General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Empress Dowager (倾国倾城)

The Empress Dowager (傾國傾城) is a 1975 Hong Kong historical drama directed by Li Han-hsiang for the Shaw Brothers Studio, starring Lisa Lu as Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing dynasty. Set in 1894, it depicts the power struggle between Cixi and the young Guangxu Emperor around the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, and it won three Golden Horse Awards, including Best Actress for Lu.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Title / studio	The Empress Dowager (傾國傾城), Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong, 1975¹
Director and writer	Li Han-hsiang, who also wrote the screenplay³
Lead cast	Lisa Lu as Cixi, Ti Lung as the Guangxu Emperor, David Chiang as the eunuch Kou Liancai, Hsiao Yao as the concubine Zhen, Ivy Ling Po as Empress Jingfen⁴
Setting	1894 (the 20th year of Guangxu), when the 60-year-old Cixi has nominally "returned power" to Guangxu but still controls the court⁵
Awards	12th Golden Horse Awards (1975): Excellent Feature Film, Best Actress (Lisa Lu), and Best Color Film Art Design (Chan King-sam)²
Sequel	The Last Tempest (瀛台泣血, 1976), completing a two-part Qing court saga⁶
Language	Mandarin¹

Spoilers

Story

The film opens in Beijing in May 1894, near Cixi's sixtieth birthday. Although she has officially stepped aside in favor of her nephew, the Guangxu Emperor, she retains real power, and the emperor's attempts to act independently are blocked by officials loyal to her.⁴^•⁵ Her favored chief eunuch Li Lianying, described in the film as corrupt and flattering, meddles in court affairs; when Guangxu reprimands him, Cixi shields him each time.²

Li Lianying sends the young eunuch Kou Liancai to serve in the emperor's palace, in fact to spy on him. Kou, however, comes to recognize right from wrong and sides with Guangxu.² When war with Japan breaks out, the unprepared Qing armies are defeated. With the support of Prince Gong, Guangxu moves against the war's scapegoats and against Li Lianying, but Cixi treats these measures as open defiance and blames the defeat on his advocacy of war.⁵ The emperor, unhappy in his marriage to Empress Jingfen, finds comfort in the concubine Zhen, whom Li Lianying and his allies then frame with a fabricated affair with an actor.⁴^•⁵

After the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki is signed in April 1895, the conflict between Cixi and Guangxu becomes open. Cixi dismisses the reform-minded tutor Weng Tonghe and directs Ronglu and others to strike at the reform faction. Kou Liancai bravely submits a petition urging Cixi to support the emperor and strengthen the country; she orders him put to death, and he goes to his execution as those around him weep.⁵^•⁶

Production and style

Li Han-hsiang's return to Shaw Brothers. Li Han-hsiang (1926–1996), born in Jinzhou, Liaoning, joined the Hong Kong film industry in 1948 and became known at Shaw Brothers for the Huangmei opera hits The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959) and The Love Eterne (1963) as well as historical epics such as Yang Kwei Fei (1962) and Empress Wu Tse-tien (1963). After founding Grand Motion Pictures in Taiwan, he rejoined Shaw Brothers in 1972 and, around the same period, shot the two Qing dynasty dramas The Empress Dowager (1975) and The Last Tempest (1976).¹

The two films were the most grandiose productions of the Shaw studio at Clearwater Bay.⁷ Li was noted for his exacting attention to props, set construction, costume, and hairstyle design, and the Hong Kong Memory collection preserves a series of hairstyle reference photographs of Lisa Lu and the other actresses in The Empress Dowager, made so that makeup artists and hairdressers could keep the performers' looks consistent during shooting.⁸ M+'s program notes single out the film's lavish costumes, props, and sets, its characterization, its vivid depiction of court life, and its dramatically charged confrontational scenes as evidence of Li's command of mise-en-scène.¹

Reception and legacy

At the 12th Golden Horse Awards in 1975 the film was named an Excellent Feature Film, Lisa Lu won Best Actress, and Chan King-sam won Best Color Film Art Design.² The role of Cixi became Lu's best-known performance; she had come to prominence with The Arch (1968) and was invited to Hong Kong by Shaw Brothers for The 14 Amazons (1972) and The Empress Dowager, winning further Golden Horse recognition. In May 2025 she became the oldest star to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.¹

The two-part saga was shown together at the 1976 London Film Festival as the mainstream Mandarin industry's major entry.⁶ The pair began Li's later series of films about Cixi and the Qing court, which continued after he moved to mainland China in 1982 to make The Burning of the Imperial Palace (1983) and Reign Behind a Curtain (1983) with the Beijing Film Studio.¹ Within Shaw Brothers' output, the film belongs to the Qing court historical drama cycle of the early and mid-1970s, alongside The Last Tempest and the later Emperor Chien Lung series (1977–1978).⁹

Release details and a note on versions

The film premiered in Hong Kong on 21 March 1975 and in Taiwan on 30 August 1980.¹⁰ Reported running times differ by source: 165 minutes on Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes, 130 minutes in the Sino-Cinema archive review, and 111 to 112 minutes on LiTV and in M+'s restoration program.³^•⁴^•⁶^•²^•¹

The title is shared with an earlier, unrelated 1964 Shaw Brothers film, also called 傾國傾城, a Shaw co-production with South Korea's Shin Films co-directed by Yueh Feng and Shin Sang-ok and starring Lin Dai.⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › Historical dramas and epics › Titles symbols to L › Titles 1 to Em

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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