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Cinema of Hong Kong Wikipedia

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Category:Hong Kong cinema|!The history of Chinese_language|Chinese-language film|cinema has three separate threads of development: the Hong Kong, the Cinema of China|Mainland and Cinema of Taiwan|Taiwan. Hong Kong as a British colony had a great degree of freedom and developed into East Asia's filmmaking hub, the third largest motion picture industry in the world (after Bollywood and Hollywood).

The first Hong Kong film was Zhuangzi Tests His Wife in 1913. The director was Lai Man-Wai, Father of Hong Kong Cinema, who also played the wife himself. But the Hong Kong film industry did not take off until after World War II.

• Cantonese movies era (1950s and 1960s),

• * mostly Wu Xia films with cheesy props and special effect using crude animation drawn on top of the film, drama, Cantonese opera on film etc. - e.g., Wah Tat Studio.

• Mandarin movies era (1960s on) -

• * e.g., Shaw Brothers Studio, Golden Harvest Studio.

• * A musical genre called Huang2 Mei2 Diao4 (黃梅調).

• * Love stories based on novels by Chiung Yao (瓊瑤 pinyin qiong2 yao2).

• * A new generation of Wu Xia film probably started by The dragon inn (龍門客棧) with a lot of wire work and acrobatic moves.

• The come-back of Cantonese movies - (1970s on) -

• *probably spearheaded by Michael Hui with his comedies which brought Cantonese movies back in the spotlight.

• *Kung fu, Police/Criminal, ghost stories are among the popular themes.

The Comeback of Cantonese Cinema (1970s-)

During the 1960s, films made in Cantonese (the majority language in Hong Kong) were made on relatively small budgets and were seen as inferior to the major Mandarin productions. However, during the 1970s, there was a movement towards more down-to-earth movies made about modern life in Hong Kong. While the high-budget, high-production-value films of the 1960s were largely filmed in Mandarin, the newer films were produced in Cantonese so as to appeal to the average people in Hong Kong.
Due to British colonial statutes, all films were mandated to be subtitled in English, facilitating their later popularity in the West.
The first films to re-popularise Cantonese as the language of Hong Kong cinema were the comedies of the Hui Brothers (Actor-Director-Screenwriter Michael Hui, Actor-Singer Sam Hui and Actor Ricky Hui). The rationale behind the move to Cantonese was clear in the trailer for Games Gamblers Play (1974): "Films by devoted young people with you in mind." This move back to the mainstream audience for Hong Kong cinema paid off immediately. Games Gamblers Play initially made US$1.4 million at the Hong Kong box office, becoming the highest grossing film up to that point, even beating such Hong Kong favourites as Bruce Lee's The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon.

Hong Kong Action Cinema of the 1970s-1990s

Bruce Lee

Hong Kong cinema is today famous mostly for its action movies. Its international reputation in this area began in 1971 when a little-known actor called Bruce Lee moved to Hong Kong after making only a few small roles in Hollywood movies and a TV series.

He gained a small role in a kung-fu film by the name of The Big Boss which was to star one of Hong Kong's most popular Hong Kong actors, James Tien (actor)|James Tien. However, Bruce Lee's magnificent on-screen presence along with his amazing physical abilities led to Tien's character being killed off mid-way through the film, with Bruce Lee being billed as the lead. His electrifying performance led to the film becoming wildly popular not only in Hong Kong but also gaining distribution in the U.S. and Europe, something which was unheard of in Hong Kong cinema at the time. On the basis of this, he starred in several other Hong Kong films (Fists of Fury and Way of the Dragon), both of which were also immensely successful worldwide.

This international success did not go unnoticed by Hollywood. Wishing to bring Bruce Lee to a mainstream American audience, Warner Brothers launched the first-ever U.S. co-production with a Chinese film company, a Bruce Lee project called Enter the Dragon, made entirely in English. On its release, it became the most internationally successful Chinese film to that date, grossing around US$ 90 million around the globe. Unfortunately, the star Bruce Lee would die just three weeks before the film's release.

