Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Second edition)

300 Pages·2010·10.97 MB·english

by  David Bordwell

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
SOMEOFTHEbest 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 sign ifi - 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. Some - How did Hong Kong filmmakers manage to create vigorous tradition of mass entertainment. That
time after the third trip, at the urgings of my wife, artful movies within the framework of modern tradition is nearly as old as the century that is
Kristin Thompson, and my friend Noël Carroll, I entertainment? What can these films tell us about now ending, and it is becoming, day by day, more
decided to write a book. It was a difficult decision, storytelling in a mass medium—its history and powerful in every land. It is time we understood it
not only because I don’t speak or read Chinese. craft, its design fea tures and emotional effects? better. These films can help us to do so. Along the
For one thing, there is already a lot written about Such questions inevitably lead us back to the way they can show us a splendid time.
this cinema, and there is going to be a lot more. unique achievements of Hong Kong cinema and
Madison, Wisconsin
Web pages are sprouting at this moment. Further, to an assessment of the de lights and the short-
December 1999
I have seen only about three hundred seventy comings of the films themselves.
Hong Kong movies. (If you think that’s a lot, you Some might say that the book risks imposing an
are not yet a hardcore fan.) Still, perhaps out of outsider’s values on a cinema that exists in and
stubborn naïveté, I thought that I had something through unique cultural circumstances. But de -
original to say about the movies produced in this spite many claims to the contrary nowadays,
tiny corner of Asia. I thought that I could explore there are more commonalities than differences
Planet Hong Kong Preface | vi
Preface to the Second Edition
THE TEN YEARS SINCE the first publication of this Media conglomerates based in Malaysia, Taiwan, to examine the premises that foster mass-market
book have seen some striking changes in the Japan, and South Korea, as well as in America, entertainment. This analysis remains intact here.
Hong Kong film industry. From the 1970s to the were investing in Chinese-language films, TV The new sections further explore the idea that
mid-1990s, its product carried an intensely local shows, music, and web content. The pressures of popular cinema gains its strength by using film
tang and savor. Filmmakers painted their home as this new era led to changing subjects and themes, form and style in ways both familiar and innova-
the cosmopolitan crossroads of Asia, where south- but the artistic traditions of Hong Kong film per- tive. Innovations are held in check by norms, but
ern Chinese traditions coexisted with a modern sisted along several dimensions. the norms can display an unexpected flexibility
service economy. Film after film proudly put on The additional sections of the book, written in when put under creative pressure. Sometimes the
display an intoxicating lifestyle mixing East and the second half of 2010, attempt to bring the story filmmaker finds a new way to satisfy a long-stand-
West, Lunar New Year and XO brandy, t’ai chi and up to date. Chapter 10, the first new entry, contin- ing norm, as when martial arts filmmakers, under
DKNY fashion. Even films set in the past dis- ues the book’s discussion of the changes in Hong the demand to make combats exciting, discovered
played a distinctively modern, Cantonese take on Kong cinema starting in the mid-1990s. While the pause/burst/pause pattern and plumbed its
things. Wong Fei-hung and Fong Sai-yuk, folk Chapter 3 dealt with the changes principally from potential. Less often, a filmmaker pushes the norms
heroes of southern China, were brought up-to- the Hong Kong point of view, new information into fresh areas, yielding an experience that satis-
date with famous Hong Kong stars and inside ref- allows us a finer-grained understanding of the fies in unpredictable ways. Chungking Express
erences. The classic Journey to the West became dynamics at work in the Mainland at the time. does this, I think, by recasting the norms of young
AChinese Odyssey, with Stephen Chow turning Chapter 11 considers how the changed context of romance and converging plotlines; the work of
the Monkey King into a Cantonese comic. the 2000s affected mainstream moviemaking and Johnnie To does something similar in the crime
In the 2000s, Hong Kong not only became part some of the territory’s major filmmakers, particu- genre.
of China; it became one node in a network of con- larly Stephen Chow, Wong Kar-wai, and Johnnie Since Planet Hong Kong appeared, there has
temporary Chinese media. With the Mainland To Kei-fung. Two new interludes trace how the been a welcome surge in academic studies of Hong
now financing and distributing films to a vast audi- Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002–2003) presented Kong cinema. A great many have been valuable
ence,local filmmakers confronted new problems. one option for local moviemaking, and how the and informative. Their authors, however, have
Working in what had been something of a cottage crime films of Johnnie To suggest a different path. not asked quite the same sorts of questions that
industry, they had to adjust to high-powered preoccupy me. Speaking broadly, most studies of
competition from all directions—Hollywood, as THE FIRST EDITION TOOK Hong Kong as a case the films have been hermeneutic: They have con-
ever, but also the burgeoning South Korean study in popular cinema. By examining the indus- centrated on assigning implicit or symptomatic
industry and the rapid growth of PRC production. try’s craft routines and artistic options, I wanted meanings to the movies. A body of themes—
Planet Hong Kong Preface | vii
modernity or post-colonialism, diasporan or ing for them. The mechanics of the movie can name for each person. Some names rendered in
nomadic identities, the post-1997 mood, and the encourage a range of interpretations. We can Mandarin transliteration in the original book
like—have been mapped onto the films. This angle focus on the interpretations, but as in the earlier have been replaced by their more familiar Can-
of approach often continues the tradition of version of the book, I want to pay special atten- tonese versions; so Chang Cheh has replaced
reflectionist reading I discuss in Chapter 2. tion to the mechanics. They are primary sources Zhang Che. When I was writing the first version
