Nobody's Child

Nobody’s Child was made as a film for children, but it turned out to be much more than that. Chu Shu-wah, a veteran filmmaker from the 1920s, was supported by the Cathay Organization in 1955 to produce a film for the family audience. He signed the awarded child star Josephine Siao and veteran Wang Yin in the main roles, along with Chen Yanyan, the Sweet Bird of Youth of the 1930s, in a supporting role and the special appearance of Butterfly Wu, the old-time Movie Queen.

Shooting began as late as 1958 and the film was released in 1960, offering a special combination of illustrious stars of the past and present. Siao would later become the sweet bird of youth in the 1960s and a movie queen of the '80s too. When I first watched Nobody’s Child more than 10 years ago, the film left me with an indelible impression: the spirited performance of Josephine Siao, the arduous struggles against destitution, the sincere sentiments and real love shared between two generations of vagabond performers, the mournful haze of a tragic snowstorm, as well as three canine stars and a performing monkey. Viewing the film again today in all its remastered glory, the refined audiovisual quality aside, it is the rediscovery of new and deeper layers of meaning within the work that impresses. Through their entertaining parables for the young, an old man, a child and their performing menagerie illustrate not only the lament of those displaced by war, but embody all the pains and joys of nomadic life for travelling performers. Siao plays a young, orphaned girl who leaves her foster mother (Chen Yanyan) and father (Lo Wei) and searches for her missing mother. Instead, she finds a father in a nomadic performer, Wang Yin. The two inadvertently become both mentor-protégé and surrogate father-daughter, and Siao’s exceptional portrayal of the little girl never overshadows Wang’s compassionate artist/benefactor.

After the middle of the film, the quest in finding the missing mother (played by Butterfly Wu, who met Siao the daughter on a boat, but they didn’t know of their relationship) becomes secondary, and the main narrative shifts towards Siao’s apprenticeship and the troubles that befall her mentor, followed by the survival of our determined and independent heroine while waiting to be reunited with her incarcerated “father”. After Wang’s release, the duo essentially become each other’s entire world. This relationship culminates in the scene of a snowstorm, with the complete transference of a life’s work and hopes from Wang to Siao at the end of their shared journey together.

The film leaves us enlightened to the difficult roads taken in the pursuit of art; what matters is not only the honing of one’s craft, but the continuation of an inherited tradition and its virtues. Nobody’s Child appears to express all the sentiments for home, country, art and life, as imagined and felt by those artists who drifted into Hong Kong from the Mainland (amongst them the director, producer, cast and crew of this film), and a sense of shared camaraderie against adversity in a foreign land. The profound relationships between teacher and student, man and beasts are all painstakingly crafted in a way that transcends ordinary children’s allegory to bring a deep sense of realism to its settings and emotions. In comparison with the typical Walt Disney film for children, what makes this work unique is its complexity of feeling, its ability to combine sorrow with all the tenderness usually portrayed.