The Post Bruce-Lee Void

After the death of Bruce Lee, there was a large void in the market. Westerners, given their first taste of Kung Fu movies had a huge appetite for more and Hong Kong tried to provide. It seemed that anybody with any knowledge of Kung Fu and a surname which could be mistaken for Lee adopted the English forename Bruce and started making Kung-Fu films, including Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei (a.k.a. Dragon Lee) and Bruce Lai. Their Chinese screen names were also cheap Bruce Lee knock-off's. Sadly, many of those films were made only to make money off the name of the genuine Bruce Lee so had relatively poor production values.

A major "Bruceploitation" film was The Clones of Bruce Lee where a professor made three Bruce Lee clones using cells from Bruce Lee's body and trained them into martial artists to be sent out to fight crime. Another, by Robert Clouse took the footage from Bruce Lee's unfinished Game of Death and new footage featuring several Bruce Lee doubles to form a new film also called Game of Death.

The many Bruce Lee clones were lampooned by Sammo Hung in his 1978 film Enter the Fat Dragon. Hung's character idolised Bruce Lee and when he hears of a film being made with a Bruce Lee imposter, Sammo goes onto the set and uses his own Kung-Fu skills (with some of Bruce Lee's traits thrown in for humour) to beat up the Bruce Lee imposter!

Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan had worked as a stuntman on Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon. At one point in the filming of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee accidentally hit Jackie Chan in the face with a weapon. After apologising for this, he offered to use Jackie Chan for all of his following films. Sadly, Bruce Lee died before he could keep this promise.

However, in the void after Bruce Lee's death, Jackie Chan teamed up with Lo Wei, director of Bruce Lee's The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, to make several Kung Fu movies including a follow-up to Fist of Fury called New Fist of Fury. Unfortunately, Lo Wei was not a good director of Kung Fu movies and the resulting movies, lacking the electrifying fights and fight choreography of Bruce Lee, turned out to be of very low quality, much like many of the other post-Bruce Lee Kung Fu movies.

In 1978, Jackie Chan teamed up with then-action director Yuen Woo-Ping on his directorial debut, Drunken Master. The resulting blend of physical comedy and Kung Fu was a big hit with Hong Kong audiences, providing Chan with his first popular movie. His follow-up movie with director Yuen Woo-Ping|Yuen, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (also 1978) and his directorial debut, Young Master cemented his popularity with Hong Kong filmgoers.

Reinventing Action Cinema

By 1983, Jackie Chan had grown increasingly tired with the somewhat limited form of the straight Kung-Fu movie so tried to branch out into action films which, though they still used Kung Fu, were less limited in scope and in the types of plots they used. His first film in this vein, Project A, featured Kung Fu as well as huge stunts (at one point, Chan falls from the top of a clock tower) and Jackie Chan's usual style of humour. This new combination was an exciting prospect for Hong Kong filmgoers and the film eventually grossed over HK$19 million.

In 1986, John Woo made his film A Better Tomorrow, a gangster movie featuring expertly choreographed (and extremely violent) gunplay scenes but also taking time to explore the emotions of the people involved, and broke Hong Kong box office records. Not only did it become widely successful in Asia, but it helped reawaken interest in Hong Kong cinema in the West as well as defining a new vocabulary for worldwide action cinema. Action films could now be as visually stunning as they were violent. It also helped jump-start the career of star Chow Yun-Fat who had become known as Box Office Poison due to the poor performance of his previous films.

Following in the footsteps of A Better Tomorrow, many films explored similar territory using a similar visual style and always with Chinese sensibilities. The most notable among these are Ringo Lam's City on Fire (1987), John Woo's The Killer (movie)|The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992), all starring Chow Yun-Fat.

This new style of action film was noticed by a new generation of filmmakers in the U.S. including Quentin Tarantino, whose Reservoir Dogs drew inspiration from City on Fire, and Robert Rodriguez. This helped the new style to spread into mainstream U.S. action films such as The Matrix.

