A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
June 29, 1950
Original Title:
說謊世界
Alternate Titles:
Shuo huang shi jie
Genres:
Comedy | Drama
Production Companies:
The Great Wall Movie Enterprises Ltd.
Production Countries:
Hong Kong
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 119
As China falls into hyperinflation following the end of the war, people fought tooth and nail to get their hands on the only reliable currencies in the world: gold and American dollars. This is a story that shows how seven bars and two thousand US dollars bring together an interesting mix of characters: an opportunistic manager, a materialistic courtesan, a con artist posing as a commissioner of the Treasury, a white-collar worker who will do anything for a promotion, a man who specialises in conning women, a father who marries off his daughter for money and a sorcerer who fakes his magic. In this dog-eat-dog world, the only truth is that everyone is lying for his own gain. Playing the courtesan who longs to be part of high society, Li Lihua steals the film with a feisty performance opposite the amusing Yan Jun, whose con artist character has a tendency to flirt with lyrics from Peking operas.
Art Direction:
James Wan Gu-Chan
Wan Lai-Ming
Costume Design:
Xie Shaoqing
Director:
Li Ping-Qian
Director of Photography:
Chuang Kuo-Chun
Editor:
Chaosheng Zhu
Original Music Composer:
Li Hou-Xiang
Producer:
Yuen Yeung-On
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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
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While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.