While both songs were essential to the film’s success, “Song of the Four Seasons,” specifically, was pivotal in that it was performed alongside pseudo-documentary war footage. “Song of the Four Seasons” offers an insight into this era's circumstances of suffering that led to people’s plight: it compels the audience with its lyrical description of a maiden driven away from her home, the musical tale accompanied by a montage of war images that evoked Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. Because the footage was played alongside the performance of a love song, the film was able to deliver a message condemning the Japanese invasion without arousing the censors. In late 1930s Shanghai, the National Party exercised strict control over cultural production, meaning that any reference to the Japanese invasion was prohibited, to prevent provoking the masses to rise against Japan’s military aggression.