Carpenter-turned fruit seller Mr. Zheng develops a romantic interest in Miss Zhu, a happy-looking girl who helps her doctor father’s medical business across the street. He throws a bucket of fruit to woo the girl and she happily returns the bucket with her handkerchief inside. Their romantic feelings toward each other grow stronger after the fruit seller helps drive off a few street bullies who harass her.
The fruit seller must overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle before he can marry his sweetheart, however. The stubborn doctor won’t approve of any marriage proposal unless his future son-in-law could dramatically improve his money-losing business. Visibly discouraged, the fruit seller returns home with a bittersweet memory of the girl and her snobbish father. At three in the morning, the fruit seller wakes up abruptly to the sound of a gang fighting upstairs.
We realize that the fruit seller lives right below an all-night club, where patrons are playing Mahjong and fighting over girls. Sleepless, the fruit seller suddenly comes up with an idea to gain his future father-in-law’s approval for his marriage. He turns the ladder leading upstairs into a controllable sliding device so that the club’s patrons will slide and fall badly to the ground. The idea works well and the old doctor sees people with broken ankles, necks, and arms line up in front of his clinic. The silver coins pile up, and he sends the fruit seller his approval with a big smile.
Laborer’s Love is the earliest extant Chinese film that has had the good fortune to survive both the ravages of chemical deterioration and modern China’s turbulent history. It also reminds us that, contrary to many mainstream historiographies, comedy films, or more specifically slapsticks, occupied an indispensible or even central position in the beginning years of Chinese cinema. On the other hand, using the deceitful device of the ladder slide to injure people for personal profit and gain, created a moral dilemma for the filmmakers. To make laughter morally justifiable, director Zhang and scriptwriter Zheng used a few scenes to build up the moral character of the fruit seller. He is portrayed both as a caring “laborer” and as a macho hero.
Meanwhile, the very fact that the fallen patrons are nothing but drunken gamblers and girl-chasers also adds a certain legitimacy and justification to the deceitful act. In this way, the filmmakers were able to avoid offending traditional Chinese moral values. All the actions taken by the fruit seller are meant to accomplish only one traditional goal: winning the stamp of approval from his sweetheart’s father for his marriage proposal.
Shaoyi Sun