World Cinema: The Hong Kong Film Industry

Santosh Sandhu discusses the Hong Kong Film Industry...

Hong Kong has a population of about 7 million people. Despite its small size, Hong Kong has been a major player in world cinema for many years. Up to the mid 1990s, Hong Kong was the world’s third largest film producer, making 300 films a year in the Cantonese language. Hong Kong only has a limited number of cinema screens and is therefore reliant on overseas revenue mainly from other parts of Asia.

Martial arts have existed for hundreds of years and form a strong part of Chinese culture and this is often reflected in Hong Kong films. Martial arts films thematically are the cinema of the underdog triumphing over corruption and oppression with the main emphasis being on action which can sometimes take up to half a film’s running time. The early martial arts films were based on traditional folk legends and featured known characters such as Fong Sai Yuk and Wong Fei Hung.

The early 1970s saw the rise of martial arts films as an international force. Up to this time they had largely been made by the Shaw Brothers studios at Clearwater Bay in Hong Kong. Shaw Brothers employed most of the local filmmaking talent and owned a chain of cinemas in South East Asia. Raymond Chow, an executive at Shaw Brothers eventually left to set up rival studio Golden Harvest. Golden Harvest’s first film was The Big Boss (1971) which starred Bruce Lee who would become the first internationally renowned martial arts star. Golden Harvest adopted the Hollywood business method of profit sharing to encourage Lee to work for them. After making three films in Hong Kong, Lee’s last completed film would be the most famous martial arts movie of all time the Golden Harvest/Warner Brothers co-production Enter the Dragon (1973).

In 1979 Golden Harvest signed Jackie Chan, a former stuntman who pioneered Kung fu comedy films. Heavily inspired by the early slapstick comedy of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, Chan was able to cross cultural boundaries with his willingness to do his own stunts and his well timed kung fu routines almost shot like dance sequences. After gaining prominence in period martial arts comedies such as Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978), Chan and his stunt team would perfect their craft in Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985) essentially bringing the genre up to date.

Conversely, Producer/Director Tsui Hark would stick to the period setting but combine the genre with supernatural elements for the visually astonishing Zu Warriors (1983). The film benefited greatly with special effects provided by a Hollywood team. Hark would build on this success by creating his own effects outfit and the supernatural genre would continue with Mr. Vampire (1985) and A Chinese Ghost Story(1987). Hark would also launch the career of Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China (1991) where Li would reprise the role of Wong Fei Hung.

Apart from its martial arts films, Hong Kong is also famous for its crime thrillers most notably the work of John Woo. A Better Tomorrow (1986), would see the rise of the ‘Heroic Bloodshed’ series of films so called for their heavily choreographed shootouts which would continue to please action junkies with The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992). Much more concerned with plot and characterization, Infernal Affairs (2002) about a cop working undercover in the triads and a triad posing as a cop would inspire the Oscar winning The Departed (2006).

Hong Kong was a British Colony which was handed back to China in 1997. China has the largest population in the world with over 1 billion people. Most films made in mainland China are in Mandarin. Partly due to the language difference, China has not opened up as a major market for Hong Kong films. Hong Kong is still treated like a separate entity and so its films are still subjected to censorship and quotas. Also much of the Chinese market is dominated by Hollywood blockbusters or ‘dapian’ which make up to 70 percent of the domestic market. Only big name Chinese directors are able to compete with Hollywood.

Like Hollywood, China also has a studio system which was established in 1949. These studios were state funded for many years. Due to state cut backs in 1996, studios have looked to international productions for finance ever since. Today, foreign films shot in China have to be co-produced with a studio and the state owned China Film Co-production Corporation (CFCC). For international filmmakers, the CFCC offers good locations, cheap labour, equipment hire and transportation. Quentin Tarantino’s kung fu inspired Kill Bill (2003) was shot in Shanghai for these reasons.

Certain Hollywood films now have a Chinese martial arts influence such as The Matrix (1999), which employed a Hong Kong stunt crew for its fight scenes. The Oscar winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) was a Chinese/American co-production utilizing an international cast and crew.

American studios such as Fox have also been involved in the distribution of Chinese films in Asia, including Hero (2002), which was marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster. Miramax handled the distribution of Hero in most western territories as it was responsible for much of the film’s 31 million dollar budget. Miramax also bought the rights to certain titles from the Shaw Brother’s film library and Golden Harvest sold many of its titles to Warner Brothers.

