Planet Hong Kong Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment David Bordwell second edition Planet Hong Kong Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment David Bordwell Second edition Irvington Way Institute Press Madison, Wisconsin 2011 This e-book is for sale at www.davidbordwell.net. If you obtained this PDF from a source other than an authorized sales download, the author would be grateful if you would visit www.davidbordwell.net to purchase your own copy. Copyright 2010 by David Bordwell All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Edited and designed by Meg Hamel Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-0-9832440-0-4 PN1993.5H6 B63 2010 For Noël Once more, the power of movies Contents Preface . v 1 | All Too Extravagant, Too Gratuitously Wild. 1 Hong Kong and/as/or Hollywood. 12 2 | Local Heroes . 17 Two Dragons: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. 30 3 | The Chinese Connections . 39 4 | Once Upon a Time in the West . 51 Enough to Make a Strong Man Weep: John Woo . 60 5 | Made in Hong Kong . 72 A Chinese Feast: Tsui Hark . 84 6 | Formula, Form, and Norm. 93 Whatever You Want: Wong Jing . 109 7 | Plots, Slack and Stretched . 114 8 | Motion Emotion: The Art of the Action Movie . 127 Three Martial Masters: Chang Cheh, Lau Kar-leung, King Hu . 157 9 | Avant-Pop Cinema . 166 Romance on Your Menu: Chungking Express . 180 10 | What Price Survival? . 186 Not So Extravagant, Not So Gratuitously Wild: Infernal Affairs . 203 11 | A Thousand Films Later . 214 Man on a Mission: Johnnie To . 251 Further Reading . 265 Notes . 268 Acknowledgments. 290 Preface SOME OF THE best books on Hong Kong start with their passengers, people shouted amiably at one crisscrossed your line of sight. This view may be the author flying in to the old Kai Tak airport, the another. Occasionally a man would try to pull me Hong Kong’s greatest work of art. I picked up jumbo jet nearly scraping the rooftops of Kowloon out of the commo tion. “Copy watch?” “Sir! Where smells too—the pungent “fragrant harbor” that City before wheeling around sharply to land. (An are you from, sir? Are you thinking of a suit?” gave the colony its name, the odor of floor wax Australian pilot is sup posed to have described the To cross from Nathan Road to Salisbury Road, from the lobby of the Centre. On the esplanade, trip as eight hours of sheer boredom followed by the street that runs along the harbor, is to leave couples loi tered and tourists snapped photos of eight minutes of sheer terror.) This magnificent most of the turmoil behind. Among the cool col - the great contrivance shining across the water. arrival is impressed in my memory too, but the umns of the Cultural Centre, at the tip of the What had brought me here? In the fall of 1973, real thrill came later, when on a sultry March peninsula, people shift gears. The Centre is less soon after I had started teaching at the University night I wandered along Nathan Road, staring up popular for its museums and theaters, I suspect, of Wisconsin, I went to see Five Fingers of Death at a forest of towering neon. Columns of Chinese than for its tranquillity; later I would discover paired with The Chinese Connection in the dilapi- characters several stories high, blazing crimson that every day families fresh from the Marriage dated Majestic Theatre. Not long afterward I saw or gold, stretched alongside more familiar names: Registry gather in front of a fountain there for Enter the Dragon. These movies shook me up. A Toshiba in silver and red, an aqua OK signaling photographs, the bride dazzling in a white gown few years later in Richmond, Virginia, I saw Bruce karaoke. and perhaps clutching a Snoopy hand bag. That Lee’s Game of Death, a film of such surpassing Drifting with the crowd, I sauntered among old first night, though, I was behind the Centre star- oddness that I screened it for my film the ory class. men walking gravely with hands clasped behind ing at the skyline of Hong Kong Island across the At the same time, during trips to Europe, I caught their back, executive men and women hollering harbor. up with King Hu’s exhilarating masterworks. into bricklike cell phones, matrons strolling four As with all legendary views, the postcard version During the 1980s, while writing about Holly - and five abreast, children trot ting along in shorts is too cramped. Here were skyscrapers spread out wood cinema and film the ory and the films of and suspenders, slender boys in white shirts and carefully, as if designed to lead your eye from the Yasujiro Ozu, I occasionally checked in on Hong blue trousers, girls