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