When one thinks of the Shaw Brothers studio, it is usually due to its wide array of martial arts and Chinese fantasy films. Less popular are their straight dramas, which saw the company attempt to attract a wider audience in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Younger Generation, directed by Griffin Yueh Feng, is a 1970 effort without a single action-based element to it. Instead it is a impassioned melodrama: ecstatic with happiness for one half, and then bizarrely maudlin for the other. Some times a film slips into obscurity because it fails to meet the tastes of the time, and can subsequently become a cult hit. I do not think there is any serious risk of The Younger Generation ever finding an appreciative audience. One sort of rather average film drama is simply replaced halfway through with another, tonally unrelated, average film drama. Yueh directed more than 90 films across a 40-year career. I cannot believe that The Younger Generation captures him at his best.

Against her parents’ wishes, the idealistic Shuqing (Ivy Ling Po) marries the young teacher Liang Shaowen (Yang Fang). Living in a modest country cottage, they cheerfully embrace their situation and soon start making a family together. Within a few years they are raising five adorable children: Hanwen, Xiuwen, Peilun, Weiwen, and little Siren.

It is all staggeringly sweet, and regularly slips into full-blown saccharine territory. Financial challenges are met with cheerful resolve. All five children are generally well-behaved and charming. The narrative exists in a Von Trapp family singers world of smiling faces and lightly comical struggles. There is even a musical number involving being a happy family dancing through the woods. Xiuwen finds and cares for an injured bird. Shaowen takes up tutoring children in the evening to make ends meet. The family’s brood of chickens lay a lot of eggs.

There is certainly room for upbeat family fare like this, and both stars give enthused performances. While Yueh’s direction does feel rather out of date for the 1970s, it is earnestly staged and lit with a sunny brightness than matches its disposition. The juvenile actors are all likeable and cute, as they are wont to be in these sorts of entertainment.

There is always a “but” at this point, isn’t there?

Shaowen’s eyesight begins to fail him, and he starts to suffer debilitating headaches. Unable to teach any longer, he instead changes jobs to work at a quarry exploding rocks. On his son Peilun’s birthday, Shaowen misplaces his gift in the middle of the quarry and runs back to get it. He is killed in the blast. Soon a grief-stricken Shuqing’s mental health is failing, eldest son Hanwen is quitting primary school to work in a restaurant, and Xiuwen is sold to a child trafficker.

The problem is not just the sudden switch in content and tone from the super-cheery to the supremely tragic. The plot points that take the film from one state to another are illogical, hopelessly excessive, and poorly presented. Story logic flies out of the window. Characters behave in stupid ways. The film does not really conclude either: it simply reaches a convenient end point and runs the credits. Audiences might have enjoyed a film that sustained the first half’s tone. With better writing and characterisation, there might even have been creative potential in downbeat, relentless tragedy. Going from one to the other is just bizarre, and not much fun for anybody.