Laborer's Love (Chinese: 劳工之爱情; pinyin: láogōng zhī àiqíng) is a classic silent comedy short film produced in China during the Republican Era, which officially premiered on October 5, 1922 at the Olympic Theater in Shanghai.
[5][6] As the film begins, a man named Carpenter Zheng from the Guangdong Province has just come back to Shanghai after living in Nanyang in Southeast Asia.
However, in the face of his financial hardships, Doctor Zhu agrees to let Zheng marry his daughter if the younger man can help revive his failing medical business.
Zheng is dismayed, believing this to be an impossible task, but soon he comes up with the idea to modify the staircase of a gambling club near the doctor's office.
He repeats this numerous times, creating a huge new client base for Doctor Zhu to the point where the old man can barely keep up with the demand, requiring Zheng to step in and provide his services as well.
Besides, while Laborer's Love completely survived, it is not perfect with margins cut off, celluloid poorly preserved, as well as frames missing.
In the film, Carpenter Zheng asks Miss Zhu to marry him, an action that was incompatible with the traditional thought process regarding marriage practices at the time.
[10] In light of the social changes, filmmakers sought to navigate the boundary between traditional and moral values through the concept of arranged marriage, while also advocating the modern ideas about free, inconsequential love.
The film's narrative adapts this traditional motif in the lovers' use of a string to send objects back and forth to each other in a distinctly modern love story.
[11] What is unique about Laborer's Love is that it does not contain the demeanour that is common in early Chinese slapstick comedies, and even uses a connecting device between Carpenter Zheng and Miss Zhu, to allude to the equality between men and women.
Moreover, the fruit basket which was made by the Carpenter Zheng, contains two functions: one is that it is used as a connection device for the doctor's daughter and the carpenter/vendor to communicate love with one another.
[12] Laborer's Love contains additional references to traditional Chinese culture; for example, the scene where Carpenter Zheng breaks open a watermelon.
This is a reference to an old Chinese idiom called 破瓜之年(pò guā zhī nián), meaning that the girl is at an age where she is "ripe" or mature enough to marry and bear children.
In the film, Miss Zhu, who is the love interest, is at an age where she is ready for marriage, this is implied when the watermelon is broken in two or split by Carpenter Zheng.
"[12] The thick pair of glasses worn by the Doctor is a status symbol of his professional respectability and paternal authority, in addition to a sign of his laughable pedantry and senility.
It draws on struggle based on gender and social class, through Carpenter Zheng, a man of low socioeconomic status wanting to marry a doctor's daughter.
By making their marriage possible, they directly undermine Miss Zhu’s father's authority, which speaks to modernism, patriarchy, gender, and socio-economic differences.
The marriage of a tradesman and a doctor's daughter is significant as it calls out socially constructed bounds that are upheld by cultural norms and values to limit the movement of individuals' socioeconomic status.
The film's romantic narrative provides further commentary on how traditional Chinese values were changing in the shift to the modern era, from its depiction of increasing social mobility to the negotiation of marriage and family through feudal and patriarchal codes.
[18] This film shows how China was becoming more open to foreign technologies that are displayed on-screen, such as the alarm clock, table lamp, Western-style furniture and the appearance of the night club.
For example, at the beginning of the film, it has the subtitles to explain the storyline: 粤人郑木匠，改业水果，与祝医女结掷果缘，乃求婚于祝医，祝云：能使我医业兴隆者，当以女妻之，木匠果设妙计，得如祝愿，有情人遂成了眷属。(A doctor in needy circumstances, whose daughter is much admired by a fruit shop proprietor [formerly a carpenter] who sticks to the tools of his trade).
For instance, the Chinese subtitles were "老伯伯！这是我孝敬你的" which in English translates to "Respected sir, I am not asking you to buy, please accept a humble gift."
[21] Particularly, undercranking, often used in slapstick comedy, is used in Laborer's Love to create gags by enhancing the rhythm of the film through fast play.
For instance, a fast-motion sequence is featured when Carpenter Zheng utilizes his trick staircase to injure the customers leaving the club, acting as a disassembly line.
This film also makes use of a type of superimposition called matte shots to convey Carpenter Zheng's daydreams of both Miss and Doctor Zhu.
While the shooting of Laborer's Love involved limitations in the number of scenes and space, it is not merely a form of imitating stage play.
[8] Aside from alluding to Harold Lloyd's iconic character, the blurry point-of-view shot of Carpenter Zheng wearing Doctor Zhu's glasses puts the audience in the position of looking in first-person, immersing them in the story world.
[8][23] The trick staircase used at the end of the film is another borrowed motif from American cinema, specifically Buster Keaton's The Haunted House (1921).
[25] Laborer's Love premiered at as part of a double feature with The King of Comedy Visits Shanghai at the Olympic Theatre on 5 October 1922.
Zheng suggested on his artistic idea to "improve and educate society," while Zhang replied that "[w]hat matters are audiences' interests and to win their laugh" and that "there is no place for doctrine yet.