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World Film Locations Hong Kong
By Linda Chiu-han Lai, Kimburley Wing-yee Choi Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-021-4
CHAPTER 1
HONG KONG
City of the Imagination
Text by LINDA CHIU- HAN LAI AND STEVE FORE
IT'S ALMOST CLICHÉ, a banal simplification, too, to say that Hong Kong is crowded.
Tokyo is crowded, but its flyover complexes divide the city into neat zones of dwellings and pockets of street-level identities. New York can be crowded, but only if you are near Times Square or Wall Street on a regular business day. Manhattan to me always affords a leisurely stroll. But Hong Kong ...
The sensation of 'crowdedness' in HK is arresting; it compels us to exhaust our vocabulary. I learn, from the many contributors of this volume, that crowdedness is indeed the key and has many names. Traffic jams and crammed public housing needless to say> Crowdedness demands metaphors: crisscrossing strands, labyrinthine passages ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/City on Fire [Ringo Lam, 1987]). It has smells and flavours (The World of Suzie Wong [Richard Quine, 1960]); it is flared up by speed, exaggerated by the urgency of the moment (Boarding Gate [Olivier Assayas, 2007]) and poetized by a very slow stroll ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/The Walker [Tsai Ming-liang, 2012]). Crowdedness is embodied in the exploding desire for a window with a harbour view (Spotlight #6), at least some breathing space ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Life without Principle [Johnnie To, 2011]). There's no crowdedness without the contrasting presence of hidden avenues of solitary isolation ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Chungking Express [Wong Kar-wai, 1994]). Crowdedness is about juxtaposition and contrast, the contiguity of the incompatible to the incommensurable: little cubicles self-multiply and pile up, chaos if you zoom in, yet an extraordinary sense of order not quite matched in any other world cities. Crowds mean young people ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Young and Dangerous [Lau Wai-keung, 1996]). A crowd draws out fear. Crowdedness is when you can't tell gang-boys from ordinary youngsters ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] fit [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Once upon a Time in Triad Society 2 [Cha Chuen-Yee, 1996]). Crowdedness drives people to make space ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] /On the Edge of a Floating City, We Sing [Anson Mak (Mak Hoi- shan), 2012]). Kids on the street prefer to be part of the crowd to flee crowded housing (Spotlight #2). Crowds point to collectivity, to infectious homogenization ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Bio Zombie [Wilson YIP (YIP Wai-shun), 1998]). Crowdedness indicates the need to stretch our visual grammar and perceptual consciousness ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Fallen Angels [Wong Kar-wai, 1995]; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Made in Hong Kong [Fruit Chan, 1997]). It also demands technical problem solving – how to shoot in a crowded area. Ask directors Ringo Lam and Cha Chuen-yee.
A unique cinematic language evolves to symphonize crowdedness in serial mashed-up scenes. At the turn of a street corner, a main road populated by banks and multinational corporations becomes an old neighbourhood. Collage work brings together crossroads and landmarks from different districts into successive scenes of temporal-spatial continuity. One district is rendered just the same as anothers into one big visual extravaganza of Hong Kong ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/ McDull prince a la bun [Toe Yuen, 2004]). A little girl's runaway excursion becomes a convenient excuse to mash up various crowded spots in the city ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Little Detective [Chan Pei (Chen Pi), 1962]). As chronicled in Wong Kin-yuen's 2000 essay, 'On the Edge of Spaces: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Hong Kong's Cityscape (Science Fiction Studies, #80, v27(1)), the Japanese animation team of Ghost in the Shell (Oshii Mamoru, 1995) decided to develop a mutated version of HK's built environment as the retro-futurist setting for their story of a cyborg having an identity crisis in the reasonably near future. Influenced by the entropic vision of Los Angeles in Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and the post-apocalyptic Tokyo of Akira (Otomo Katsuhiro, 1988), they were intrigued by the tension in HK between ultra-modern high-rise structures and older buildings representing diverse cultures and times. In a scene in Ghost, the now-dilapidated Streamline Moderne low-rise residential buildings are still hanging on in some Hong Kong Island neighbourhoods such as those along Queen's Road East in Wanchai, as well as the start of Ladder Street. The latter dated from the 1840s, off Queen's Road Central, which was the first built thoroughfare by the harbour front. This architectural variety in turn suggests the film's theme of unstable, fluid, sentient identity in a technologically advanced society. Oh, and this pastiche of HK has canals in addition to a harbour.
