Hong Kong

Hong Kong film stars anyone?

No?

Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chow Yung Phat, Lucy Lui all come from Hong Kong.

After all, Hong Kong was the highest movie going place in the whole world for a little while. Why was that?

Hong Kong is quite a small place that is heavily populated. Imagine you lived in Hong Kong (if you don't,) you would expect to see a lot of geography you are familiar with. I always like to see British films because I am familiar with the places they are set, just like you New Yorkers watching 'Godzilla' and the many other films set in that place I have never been. HK was probably the most robust film industries in the world. It obliterated Taiwan's film market. I'll ask that question again, why was it more successful?

The key to it's success was that it was 'popular cinema.' The stories were always about cops vs Triads with a vivid colour palette and fast paced edits. There would be action... suspense... emotion during the film made in late 80s and 90s. The movies were always shown very late at night, that is the 'mid-night movie,' thus having to keep the audiences awake by bombarding them with colours, sound effects and exciting imagery. As they were evidently so many quick cut slow-motion takes and re-takes of the same shot to glamorise the action, HK shot its films in silent and then dubbed them afterwards. This allowed more freedom as the sound could fit around the almost abstract action on screen. The mise-en-scene in HK films correlate gesture, composition, colour and music more than what we would expect in our cartoons. This all comes from Cantonese Opera. Check out my blog on Montage, and it'll go into more detail lick-adi-split yo.

"Hard Boiled" by John Woo. The action in this is ridiculously intense. There is a burst of action, a slight pause to breathe, then another massive burst of slow-mo, fast cutting battle and so on. There are parts when they talk, but not too many. There is a part in it where Yeung (Chow Yung Phat) is waiting outside a door with his battle companion. This is the pause. They then burst through the door and bullets rip people up. The pause after this, is just before Yeung executes his foe, with a point blank shot to the face causing blood to spray all over his own flour covered face. Pretty damn cool huh. The slow-motion in this scene gives it a beautiful, balletic quality. Yeung's movement over the table is so abstract and concealed by the flour that it is up to us as an audience to imagine what just happened.

HK's film history has been a varied one. In the beginning, comedies were made consistently all about farting, other bodily functions, slapstick and food. John Woo started out making comedies, but he got very fed up with it as he like the melodrama. You would have thought he'd be into action but it's not the case according to him. He does however like to incorporate the two, making, dramatic action films. Just like "Blue Streak" is an action comedy as well as nearly all Jackie Chan films, John Woo tames the drama into his action, rather than the comedy. Loyalty and honor are big players in the HK action film, especially when they're all about Kung Fu or Wuxia. Wuxia is sword fighting in mainland China. So, the genres HK cover are

• Crime - Cops and Triads
• Horror - Ghost stories and Vampire films
• Comedy - Hybrid with other genres
• Melodrama - That is historical and in Mandarin. This is strange as HK speaks Cantonese.
• Wuxia - Adventures in mainland sword-fighting China
• Art Film - 'Second Wave' - They had a lot of success abroad but nearly nothing in HK.

Popular genres such as the Western and Sci-fi film have not become popular in HK, unlike the Western in America.

Chu and Bordwell think that HK is culturally specific. There is a dual identity from Britain and China. HK used to be a 'Crown Collony' making lots of people move there as before that it was just a tiny fishing village. This was all because China was turning Communist at the time and making everyone flee the mainland.

Let's have a look at a Jackie Chan film called "Police Story."