yesterday i watched the hk film sex for sale. this is a shaw brothers production from 1974. the film is often compared to midnight cowboy. it's been a long time since i've seen midnight cowboy, but i don't think the comparison is quite accurate(midnight cowboy meets valley of the dolls might be a better comparison).

sex for sale deals with a young man that can't really wear a mask(the chinese title of the film is mask) to hide his true feelings. he ends up answering a modelling ad which leads to him sleeping with various people in order to get jobs or have somewhere to stay. an interesting thing about this film is that most of the positions of power are held by women. and it is the women that go after the man not the other way around. there is lots of sex in the film, and i was quite surprised to see that they actually showed women's breasts(no mosaic, which is the norm here). how did hk films go from this to the prudish films of today? maybe this was just an exception?

another surprising thing was that there was a self-hating gay character in the film. and not a minor character used simply for a joke, but one that gets considerable screen time. towards the end of the film there's a funny scene where the main character asks of the gay man "why do i love women? why can't i love men like you do? can't you show me how?!" or something along those lines. eventhough the gay character is a bit of a stereotype, it was interesting that in the end the main character realized he was his only true friend. i wonder if audiences in 1974 were shocked by such a character?

since the film was made in 1974, there are scenes of various apartments which are not without their charms, but even better than the apartments is the music. certain scenes had this groovy hippie freakout music. i had no idea music like this existed in old hk movies. i'd really like to know if this music was written for the film or lifted from other sources. there are songs sung in some of the club scenes, but they seem to have more to do with ballads than freaky rock music.

i'm curious if the other shaw brothers' movies have great music too. i already have my eye on a few more of their dvds that i want to pick up, so i guess i'll soon find out.

you can find a review of the film here along with some stills from the film.