My concern has been less with hermeneutics of the art of entertainment. of the book, Chow Sing-chi preferred to be known
than poetics. I ask about the principles that gov- as Stephen Chiau, but by 2010 he was universally
ern the making of the films.This frame of refer- FINALLY, BITS OF housekeeping. I have not on the recognized as Stephen Chow, so that’s the version
ence has many advantages, not least among them whole revised the arguments and examples in the I employ here.
that it permits film criticism to mesh to some first edition. I’ve confined myself to making a few The format preserving the digital files of the
degree with the craft practices of filmmaking. stylistic changes and to amending factual errors, original book did not permit me to insert addi-
It’s sometimes thought that studying the prin- typically of historical information. For example, tional endnotes into the flow of the text. In some
ciples of filmic construction ignores meanings, Law Kar and Frank Bren have identified what is cases, I introduced new references into the exist-
but that isn’t the case. A poetics of film, it seems to likely to have been Hong Kong’s first fiction film, ing notes for each chapter. On the whole, howev-
me, gives meanings a new function. We can note and my claim about the title in the initial edition, er, readers interested in following up research on
that the production process may seize upon ideas picked up from previous researchers, has been Hong Kong film since 2000 should consult the
and subjects already in circulation. In both the corrected. Further Reading section at the back of the book.
old and the new sections of the book, I try to show The first edition contained only black-and-white A great many people have assisted me over the last
that filmmakers working in a popular vein can illustrations, all taken from 35mm film prints. decade in my thinking about Hong Kong cinema.
take well-worn themes and larger meanings as Ihave replaced nearly all of these pictures with I thank them in the acknowledgments. Here I must
material for their craft. The themes can come color illustrations. Many of the new pictures were single out Kristin Thompson and Jim Cortada,
from contemporary concerns, as in the Young and made from 35mm prints, but I drew some from who encouraged me to embark on this e-book
Dangerous series, or from traditional sources. DVDs when I could not get a film print or when adventure, and Meg Hamel, who made the enter-
Chang Cheh drew upon codes of masculinity, the DVD yielded better reproduction. In a very prise easier than I had any right to expect.
Tsui Hark on Chinese Opera’s play upon gender few instances, I have left the illustrations in black
Madison, Wisconsin
reversals, Wong Kar-wai on tropes of romantic and white because I had no access to 35mm
December 2010
longing. The task of the popular filmmaker is not prints, and available DVD sources were photo-
necessarily “to say something new,” but rather to graphically inferior to the original stills.
give old materials a fresh force. That process I’ve changed some names from the first edition.
works principally through film form and style. The original book referred to individuals by their
The way the parts are designed and coordinated, best-known Anglicized names, such as Andy Lau
the way cinematic narration is deployed, and the and Brigitte Lin. I have retained these because
way film techniques are chosen shape the emer- these are familiar to Western readers, but on the
gent qualities of the film, including its thematic first mention I supply the full Chinese name of
horizons. each person. Spelling can cause further problems.
The main purpose of a popular movie is to offer One choreographer-director calls himself both
us an experience, not to impart an idea. Still, the Yuen Woo-ping and Yuen Wo-ping, and another
way in which the experience is engineered can filmmaker goes by Corey Yuen, Cory Yuen, Yuen
suggest ideas, especially to critics attuned to look- Kwai, and Yuen Kuei. I have had to settle on one
Planet Hong Kong Preface | viii
|
1 All Too Extravagant, Too Gratuitously Wild
HONGKONGCINEMAis one of the success stories of until the fateful year 1997 did Hollywood edge out world’s most energetic, imagi native popular
film history. For about twenty years, this city-state the local product, claiming slightly over half the cinema.
of around six million people had one of the most admission receipts—and some would blame that Every fan has favorite examples; here are two of
robust cinema industries in the world. In number outcome on local underproduction and elevated mine. At the climax of the first part of King Hu’s
of films released, it regularly surpassed nearly all ticket prices for Western fare. A Touch of Zen(1971), a swordsman and swords-
Western countries. In export it was second only How did this tiny cinema come to be so suc - woman confront enemy warriors in a bamboo
to the United States. It ruled the East Asian market, cess ful? Some answers lie in history and culture, grove. It is no ordinary com bat. The fighters leap
eventually oblit erating one neigh boring country’s but many others are to be found in the films them- twenty feet in the air, pivoting and somersaulting,
film industry. Distributed in the West, Hong Kong selves. Hong Kong’s film industry offered some- sometimes clashing with one another (Fig. 1.1). The
films became a cult phenomenon on an unprece- thing audiences desired. Year in and year out it woman strategically vaults up, then caroms off one
dented scale. Although a typical production cost produced dozens of fresh, lively, and thrilling tree trunk and alights on another, clinging there
mov ies. Since the 1970s it has been arguably the like a spider before swiveling and dive-bombing
about as much as a German or French one, the
industry enjoyed no subsidies of the sort that
keep European cin ema alive. Hong Kong movies
were made simply because millions of peo ple
wanted to watch them.
Over the last two decades American film has
devoured the world mar ket. In some countries
Hollywood claims 90% of box office re ceipts. Yet
over the same years Hollywood movies held a
minority position in Hong Kong, with U.S. market
share sometimes falling to less than 30%. Global
blockbusters often failed in Hong Kong. Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981) ranked only sixteenth in
local admissions, beaten by The Dead and the
Deadly, Legendary Weapons of China, and Boat
People. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?(1989) earned
just one-third the grosses of God of Gamblers. Not 1.1 Swordfighters clash in mid-air in A Touch of Zen.
Planet Hong Kong | Chapter 1 All Too Extravagant, Too Gratuitously Wild | 1