was forming in Hong Kong.

The overwhelming success of Shaw’s classic and thoroughly modern martial arts films – along with the rise of Cantonese-language television – in the late 1960s led to the total collapse of the Cantonese-language film industry in 1971, even though Mandarin films presented a language barrier for many.

Lo Lieh in a still from King Boxer (1972), a Mandarin-language film. Photo: Shaw Brothers Studio

But the success of The House of 72 Tenants swung the dial back to Cantonese-language cinema in 1973, and Mandarin films slowly died out during the rest of the decade.

This happened more by chance than by design; The House of 72 Tenants has often been described as a “box-office miracle”. It was actually a run-of-the-mill assignment for Chor, which he dashed off without much fanfare.

A Cantonese version of the Shanghainese play was popular in Hong Kong at the time, and that inspired the production, although Chor wrote the film’s dialogue himself.

“The success of The House of 72 Tenants had much to do with the success of the stage play. I had little to do with it being well received,” Chor modestly told the Film Archive. “My main contribution was to make it more localised. I was much influenced by Italian Neorealism when I was growing up, so I put in elements of local culture.”

The result is more of an enjoyable anomaly than a great work of cinema. It is the least cinematic of Chor’s 1970s films, and it looks old-fashioned, especially when compared with his previous Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, which brought sex into the chaste martial arts genre.
Lily Ho (left) and Betty Pei in a still from Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972), directed by Chor Yuen. Photo: Shaw Brothers

Chor essentially filmed a stage play; consequently, the camera is relatively static and the story is told through dialogue rather than images. But it is this dialogue that made the film such a big hit, especially as Chor picked up on the local street slang of the time.

“The adoption of lively colloquial Cantonese dialogue made Hong Kong people feel in touch with their own mother tongue again, and paved the way for the renaissance of Cantonese culture,” one critic wrote.

The story is set in mainland China’s Guangdong province sometime in the past. It is an ensemble piece that revolves round a group of tenants fighting with their malicious landlady and her scheming husband, as well as a corrupt policeman on the take. (The original Shanghainese play focused on the policeman and his attempts to rip off the tenants.)

Hu Chin (second from right) plays the wicked landlady in The House of 72 Tenants.

There are many small events, such as the theft of an expensive piece of material from a tailor, but the main story develops when the tenants band together to stop the landlord’s young maid being sold off as a bride.

“Audiences will immediately warm to the undaunted spirit of cooperation and generosity, albeit portrayed overly idealistically,” the Ming Pao newspaper review said in 1973.

The Post’s critic noted the humour: “From the frequent laughter around the theatre there seemed to be a good many jokes. 72 Tenants is bawdy, bold, topical, generally anti-establishment and, to some extent, true to life,” he wrote.

Others reviewers thought that Hongkongers could see many of their contemporary problems reflected in the troubles of the characters.

The casting was another reason for the film’s success.

Always looking for a good marketing angle, Shaw co-produced the film with local broadcaster TVB, using popular TV stars such as Lydia Sum Tin-ha alongside Shaw contract players like Ching Li and Yueh Hua.
To increase box-office appeal, there were cameos from big Shaw stars including Lily Ho Li-li and Chen Kuan-tai, who played a policeman.

“I used entertainers from the popular television show Enjoy Yourself Tonight [EYT], despite their lack of experience in films, simply because the audience liked them. My cast comprised one-half EYT artistes and one-half Shaw actors,” Chor said.

Chor Yuen (left) speaks before receiving his Lifetime Achievement award at the 37th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2018. Photo: AP

After working with the EYT stars, Chor became obsessed with adapting popular television dramas for the big screen, even though his boss Shaw said that this was a mistake, as such adaptations always failed at the box office.

The House of 72 Tenants had been adapted for the screen as a Cantonese comedy once before, for the 1963 mainland Chinese production of the same name.

“In our version, the theme centred on eviction and the struggle against it,” its director Wang Weiyi said.

In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.

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