Underplayed Gems

Golden Gate Girl (1941)

Golden Gate Girl poster
Original title
金門女
Directed by
Esther Eng
Genre
documentary film, drama film
Country
Hong Kong
Runtime
1h 50m
Rating
6.5 of 10 from 2 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A widower in San Francisco disapproves of his daughter's love for a theater actor. After the actor is deported, the daughter dies in childbirth and her baby is raised by the widower's employees. Years later the grown child reunites with her father.

nostalgicmelodramaticbittersweetmildly comicslow-paceddatedfamily-orientedheartfeltsentimental

What happens

Golden Gate Girl, also known as Tears in San Francisco or Jinmen Nü is a Hong Kong drama film made in San Francisco in 1941, directed by Esther Eng and veteran filmmaker Kwan Man-Ching, the film was released in San Francisco but wasn't shown in Asia until 1946. The film is notable for the film debut of Bruce Lee, an infant at the time. It tells of a widower (Moon Kwan) who is concerned that his daughter, Chain-ying (Tso Yee-man), spends too much time at the theater. When she falls in love with Wong, one of the company's leading actors, the enraged widower forces the theater to close its contract with Wong, resulting in the actor's deportation to China. But Chain-ying is already pregnant and dies after giving birth to a baby girl (played by Bruce Lee, then aged three months). The widower's former employees look after the baby, who, like her mother, grows up (Tso Yee-man again) with a passion for the theater. After a series of complications, tears, and comic moments, she is eventually reunited with her father, Wong, when he visits the United States to perform in a national defense play (to aid China then at war), and they are finally reconciled with her aging, remorseful maternal grandfather. The making of Golden Gate Girl is the subject of a 2014 feature documentary titled Golden Gate Girls, directed by S. Louisa Wei, who constructed the story around the life and times of woman film pioneer Esther Eng. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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