Back to the beehive
ARE we developing a taste for retro? A film series of 1950s Cantonese melodramas attracted good audiences at Sheung Wan Civic Centre last September and two months later, the Swinging Sixties exhibition at the Arts Centre rekindled fond memories of The Beatles and beehive hairdos among the crowds of baby boomers (and their offspring). Oscar Ho Hing-kay, the centre's exhibition director, described the response as 'overwhelming. We had whole families turning up.' Coincidentally, Law Wai-ming, research officer at the Hong Kong Film Archive, was working on a programme of 1960s films at the time of the Arts Centre show. Young Beat A Go-Go, which opens at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre tomorrow, is devoted to '60s youth movies and comprises seven films which haven't been shown in Hong Kong 'for 25 years or so, apart from a few TV screenings,' Law says. Three of the films, Girls Are Flowers, Romance Of A Teenage Girl and Youth Love belong to the Archive. The Joys And Sorrow Of Youth was supplied by ATV and the remainder came from film companies.
The '60s was an exciting period in Hong Kong's history, especially for the young. 'This was the first generation of adolescents since the war, society was becoming affluent and unemployment was coming down. There was the chance to become rich,' Law says. Society was in a state of rapid change and the concept of Hong Kong consciousness, an identity which was distinct from that of 'Great China' first emerged during that decade. 'In the early '60s most people were still quite poor,' Ho says. 'Only those from rich families could afford to be Westernised. But by the end of the '60s, everything was more affordable, and it was no longer a sin to take on Western values.' However, while the young flirted with Western culture, eagerly absorbing its fashions and music (Chinese teenage pop idols such as Joe Jr and Teddy Robin and The Playboys sang in English), film-makers were anxious about the switch from traditional thought. 'Cantonese movies at that time were not just about entertainment but also took on the responsibility of presenting good values,' Law says.
Chor Yuen's 1969 classic Joys And Sorrow Of Youth, which traces the relationships of a class of undergraduates all fumbling to find their way in a new society, opens with a stark statement: 'This is a university campus, a murder has been committed and the offender is one of of the students.' A tangled tragedy follows as the characters of these wide-eyed students unfold: the son of a rich man whose family becomes bankrupt, the student who works with the triads pushing heroin to pay for school fees, and the campus beauty who would rather sell her body than look for a career.
But of course the baddies are counterbalanced by the goodies: the Christian librarian who wants to save souls and the 'innocents' who are guilty of little more than lurking without intent.
Law considers Joys And Sorrow Of Youth to be 'a masterpiece of its time' and the film evocatively captures the mood of a volatile era, and even steals a car race straight from the 1955 movie Rebel Without A Cause. But then the film-makers of the '60s were heavily influenced by Western directors, Law says. 'Sometimes they would copy the ideology or the story, or even both.' Teddy Girl, made in 1969 by director Long Gong and a box office success at the time, is a film imbued with more hatred and teenage angst than the campus tragedy, says Law. It is a serious piece about a couple of former prostitutes who break out of reform school to wreak revenge on their abusers. The print of Teddy Girl comes from San Francisco (there are no copies in Hong Kong) and will be screened here after the Rotterdam Film Festival where it was included as part of a tribute to actress Josephine Siu Fong-fong. The teen queen also stars in Romance Of A Teenage Girl and Youth Love, two other films in the programme.
Ho describes the film as a landmark in the history of Cantonese cinema. 'Before Teddy Girl, a lot of Cantonese movies were quite silly but this had a social message. It was very didactic and, of course, now appears quite conservative, but such film-makers did set out to influence behaviour.' Freddie Wong, general manager of business development at Edko Films, also appreciates the film. 'Long Gong's movies were considered very daring at that time in terms of theme and film language. They may appear dated today but it is always interesting to look back at what was produced almost 30 years ago.' The Urban Council and the Hong Kong Film Archive are about to plan their next programme. And the theme? 'Well, something from the '70s is distinctly possible,' Law says.