Lo Chen

Lo Chen (1923 - 31 January 2003), a native of Shanghai whose original name was Li Mengfei, was a Hong Kong screenwriter and director and one of the four major directors of Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd in the early 1960s. He graduated from the Shanghai Chinese School of Journalism and the foreign-languages faculty of the University of Shanghai, was devoted to poetry and was at one time reputed as one of the three leading young poets of Shanghai; he was also fond of drama and joined the China Art troupe. He moved to Hong Kong in 1948 and the following year joined the Great China Film Company as a continuity clerk and assistant director, later working with Ma Xu Weibang and co-writing his first screenplay, The Haunted House (1949), on which he was also assistant director. He went on to write for various companies. In 1956 he won Best Screenplay at the 3rd Southeast Asia Film Festival for The Long Lane, directed by Richard Poh, becoming the first Hong Kong filmmaker to win a major award at that festival. That year he directed his first film, Fresh Peony (co-directed with Bai Guang), and later directed works for other companies including The Story of Lu Siniang (1958) and The Lovesick Woman (1960). In 1960 he was recruited by Shaw Brothers as head of its script department and director; his first film for the company, Flames of Passion (1960), established him as one of its leading directors. By 1976 he had directed over twenty films for Shaws, writing the screenplays for most of them, among them Mai Wen Ji (1961), Raw Passions (1969), It's All in the Family and The Snake Prince (1976). In the early 1970s, as wuxia films grew popular, he left Shaws to freelance, feeling the genre was not his strong suit, and co-directed The Mad Killer (1971) with Ng See-yuen. Returning to Shaws in 1974 on a two-year contract, he shot mainstream works, his last film as director being Behind the Storm (1982). Lo excelled in wenyi (literary) films, with a humanistic sense and delicate style and a distinctive eye for characterisation, plotting and composition. He died in San Francisco on 31 January 2003.