At the extreme opposite end of crowdedness, we have vacant spaces pending for their next round of usage, turned into the Film Service Office's real estate portfolio since 1998. They are disused office mansions, spatial tokens of HK's former colonial administration. During their lingering presence without a designated purpose, the practical HK government invited film-makers to use them for inexpensive rented sets. (Spotlight #4)
Due to the size of the book, one type of important location has to be left out. In the 1960s, as a result of a strong studio system emerging, HK films were mainly filmed inside the studio. On-location shooting, often used for narrative transitions, occurred in places nearby the film companies. This was the case for Daguan Motion Pictures, MP & GI, Shaw Brothers Studio, Yung Hwa and Golden Harvest, which all happened to have set up their studios in Kowloon near the old airport and in Diamond Hill, now a residential area ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Lost Souls [Mou Tun-fei, 1980]). Many Cantonese classics in the 1960s, such as Eternal Regret ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Chor Yuen, 1962) and Country Boy Goes to Town ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Chan Cheuk-sang, 1965), were filmed in Diamond Hill.
As the writings by all contributors finally came in, we couldn't help noticing some significant repetition. Victoria Harbour and the Star Ferry pop up many times, each time articulating a facet of our subdued sentiments as insider-residents of this crowded city. Victoria Harbour is concrete existence of a fiendish kind. Its charm is also nightmare. It has long been the single most famous geographic icon of HK. Unfortunately, it has not always received the respect it deserves. Over the last century, recurrent land reclamation projects have reduced the harbour's width from 2,300 metres to the current 910 metres. Pedestrian access to a harbour-front view is difficult on the Kowloon side and all but impossible on Hong Kong Island. In a key scene in Autumn Moon ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Clara Law, 1992), a Japanese tourist (Masatoshi Nagase) is fishing in the harbour, only to be warned by a passing local teenaged girl that available fish are both tiny and contaminated by pollution. In the background is the glamorous skyline of Central and Wanchai, and the film provides a pretty genuine tourist's view - as they frequently are, the distant skyscrapers here are shrouded in thick smog. Victoria is more than a harbour. It marks family tragedies, world financial crises, and the research subject of diligent ethnographers (Spotlight #6, Life without Principle, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/One-way Street on a Turntable [Anson Mak (Mak Hoi-shan), 2007]).
There must be many more untold stories.
CHAPTER 2
SPOTLIGHT
HERE, THERE AND IN-BETWEEN
Transitional Space in Hong Kong Movies
Text by KIMBURLEY WING-YEE CHOI
KAI TAK AIRPORT, the international airport of Hong Kong from 1925 to 1998, was expanded several times between the 1950s and 1970s in response to growth in commercial air travel. Air Hostess/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Evan Yang, 1959), which opens with Air Hostess Kepin (Grace Chang, aka Ge Lan) singing the song 'I Fly Up to the Blue Sky' (music: Yao Ming; lyrics: Evan Yang, 1959), may reflect the appeal of air travel to business travellers back then. One of HK's earliest colour movies, Air Hostess portrays the professional lives of flight attendants: they are modern, elegant and unfettered, yet they abide by the strict rules of their job. Crime is a crucial dramatic device – smugglers allure Kepin and Xinjuan (Julie Yeh Feng) to bring jewellery into Singapore. Hence the film's portrayal of airports as transitional zones where modernity, not traditional values, reigns supreme is ultimately also a cautionary tale supporting the presence of strict rules in a somewhat lawless frontier. As transitional spaces, airports mark narrative changes. Characters are situated in between the legitimate and the illegitimate.
The airport also provides the characters with the opportunities to change. In My Intimate Partner/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Chun Kim, 1960), buddies Ng Jui-choi (Patrick Tse Yin) and Chow Yat-ching (Wu Fung) are both in love with Ying (Nam Hung), who simply treats them as friends as she is engaged to someone in South East Asia. In a key scene set in the airport, Ying receives news about the death of her fiancé from Tsui-lam (Kong Suet), his sister. This airport scene marks Ying's new beginning: she may now freely start her romantic relation with Yat-ching, and Jui-choi soon falls in love with the newly arrived Tsui-lam, thus the problematic love triangle gets resolved into two legitimate romance stories.