Sadly the Hong Kong film industry has suffered a decline in recent years with less than 100 films being produced per year. Domestic audiences now prefer Hollywood and rampant piracy has proved a deterrent for getting people into cinemas. Jackie Chan, Jet Li and John Woo are consistently working in Hollywood and filmmakers are now more likely to be looking to work with mainland China.

Related:

The Indian Film Industry
The French New Wave
The Rise and Fall of Italian Neo-realism

Santosh Sandhu graduated with a Masters degree in film from the University of Bedfordshire and wrote the short film 'The Volunteers'.

John Wayne: World War II Propagandist

Santosh Sandhu profiles the career of silver-screen legend John Wayne and examines the influence of World War II on his body of work...

John Wayne (1907-1979) was the very embodiment of everything America would like to be. Jingoistic, brave, forthright and a fierce defender of the American way of life. After shooting to fame playing supporting characters in B-Movie westerns, he was initially cast as a leading man in Stagecoach (1939) which would see the emergence of the screen persona he would inhabit for the rest of his career. This also signaled the beginning of a long lasting relationship between the actor and director John Ford. Often depicting an everyman oppressed by authority, Wayne would come into his own having to do what was right for himself and those depending on him.

Wayne would spend the war years making patriotic movies such as The Fighting Seabees (1944) and Back to Bataan (1945). Unlike some of his fellow actors who signed up for active service including John Ford who made the documentaries The Battle of Midway(1942) and December 7th(1943), Wayne never did fight in the war, having been refused due to his wife and children. Instead Wayne served his country via his movies in which he often played a similar character, mainly the typical American hero with a clear set of morals and democratic principles. His films would feature stirring music, dialogue and credit sequences that pretty much explained a film to the audience so they were in no doubt as to the ‘message’ of the film. John Wayne and the other Americans were portrayed as brave men doing what their country required of them regardless of the sacrifice.

Such patriotism was reminiscent of Wayne’s right wing political beliefs and his strong anti-communist sentiments. A fierce supporter of the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, Wayne managed not only to distance his former colleagues but also John Ford, who suggested greater diplomacy was required when dealing with members of the film community. Whilst Ford was also an anti-communist he strongly distrusted the tactics of McCarthy whose blacklisting resulted in the destruction of many lives and careers.

Ford’s westerns Stagecoach and The Searchers(1956) had originally been seen as racist and disrespectful to Native Americans who were portrayed as nothing more than blood thirsty savages. Later in his career Ford did attempt to reconcile this by making more liberal films such as Sergeant Rutledge(1960) about a black cavalry officer wrongly charged with rape and murder and Cheyenne Autumn(1964) about a journey made by a group of Indians to the land of their forefathers. Wayne however never did make a film which contradicted his original stance. He made crude comments about Native Americans and the black community and was against the civil rights movement. His directorial effort The Alamo(1960) was a thinly disguised attack on communism.

During the Vietnam War, Wayne thought of South Vietnam as a brave little country protecting itself against the evils of communism and it was America’s duty to intervene. Using the same storytelling techniques established in his World War II movies, Wayne made The Green Berets(1968) which promoted US involvement in the Vietnam war. The film featured a group of US soldiers trained to go on a dangerous mission with a doubting journalist soon converted to accept the nobility of this war effort. Wayne's friendship in the film with a Vietnamese boy laid on the sentimentality and manipulation. Wayne’s attitudes were therefore dismissed as severely right wing and out of touch.

The film was made with a total disregard to the civil rights movement and anti war protests which were so widespread in America at the time. It was obvious that Wayne deplored such anti-establishment sentiments and chose to disregard them entirely. His feeling that the American government should always be supported in whatever it does did not reflect the sentiments of the public. Whilst the film did make money at the time, today it is rightly regarded as an embarrassment due to its over simplification of a contentious issue. Wayne’s comments gave scant consideration to the napalming of innocent civilians and the drafting of young American soldiers mainly from ethnic minorities into a war they knew nothing about. Whilst John Ford only ever saw himself as a film director, Wayne often aspired to be something more.

Santosh Sandhu graduated with a Masters degree in film from the University of Bedfordshire and wrote the short film 'The Volunteers'.