with dyed auburn hair and spiky profile of the Bank of China to the Neo- Kong cinema. I caught a Jackie Chan here, a Tsui knapsack purses strapped to their backs. There Deco Central Plaza and soon enough to the gigan- Hark there, and cable TV yielded up oddities like were plenty of tourists: big German and Aus- tic glowing signs for Citizen and San Miguel. Be - Shaolin Kung-Fu Mystagogue. The films appealed tralian couples ap praised cameras and Discmen hind these, misty green hills rose to the Peak. to me as “pure cinema,” popular fare that, like in shop windows while American students rum- Everything was reflected in the bay, not in perfect American Westerns and gangster movies of the maged through a cart of bootleg CDs. The noise outline but in thousands of red, blue, and gold 1930s, seemed to have an intuitive understanding was overwhelming: buses screeched to discharge high lights broken by the ferries and barges that of the kinetics of movies. Over these years, my old Planet Hong Kong Preface | v friend Tony Rayns saw to it that I was sent the this cinema not as an expression of local society, across human cultures. Whatever a film’s country annual catalogues of the Hong Kong Internation- nor as part of the history of Chinese culture, but of origin, it is likely to tap into widespread physi - al Film Festival, and so I came to learn something as an example of how popular cinema can pro- cal, social, and psychological predispositions. For of this cinema’s history. duce movies that are beautiful. instance, audiences can intuitively understand In the early 1990s I dived in, not least because What follows, then, is an essayistic attempt to many facial expressions of emotion. Many prac- these movies aroused my students’ passion in a understand the interplay of art and entertainment tices—such as acquiring shelter and caring for way that I had not seen for a long time. I began in one popular cinema. Because I have felt free to chil dren—are similar in different societies. Cul- book ing Hong Kong films for my courses, sub- choose what interests me, I have left to one side, tures also converge historically, because when scribing to the fanzines, picking up videotapes for example, the Canton ese Opera films, the social they come into contact, borrowing is inevitable. and laserdiscs. Soon I was convinced that this was realist tradition of the 1950s, the musicals and The tradi tions of Hollywood and Japanese cinema a popular cinema of great vigor. When I gained a comedies and melodramas of the 1960s, and the have powerfully influenced Hong Kong film. semester’s leave in the spring of 1995, I decided films of Sadean violence. I have also not touched Popular cinema, moreover, is deliberately de - that it was time to visit the Festival. upon the work of certain directors whose work is signed to cross cultural boundaries. Reliance on Through the Festival I met Li Cheuk-to, Athena un available in good film prints. Selective though pictures and music rather than on words, appeal Tsui, Stephen Teo, Shu Kei, Michael Campi, and it is, I hope that Planet Hong Kong will serve as to widely felt emotions, easily learned conven- many others who have become firm friends. I also both an introduction to Hong Kong film and an tions of style and story, and redundancy at many saw a selection of recent films, a retrospective of explora tion of matters not addressed elsewhere— levels all help films travel outside their immediate postwar movies, and a sample of what was playing industry background, production practices, and context. That audiences all over the world enjoy at the moment. At the first Hong Kong Critics above all filmic structure and style. Hong Kong movies dra matically illustrates the Society award ceremony I met Ann Hui, Wong The book also delineates Hong Kong’s sig ni fi - transcultural power of popular cinema. Kar-wai, and other filmmakers. I managed to slip cance for international pop ular filmmaking. How Today the Asian financial crisis has driven the into the Hong Kong Film Awards, where I snapped did cheap movies made in a distant outpost of the crowds from Nathan Road, and the Hong Kong photos and got autographs of stars and directors I British Empire achieve broad international appeal, film industry is struggling to survive. This book admired. During my three weeks’ stay I lived in a while European film makers bemoan their inabili- portrays a vibrant moment in the history of fan’s paradise. I even ate at Chungking Mansions. ty to reach even their own national audiences? popular film and shows how it participates in a I became addicted to visiting Hong Kong.