In A Gimmicky World/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Mok Hong-sze, 1963), the airport again marks a new beginning in life, this time for the female protagonist Wang Lan (Patricia Lam Fung). Wang is persuaded by evildoer Zeng Hong (Lee Pang-fei) and her adoptive mother to approach a rich young man from the States to cheat his money through gambling. In the film's finale, Wang races off to the airport, determined to leave HK and relocate to the States with her new boyfriend. Devoid of pronounced historical and personal traditions, the airport here functions as a site where people can abandon their erstwhile identities and even their families (such as an unscrupulous adoptive mother) in favour of a new life.
The use of transitional space in HK movies since the 1980s seems less optimistic. In City on Fire/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Ringo Lam, 1987), undercover cop Ko Chow (Chow Yun-fat) is caught between loyalty toward his friends and his duties as a police officer. Adding to his struggles is his relationship with his nightclub girlfriend Hung (Carrie Ng), whom he wishes to marry after quitting the force. In a key scene, Ko rushes to the Kai Tak Airport to ask Hung, the impatient bride-to-be, not to abandon him and HK for a married man. But right after his proposal, he is apprehended by the police for his previous gun sales to a gang of thieves. The airport scene indicates the crossroads these two individuals have reached: they need to decide whether to maintain the status quo (i.e. Ko continuing to be an undercover cop and Hung keeping her rocky relations with him) or to make substantial life-trajectory changes (i.e. Ko quitting the force or Hung leaving him for good). In the film, Hung's actions undercut Ko's desire to resign from the force, as he decides to infiltrate the gang of thieves and to carry on being a marginal person – someone who belongs to the world of law enforcement and that of lawbreakers and who, therefore, forfeits a clearly demarcated identity.
In 1998, Chek Lap Kok replaced Kai Tak as Hong Kong International Airport, and the construction of Stonecutters Bridge was part of the new airport project. The unfinished Stonecutters Bridge suggests no new life or transformation, but reminds audiences that characters in the millennium have no way out except death. Overheard/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Felix Chong and Alan Mak, 2009) is about people's distrust of law enforcement and the legal system in the context of capitalist finance. Two officers, Yeung (Louis Koo) and Lam (Daniel Wu), overhear that the stock price of a firm involving commercial crimes will soar when the market opens the following day. They delete the 'insider trading' portion of the recording and quickly purchase substantial shares of the stock in question with a big, tenuous loan. Their acts result in the murders of both Yeung's family and Lam himself. A year later, police collect records incriminating the head of the firm for arrest. Under police escort, Yeung drives himself and the firm's 'Boss' off the unfinished Stonecutters Bridge into the harbour; meanwhile, the police supervisor on location deliberately turns off his walkie-talkie connection to allow Yeung's extrajudicial killing to finish. Situated beyond HK's structured and hierarchical political–legal–economic system, the unfinished bridge as transitional space provides shelter for Yeung and his supervisor to challenge accepted rules and the general ethos of judicial administration. But rather than bring the protagonists a new life, the unfinished bridge to the airport extricates them from a vicious spiral into the depths of crime.
The airport in HK Cinema has been a marker of opposing forces and contrasting options. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the binary was more obvious: a character stays to struggle versus takes off for new freedom, or a character stays to acknowledge responsibilities versus takes off to escape. In recent examples, the airport figures more strongly as the chase-passage for traumatic exits as existential situations become increasingly complex, and the black-versus-white measure of law and morality no longer stands. The airport is no simple transitional space for change and transformation, but a ground of the in-between on which strands of changing values of global financial capitalism spin off, if not entangled.
