Tao Qin, whose real name was Qin Fuji, was born in 1915 in Cixi, Zhejiang, and graduated in Chinese literature from St John's University in Shanghai. He translated for cinemas in his spare time, later writing programme notes for picture houses and adapting a foreign film into the stage play Fragrant Letter of Tears. After Japanese forces occupied the Shanghai concessions in 1941, he joined the producer Zhang Shankun's United China Film Company (Zhonglian/Huaying) as a screenwriter in 1942, writing scripts including Madame Butterfly (1942), Peach and Plum in Spring (1943) and Don't Forget Tonight (1945). He continued writing after the war, for the Shanghai musical Orioles Flying in the World (1946) and the Hong Kong melodrama Unmarried Mother (1949). When Zhang Shankun founded Great Wall, Tao joined to script its first production, The Wanton Woman (1949). He stayed on after the studio's reorganisation and began directing, making Father Marries Again (1952), Aren't the Kids Lovely? (1953) and Night and Every Night (1953). He left Great Wall in 1952 for the Shaw studio, where he directed Beyond the Grave (1954), and from 1956 worked for the International company that became MP&GI (Cathay), making twelve films there, among them Our Sister Hedy (1957), which won Best Picture at the 5th Asian Film Festival. Re-signing with Shaw Brothers in 1958, he became a senior figure and directed nearly twenty films, winning awards repeatedly. Best known for melodrama, he made Love Without End (1961), a landmark Hong Kong romantic tragedy whose theme song endures, and The Blue and the Black (1966), which took Best Picture at the 13th Asian Film Festival. His musicals, including Les Belles (1961), which won him Best Director at the 1st Golden Horse Awards, were also popular. He began his last film, a wuxia picture, in 1969 but died of stomach cancer on 16 May that year before completing it, and it was finished by his friend Yueh Feng. He directed about fifty films in all.
Tao Qin was a major director and screenwriter of Hong Kong Mandarin cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, producing signature works for both Shaw and Cathay; the musical The Fair Sex won him Best Director at the first Golden Horse Awards. Skilled in urban melodrama and musicals, his films had a lasting influence on the development of Mandarin-language genres in Hong Kong.
Achievements
- 1942 · Joined the United China Film Company as a screenwriter, writing scripts such as Madame Butterfly for the Zhonglian/Huaying studio.
- 1957 · Our Sister Hedy won Best Picture at the 5th Asian Film Festival.
- 1961 · Won Best Director at the 1st Golden Horse Awards for Les Belles.