Her husband, Tang Zhiyuan, an ambitious but utterly incompetent bank clerk, launches a business with the financial support of his father-in-law, which Sizhen helps him secure.

Blinded by the stability provided by his short-term financial gain, he falls prey to the seduction of a gold digger, Shi Mimi, and neglects his new company.

[3] Screenplay Eileen Chang (Zhang AiLing (张爱玲)) was already a well-known essayist and novelist in China before entering the film industry.

[4] Filmmaking then became an alternative way as both self-expression and employment since the film industry was struggling during the postwar period and was more tolerable of talents and celebrities' moral problems.

In the 1940s, Shanghai's film industry experienced high demand for domestically produced romantic tragedies and transplanted Hollywood love stories in local settings.

Chang was aware of this trend, and noted that Chinese films at the time were "practically all on the subject of love… Love which leads to a respectable marriage”.

[5] This film, addressing the topic of love, has been associated most strongly with Chang’s philosophical vision expressing the plight of Shanghai's middle-class women within the home and her relationships (romance, marriage, and family).

"[5] It marks Eileen Chang’s signature style of a tragic comedy with a bitter-sweet ending where the characters would experience a "little reunion," but no grand finale like the audience typically anticipated.

But her suffering is almost nothing compared with the agonizing sacrifices Chinese women made in the old times... We should not look at her as a victim of the social system, since her behavior is out of her own free will."

Chang is aware of the discussion of the woman's question since the May Fourth Movement, and the women who suffered because of the social system, yet she believes that Long Live the Missus!

integrates the Hollywood style comedy of “pursuit of happiness”, Chinese traditional love stories, and tragic romance that involves courtship, marriage, and threats of divorce.

[10] This invasion caused China’s economy to experience hyperinflation between 1937 and 1949 due to the three governments (the Nationalists, the Japanese, and the Communists) all issuing their own currency.

Similar to Sizhen's lies, Shi Mimi's purposely leaving a handkerchief with her lipstick stains on it in Zhiyuan's suit pocket is carried out with funny melody.

Despite the often awkward camera movements (perhaps a result of the limited financial support), the characterization and plot are enlivened by the witty, incisive dialogues that are a distinct hallmark of Chang's wartime fiction.

[6] It centers on women dealing with pressure and expectation to conform to family roles as a dutiful daughter-in-law, a child-bearer, and a good wife.

The mother runs the household and treats the daughter-in-law in a grating manner which is made clear when Sizhen is seen constantly waiting on her mother-in-law's hand and foot.

From asking her brother to buy pineapples for her mother-in-law to changing her husband’s shoes and listening to his complaints, Sizhen strives to be a good wife who is willing to compromise and sacrifice herself in her complicated family relationships.

[5] Yet, the movie romanticizes her oppressive marriage and domestic life through her elegant look and fashion, which is achieved by the extravagant silk qipao, handbags, sunglasses, and accessories she wears.

Given this, the movie may have suggested to female audiences that marriage is not so bad after all, as it comes with the financial benefits of being able to dress well and have leisure time.

The unromantic relationship and Sizhen’s failure to bear a child contradicts the warm and affectionate wedding picture that hangs above their bed (a typical custom of modern Shanghai couples).

This comedy of errors exposes the moneyed culture and the hypocrisy of Shanghai urbanities, and ridicules bourgeois materialism and decadence through its portrayal of negative male figures.

Through its dramatic plot twists and concocted dialogues, characters engage in theatrical gestures, role-playing, and lying, thus highlighting the essentially deceptive nature of human relations.

She later proceeds to lie to her mother-in-law again, telling her that Zhiyuan plans to take a trip to Hong Kong by boat, which she believes is safer, instead of by plane.

What has made Chang's opinion on comedy here remarkable is not so much her acknowledgement of laughing as natural, but her insight into the coexistence of tragic and comic constituents.

and the Hollywood screwball comedies, such as the focus on the love conflict/battling process of a (mismatched) couple, juxtaposition (of all male and female, capable and incapable), coincidences and chance encounters in the plot.

In contrast, most of the screwball comedies were played out against settings of sheer affluence (a Connecticut estate or a Park Avenue penthouse), properties (elegant clothes, cars, and furniture), and lines (witty and inventive repartee).

[1] Like her narratives on wartime China, Chang’s screenplay parodies the manners and emotions of Shanghai’s middle-class, with a particular focus on the pettiness, hypocrisy and infidelity.

Here, Chang applies one of her preferred story techniques of “uneven contrast (cenci de duichao)"[1] by portraying these characters as stereotypical of Shanghai middle-class, as none of them are “enlightened or perverse to an extreme.

In addition to the portrayal of ordinary Shanghai women in a time of economic crisis and cultural conflicts, this film brings awareness to gender relationships, middle-class family life, and the complex politics of Chinese cinema in post-war China.

"[5] Chinese scholars Sun Yu and Zheng Xin argue that Sang Hu transformed Eileen Chang's tragic depictions of an "ephemeral age" into a more optimistic and lighthearted perspective using his comic techniques.