''Sum Hun'' (aka ''Xinhin'', as well as ''Heartaches'') is a 1936 Cantonese-language drama film produced by an American production company in 1936 for a Chinese audience. The film was advertised as the first Cantonese-language film made in Hollywood. The film is believed to be lost.

Plot

A Chinese-American aviator (

Beal Wong Beal Wong (1906-1962) was an American actor from California. Wong acted in films from 1933 to 1962. Some of the films he appeared in were ''The Big Bluff'', '' China'', ''Women in the Night'', ''Little Tokyo, U.S.A.''. He also appeared in '' The S ...

) falls in love with an opera star named Fan ( Kim-Fong Wei) in San Francisco. Unfortunately, a jealous theater manager named Jung intervenes, threatening to send the opera star back to China.

Cast

as Lee * Kim-Fong Wei as Fan

Production

In 1936, a young San Francisco woman named

Esther Eng Esther Eng ( – January 25, 1970), born Ng Kam-ha, was a Cantonese–American film director and the first female director to direct Chinese-language films in the United States. Eng made four feature films in America, and five in Hong Kong.Wei, 20 ...

(who would later become a well-known director) joined forces with a young actor Bruce Wong to try and tap into the Chinese movie-going market. Together, they managed to raise the money they'd need to get the film made, and then they set to work studying the taste of Chinese audiences. The film was shot in eight days in Los Angeles and San Francisco under Bruce Wong's Cathay Pictures production company. He cast his brother Beal in one of the lead roles.{{Cite book, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bsoUXGZSxZcC&q=%22sum+hun%22+beal+wong&pg=PA1421, title=Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911-1960, last1=Staff, first1=America Film Institute, last2=Gevinson, first2=Alan, last3=Afi, first3=American Film, last4=Institute, first4=American Film, date=1997, publisher=University of California Press, isbn=9780520209640, language=en

References

Cantonese-language films 1936 films