How silent-movie comedians like Buster Keaton, and Mel Brooks, inspired comedy films of John Woo, including a Charlie Chaplin tribute, before his action career
- John Woo’s first films were comedies and the competition was intense. Weird characters acting out scenarios not too far-fetched were the key to success, he said
- He created a Chinese Charlie Chaplin in Laughing Times, and directed Tsui Hark in a 1984 film. Tsui then hired Woo for A Better Tomorrow; the rest is history
“One of Hong Kong’s latest and hottest show biz properties is a young director, John W.S. Woo,” wrote local critic Mel Tobias in 1977, in the Post book Memoirs of an Asian Moviegoer.
“Typical of the genre of young directors, John struck gold for [the] Golden Harvest [film studio] with Money Crazy (aka Pilferer’s Progress), a Cantonese comedy. Now he is walking tall and basking in the spotlight.”
Woo’s film, retitled Princess Chang Ping, was a conventional Cantonese opera movie and was static and stagy – it possessed nothing of his later kinetic style. But it proved a critical and commercial success for Golden Harvest, which consequently decided to capitalise on Woo’s new-found reputation and give him more work.
Cantonese opera films were a moribund genre, and it was thought that the success of Princess Chang Ping was a one-off.