Love of the White Snake

Love of the White Snake (1978)

真白蛇傳

This early Brigitte Lin film is based on the same Chinese folk tale that Tsui Hark later used as his source for The Green Snake. It is the story of two sister snakes that want to feel what it is to be human and one of them needs to know what it is to feel human love. It is a sweet magical but ultimately tragic tale of breaking societal taboos. - brns.com

Date of release
1978-09-15
TMDB
9.0 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Fantasy
Director
Si-Ma Ke, Choi Dong-joon

Casting

Interesting facts

Love of the White Snake is a 1978 Hong Kong fantasy romance film. Directed by Chen Chi-hwa, the film is an adaptation of the Chinese folklore Legend of the White Snake. The film stars Brigitte Lin as Madame White Snake, Chin Tse-Min as the Green Snake, and Charlie Chin as pharmacist Xu Xian.

Production

Director Li Han-hsiang was initially attached to the film as a favour to producer Huang Zhuo-han, for helping him finance The Dream of the Red Chamber. The Shaw Brothers intervened, and the project was passed on to director Chen Chi-hwa, who completed the script under his pseudonym Ke Szema.

Brigitte Lin filmed The Dream of the Red Chamber, Love of the White Snake, and A Love Seed back-to-back, but because of production delays, she was unable to shoot White Snake until she had finished her scenes for A Love Seed. While waiting for Lin to complete A Love Seed, the film crew shot exterior scenes in South Korea, but production was again delayed when Charlie Chin fell sick and travelled to Europe for a month and a half after recovery.

The film was scheduled for release close to the Dragon Boat Festival in summer. Leading up to its premiere, the Shaw Brothers arranged to re-screen their 1962 film adaptation Madam White Snake starring Lin Dai, and as they've registered the Chinese title 白蛇传, Brigitte Lin's version was forced to change its name to 真白蛇传 to avoid legal issues.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended