Pan Lei (4 August 1926 - 22 July 2017) was a screenwriter and director whose career spanned literature and cinema. Born Pan Rongsheng, a native of Hepu in Guangdong, he was an only son born in Haiphong, Vietnam. During the war with Japan he fled with his sister and brother-in-law to Kunming, enlisted in 1943, was posted to India and later fought along the Sino-Indian-Burmese border, changing his name to Pan Lei. He rose to lieutenant before the war ended. Returning to Vietnam after his discharge, he was displaced again by the Indochina War and went to Shanghai as an overseas-Chinese student at the National Jiangsu Medical College, where he began writing poetry, prose and short stories and took the pen name Pan Lei. After leaving his studies he worked for an organisation under the Kuomintang's finance committee and then settled in Taiwan. In May 1949 he founded 《寶島文藝》, described by the Hong Kong Film Archive as Taiwan's first literary magazine, and from 1955 to 1957 he won a major Chinese literary award three years running; his books included 《靜靜的紅河》, 《安平港》 and 《歸魂》. He joined the production department of the Central Motion Picture Corporation as a script editor and taught screenwriting and directing at the Taiwan Academy of Arts. His first screenplay to reach the screen was the Taiwanese-dialect film 《痲瘋女》(1957). Leaving the studio in 1957, he made his directorial debut the next year with 《合歡山上》 and followed it with 《金色年代》(1959); he later directed 《颱風》(1962) and, with Akinori Matsuo, 《海灣風雲》(1963). 《颱風》 was entered at the seventh Asian Film Festival and drew the attention of Run Run Shaw, who recruited him. Pan joined Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) in 1963. Back in Taiwan he wrote and directed the romances 《情人石》(1964) and 《蘭嶼之歌》(1965) and the action film 《山賊》(1966), scripted by King Hu. His later Shaw productions were stylistically varied, from the detective picture 《毒玫瑰》(1966) and the romance 《落花時節》(1968) to the martial-arts film 《天下第一劍》(1968) and the melodrama 《新不了情》(1970). He left Shaw in 1971, returned to Taiwan and set up a centre for experimental film and television that was later converted into a studio and eventually changed hands. He then withdrew from film-making for a time to concentrate on writing. In 1975 Pan returned to Shaw Brothers, writing and directing 《色中餓鬼》 and 《妙妙女郎》 (both 1975), and 《搵食三十六計》(1977) was the last film he made there. He then formed his own company, Pan Lei Film and Television Productions, and wrote scripts for directors including Lo Wei. In later life he devoted himself to the study of antique jade and published an autobiography, 《不枉此生》. He died in Taiwan on 22 July 2017.
Achievements
- 1949 · Founded 《寶島文藝》, described by the Hong Kong Film Archive as Taiwan's first literary magazine
- 1957 · Won a major Chinese literary award three years in succession from 1955
- 1963 · Joined Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd