本文認為「華語電影」一詞不是最初被港台學者於20世紀90年代開始提出採用，而是可以追溯到上世紀五十年代的新加坡和馬來亞。從1958年11月至1959年5月，新加坡國泰機構的華裔導演兼發行人易水，陸續在《南洋商報》的影藝版落力提倡「華語電影」。當時其「華語電影」跟當下通行於東西學界的「華語電影」 （Chinese-language cinema）概念具有一些共同的維度，不但包含港台「國語片」，也包涵方言電影，例如粵片和閩南語片（廈語片）等等。這些系列文章於1959年結集成書《馬來亞化華語電影問題》，易水亦身體力行，完成數部「馬化華語電影」。本文首先通過重讀《馬來亞化華語電影問題》及易水的電影實踐，檢視其「華語電影」於五、六十年代如何在第三世界政治的「馬來亞化」時代背景下，如何以「華語電影」 安頓和解決當年寓居於新加坡與馬來亞不同籍貫華人觀影群體的多重語言身份和文化認同需要 ，並以「華語」統稱普通話與方言族群，作為華族的協商籌碼，以應對強大的英語族群和馬來語族群的雙重政治壓制。本文也通過梳理當年新馬報刊對「馬化華語電影」的論述和爭議，分析易水的華語電影實踐，其半記錄性質的第三世界電影《獅子城》和採用客家山歌形式來再現馬來亞錫礦地上華裔男女生活的通俗劇《黑金》，這些「雜語共生」的「多種華語」特色，如何嘗試跨越民族界限和方言族群政治意識形態的誤區。

This article purports that the term "Chinese-language cinema" was not first used in the nineties of last century by scholars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but that its origins can be traced back to Singapore and Malayasia in the fifties of last century. From November 1958 through May 1959, the Chinese director and distributor, Yi Shui, of Singapore Cathay Productions, vigorously promoted "Chinese-language cinema" in the “art of cinema” section of the Nanyang Siang Pau. This earlier use of "Chinese-language cinema" shared some common ideas with the current usage of the concept in academic circles of both the East and the West. It not only included “Mandarin film”, but also films in such dialects as Cantonese, Southern Min (Amoy) and others. In 1959, Yi Shui's essays were compiled into a collection titled On Issues of the Malayanization of Chinese-Language Cinema. Yi Shui also practiced what he preached, producing several Malayanized Chinese-language films. This article will review On Issues of the Malaynization of Chinese-language Cinema, as well as Yi Shui's film practice, in order to examine how "Chinese-language cinema" found its place Singapore and Malayasia and how it met the demands of Chinese cinema audience from a wide variety of geographic backgrounds as well as linguistic and cultural identities. This analysis will be done in the context of the third-world politics of Malayanization of the fifties and sixties, as well as exploring how the use of the collective term "Chinese language". It will be shown how the use of this term to simultaneously refer to both the Mandarin and the dialect group communities became a bargaining chip in coping with the dual political pressures originating from the powerful English and Malay language communities. This article will furthermore analyze Yi Shui's “Chinese language cinema” film practice by examining the discourses and controversies in Singaporean and Malaysian newspapers surrounding the "Malayanization of Chinese-language Cinema" in order to show that his semi-documentary third-world cinema film The Lion City and the melodrama Black Gold, which adopts the form of Hakka folk songs to represent the lives of ethnic Chinese men and women in Malayan tin ore mines, attempted to mediate the misunderstandings rooted in national boundaries and the political ideologies of various dialect groups by means of a "multi-lingual symbiosis" of multiple Chinese dialects.