During the golden age of Malaysian cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, two film studios – Shaw Brothers and Cathay-Keris – dominated film production, distribution and exhibition. In their efforts to attract audiences, both studios emphasised ‘product differentiation,’ a strategy that often took the form of ‘star’. However, there was ample evidence of the occasions on which ‘genre’ was also employed in their production marketing strategies. This lecture attempts to trace ‘genre’ of old films by historicising Malaysian cinema. In the process I argue that genres of Malay films had their own conventions due to their borrowing from – and adaptation of – various local, regional and transnational media and cultural forms. Although most of the films may not have been formulated within a Hollywood-style, generic framework, some entailed genre elements whereas others were unarguably genre films. The popularity of Hong Kong genre films in British Malaya, as well as cosmopolitan film practice (involving South Indian and Filipino filmmakers in the early phase), contributed to the influencing and shaping of Malay films’ genre and content. This lecture claims that early Malay film genres transcended the binary between realist and non-realist genres which is assumed in most Anglo-American film scholarship. Many Malay film narratives, which in the main were imbued with elements of magic and superstition, exhibited either non-sociological modes of the fantastic or anachronism that ruptured modern, homogeneous notions of time. As the lecture will suggest, this tendency alludes to the prototype of Malay film genres, purba films, a form of period film or costume drama that had its roots in theatrical forms (bangsawan and sandiwara) and folk literature (regional myths, folklore and historico-legends), which taken together could be considered ‘genre narratives’.

一九五〇和六〇年代，這段馬來西亞電影的黃金年代，主要由兩家電影公司——邵氏兄弟和國泰克里斯主導影片的製作、發行和展演。為了吸引觀眾，兩家公司都採取「產品差異化」的策略，發揮「明星效應」。不過，也有資料顯示他們在市場營銷策略上同時採取「類型」的手段。本演講通過追溯老電影的「類型」來歷史化馬來西亞電影。我認為，馬來電影有其約定俗成的類型，這是因為其經常借用或改編各種本土的、區域的，甚至是跨國的媒介和文化形式。雖然大部分馬來電影未必在好萊塢的類型片框架下操作，但不少皆含有類型元素，其餘無疑是類型電影。英屬馬來亞時期大受歡迎的香港類型電影，以及具世界性意義的電影操作方式（早期包括南印度和菲律賓電影製作人），都影響和形塑了馬來電影的類型和內容。本演講指出，早期的馬來電影類型超越了大部分英美電影學界中預設的現實和非現實類型二元論。許多馬來電影敘事充滿魔幻和迷信元素，展現出非社會學式的奇幻，或是破壞現代性同質時間的時空倒錯之境。本演講將指出，這個傾向揭示了馬來電影「古裝片」（purba films）的原型，其時代劇或古裝劇的形式源自宮廷戲劇（bangsawan歌舞劇或sandiwara戲劇）和民俗文學（區域神話、民間故事和歷史傳說），這些都可被看作是「類型敘事」。