CHAPTER 3
CAUGHT IN THE ACT (1957)
LOCATION
Wader Motion Picture & Development Co. Ltd, Castle Peak Road 6.5 m, Kwai Chung
SCREENWRITER YEUNG (CHEUNG YING) is working on a new story, 'Murdering My Wife'. Ever since a fortune teller predicts his wife will be unfaithful, many everyday details seem to suggest his wife could actually be planning on murdering him. Feeling suspicious and insecure staying home, he slips out to Wader film studio. Between home and office is a twelve-second pan-shot, an exterior survey of Wader Motion Picture & Development, the company that shot Caught in the Act. Supposed to be a brief narrative transition, the segment is more an excuse to show off the actual film studio. Thanks to the digression, we get to see the physical components of the 80,000-square-foot Wader: a bungalow apparently the reception office, one multi-storey office building, and a complex of two studios, one bigger than the other. In the open space enclosed by the buildings were half-done furniture and construction material. Wader had top camera facilities with its own cinematographer, set designer, lighting and recording artists - suitable for full-package rental to companies without a studio. Wader's investor was Ho Kai-wing, helm of Kong Ngee, one of the three major (HK-made) Cantonese film distributors in Singapore. Wader ensured a continuous supply of films for the Kong Ngee network, at a time when movie-going brought great fortunes to distributors in Singapore. Where Wader stood is now a park above public housing in Kwai Chung. In the 1960s, an early phase of public housing development, the vicinity of Wader was a favourite spot for action scenes in many Cantonese films. [right arrow] Linda Chiu-han Lai
CHAPTER 4
OUR DREAM CAR (1959)
LOCATION
Star Ferry Pier parking lot, Central
GRACE CHANG AND CHANG YANG played a young middle-class couple, the husband a junior engineer and the wife in the fashion business. Every day after work, they would meet at the Edinburgh Place Ferry Pier, more commonly referred to as the Star Ferry Pier. The first time we are introduced to this scene, the camera follows Grace Chang as she walks elegantly across the pier's vast parking lot. As the clock tower chimes five, she sits down on a bench by the waterfront. Life is modest yet sweet ... until a dream car comes along. The second time we are brought back here, the couple has already bought their dream car. The loan they take out to pay for it has sparked a string of marital disputes. Towards the end of the film, we return again to this symbolic place. In the end, our protagonists have sold their car and rekindled their love for each other. These three scenes mark the twists and turns of the film's dramatic structure. The third generation Star Ferry Pier, with its clock tower, was built in 1957 at the height of the Modern Movement. Our Dream Car, a delightful comedy filmed in the same period, is a sensitive portrayal of a city undergoing a vibrant evolution. Modernity is the issue. The pier was retired from service on 11 November 2006, when it was demolished to make way for a reclamation project. This marked the end of an era, and aroused great controversy and popular protests. [right arrow] Wong Ain-ling
CHAPTER 5
LITTLE DETECTIVE (1962)
LOCATION
Prince Edward Road at Waterloo Road, Nathan Road (Mongkok), Homantin, Yaumati, Star Ferry (Tsimshatsui)
EXTENSIVE USE OF REAL LOCATION was uncommon in local film-making until the late 1960s. But trial attempts were not lacking in the 1960s. Filmmakers inserted glimpses of streets in the company's neighbourhood for temporal-spatial transitions. To contemporary viewers, they are precious 'documents' of a lost landscape. In Little Detective, an atypically prolonged outdoor sequence of three and a half-minutes marks the story's turning point. Siu-lan, little daughter of reputable Inspector Yiu Kong (Ng Cho-fan), desires to follow daddy's footsteps but can't wait. One day, she begs a father's subordinate to teach her how to use a gun and accidentally puts a bullet into his hip. Terrified by the thought of being jailed, she flees home and roams through the busy streets of Kowloon. The camera waits on Prince Edward Road at Waterloo Road, observing St. Teresa's Church, with Maryknoll Convent's College on the right and the Lion Rock behind as Siu-lan enters the shot. Next, Siu-lan pushes through the crowd in front of a cinema showing a film starring Spencer Tracy. A local bakery where she begs for bread ... Nathan Road - HK & Shanghai Bank's Kowloon head-quarters ... King's Park, Homantin ... A corner of Austin Road ... Street stalls in Yaumati. Finally, we see Siu-lan wandering outside the Star Ferry in Tsimshatsui, which marks the edge of her world. With no money, she cannot cross the harbour to Hong Kong Island, which fills the backdrop of the shot. Petrina Fung (aka Fung Bobo) was seven when she played Siu-lan. In 1961 alone, she appeared in over 30 films. [right arrow] Linda Chiu-han Lai
(Continues...)
Excerpted from World Film Locations Hong Kong by Linda Chiu-han Lai, Kimburley Wing-yee Choi. Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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