Also in 1986, Jackie Chan took Hong Kong cinema to new heights by making Police Story. While Chan's previous action films typically depended more on Kung Fu and Comedy than John Woo's highly stylized bullet-fests, there was still the trend towards bigger budgets. Where his previous Kung Fu films had been typically lower-budget affairs with Kung Fu fighters duelling in the countryside around Hong Kong, his newer movies called for a grander scale. In Police Story (movie)|Police Story, large parts of a shopping centre and a rural village were destroyed. In the sequel, Chan called for explosions on a scale similar to many Hollywood movies.

Exit of many Leading Figures

Due to the new-found international success of Hong Kong films during the 1980s and early 1990s and the quest for bigger budgets, many of the leading lights of Hong Kong cinema left for Hollywood with budgets and pay which could not be equalled by Hong Kong production companies.

John Woo left for Hollywood after his 1992 film Hard Boiled. In his 1997 film Face/Off, he brought his unique style to Hollywood. This effort was immensely popular with both critics and public alike (it grossed over US$240 million worldwide). Mission Impossible 2 grossed over US$560 million worldwide but was critically maligned. Apart from these two films, Woo has struggled to revisit his successes of the 1980s and early 1990s.

After 15 years of success in Hong Kong cinema and several attempts to crack the U.S. market, Jackie Chan's 1995 film Rumble in the Bronx finally brought him recognition in the U.S. Since then, he has made several extremely successful films for U.S. studios including Rush Hour (1998), Shanghai Noon (2000), Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights. Between his films for U.S. studios, he still makes films for Hong Kong studios, sometimes in English (Mr. Nice Guy and Who Am I?), often set in western countries like Australia or Holland, and sometimes in Cantonese (New Police Story). Because of his enormous U.S. popularity, these films are usually released in the U.S., a rarity for Hong Kong films, and generally attract respectable audiences.

Jet Li has, for the large part, ceased his Hong Kong output since 1998's Hitman (film)|Hitman and worked in Hollywood since. After a minor role in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), he has gone on to star in several Hollywood films which have performed respectably and made a name for him in American audiences. So far, he has returned to Chinese Cinema for only one film: Hero (film)|Hero.

Chow Yun-Fat has also moved to Hollywood. After his 1995 film Peace Hotel, he has made four films in Hollywood which have not seen as much success as Jet Li's: The Replacement Killers, The Corruptor, Anna and the King and Bulletproof Monk. He returned to China just for 1999's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Despite the loss of some of the most influential figures of Hong Kong cinema, Western interest in the past films of Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li, Jackie Chan and John Woo has increased notably with their citation as some of the leading influences on Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and the success of The Matrix (which had action choreographed by Yuen Woo-Ping). Additionally, Jackie Chan's success in Western films and continued role in Hong Kong cinema has vastly increased the audience for his Hong Kong films.

Modern Hong Kong Cinema

During the 1990s, the Hong Kong film industry underwent a significant decline, exacerbated by the Asian economic crisis which dried up traditional sources of film finance. Revenues generated by the Hong Kong motion picture industry halved during this period. Also Hollywood in the United States attracted popular movie figures such as John Woo, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat to make movies directly for the U.S. domestic market.

In an effort to halt the decline of the local industry, the Hong Kong Government in April 2003 introduced a Film Guarantee Fund as an incentive to local banks to become involved in the motion picture industry. The guarantee operates to secure a percentage of monies loaned by banks to film production companies. The Fund has received a mixed reception from industry participants, and less than enthusiastic reception from financial institutions who perceive investment in local films as high risk ventures with little collateral. Film guarantee legal documents commissioned by the Hong Kong Government in late April 2003 are based on Canadian documents, which have limited relevance to the local industry.

In the 2000s, there have been some bright spots, including hits such as Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer, which broke new ground in the use of special effects, and the Infernal Affairs trilogy.

See also: Hong Kong in films, Heroic bloodshed, Emperor Entertainment Group

Last Modified:   2005-03-07