Tang Kit-chun

The Diary of a Husband, Part 2

In this 1960s family comedy though, marriage is attached with a string of feudal obligations. Shun (Cheung Ying-choi) and Sum (Nam Hung) are happily married with a son. Shun's childless uncle from the US proposes to take away their son as his own and, when the couple refuse, demands that Shun marry a second wife to bear him an offspring. The couple in distress team up with their naughty friends in playing a game of bluff, which sets off a series of whimsical and side-splitting sequences. Director Chor Yuen tied the knot with actress Nam Hung three years after the film's release, leading to one of the most celebrated marriages in Hong Kong cinema.

The Diary of a Husband

The Diary of a Husband serves as an illustration for the arrival of the white-collar economy, in which the extended family is replaced by the smaller nuclear family. It is a story about four pals who work at the same office, which, like other white-collar workplaces, has become the men's primary site of life, where livings are made and friendships fostered. Meanwhile, their wives have fostered something of their own—a brigade to catch cheating husbands. Much comedy is then generated by the cat-and-mouse game between the men and the women...The battle line drawn here between the sexes remains for years, to the extent that this very same story has been retold many times in Hong Kong films, including Men Suddenly in Black, the 2003 Pang Ho-cheung film with a similar Chinese title.