https://www.scmp.com/rss/1187/feed A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Paul began learning Mandarin while in high school, continuing his Chinese studies as an undergraduate at Brown University and Singapore's Nanyang University. After earning a Masters in Fine Arts in cinema at the University of Southern California, he obtained a grant to research Chinese cinema at Peking University from 1980-82. He moved to Hong Kong in 1983 and began writing for the South China Morning Post in 1988. A collection of his articles was published as At... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Despite the holiday never being invoked in the course of its 95 minutes, one would be hard-pressed to find a movie that better captures the Hong Kong celluloid aura of the Lunar New Year than this 1987 blockbuster. What director-scriptwriter Clifton Ko Chi-sum lacked in motion-picture technique was more than compensated for by an uncanny knack for finding humour in the protagonists’ materialism – and by extension Hong Kong’s – as well as the narrative’s ability to transform naked greed into an... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2131413/flashback-its-mad-mad-mad-world-1987-lunar-new?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2131413/flashback-its-mad-mad-mad-world-1987-lunar-new?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Feb 2018 13:01:19 +0000 The seismic change in the nature of commercial Hong Kong cinema and mainstream audience tastes during the past half-century is perhaps best illus­trated by comparing any recent blockbuster with The Love Eterne (1963). A box-office hit from Taipei to Singapore during both its original release and subse­quent revivals, the widescreen “Shawscope” production could never be made today, with its female-centric cast, Chinese operatic score and a pace too leisurely for viewers accus­tomed to... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2109772/flashback-love-eterne-1963-betty-loh-ti-ivy-ling?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2109772/flashback-love-eterne-1963-betty-loh-ti-ivy-ling?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Sep 2017 13:03:26 +0000 No appraisal of 1960s Cantonese cinema is complete without an examination of teen idols in general and Connie Chan Po-chu in particular. Just 13 years old in 1960, Chan appeared in more than 200 productions before the decade’s end, embracing every genre during the rise and fall of one of Cantonese celluloid’s golden ages. The Pregnant Maiden (1968) is one of her most representative works, a riotous farce that mesmerised Chan’s devotees across Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, but one so juvenile as... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2101394/flashback-pregnant-maiden-1968-sees-connie-chan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2101394/flashback-pregnant-maiden-1968-sees-connie-chan?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jul 2017 13:00:00 +0000 The eternal triangle so typically a feature of Cantonese drama consists, like its Hollywood counterpart, of a man torn between two women. But unlike American versions, the “other woman” is often not a home-wrecking mistress but a domineering mother. Such a triangle is on view in It Was a Cold Winter Night (1955), an all-star adaptation of a then-recent literary work by famed novelist Ba Jin, and an erudite example of Hong Kong cinema at its most highbrow. Writer-director Lee Sun-fung was no... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2097321/flashback-it-was-cold-winter-night-1955-ng-cho?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2097321/flashback-it-was-cold-winter-night-1955-ng-cho?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Jun 2017 13:01:45 +0000 Among the thousands of Chinese-language movies produced in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic during the turbulent 1970s, China Behind – completed in 1974 but not publicly screened till the 1980s – ranks as the decade’s most singular cinematic accomplishment. In terms of casting, technique and (most of all) subject matter, director Cecile Tang Shu-shuen created a work so outside the bounds of acceptable commercial and political norms that it was immediately banned in all three... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2087426/flashback-china-behind-cecile-tangs-orwellian?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2087426/flashback-china-behind-cecile-tangs-orwellian?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Apr 2017 13:03:16 +0000 Hailed upon its release as a new-wave twist on the traditional Cantonese horror picture, The Imp (1981) has both diminished and grown in the interceding decades. Director Dennis Yu Wan-kwong’s tale of unfolding terrors connected to an upcoming birth proved such a pervasive influence on the late-20th-century Hong Kong ghost genre that its power to appal has necessarily, though not entirely, receded. But the abatement in shock value has had the salutary effect of focusing attention on what was... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2078739/chilling-snapshot-long-gone-hong-kong-imp-film?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2078739/chilling-snapshot-long-gone-hong-kong-imp-film?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Mar 2017 13:01:07 +0000 With the success of La La Land heralding a 21st-century rebirth of the Hollywood musical, Les Belles strikes a relevant note as a lavish example of how Hong Kong emulated the genre more than a half-century ago. Shot using the then-novel technologies of Shawscope and Eastmancolor (as promi­nent­ly proclaimed in the original posters), the Shaw Brothers production is a star-laden, tune-filled spectacle that is the very defini­tion of Hong Kong cinema’s aspirations towards Hollywood-style... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2073032/flashback-les-belles-1961-linda-lin-dai-stars?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2073032/flashback-les-belles-1961-linda-lin-dai-stars?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Feb 2017 13:03:24 +0000 Silent cinema was an art form on the verge of extinction while, paradoxically, at the peak of its creativity when Warner Brothers bought the screen rights for the Oscar Wilde stage success Lady Windermere’s Fan. The works of Wilde, an author known for his witticisms, would seem too reliant on linguistic bravado to make good candidates for a medium bereft of recorded dialogue. Fortunately, the playwright’s lingual genius met its kindred spirit in the witty artistry of director Ernst Lubitsch,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2067194/flashback-lady-windermeres-fan-ernst-lubitschs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2067194/flashback-lady-windermeres-fan-ernst-lubitschs?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Feb 2017 13:02:58 +0000 The Lunar New Year tradition of family-friendly screen fare reached new screwball heights during Hong Kong’s last celluloid golden age with this 1992 farce. The meandering hodgepodge of a script, revolving around three brothers and their significant others, was transformed by director Clifton Ko Chi-sum and his super-stellar cast into a low-comedy classic that today serves as a time capsule of the crème de la crème of early 1990s cinema. Contemporary audiences responded by making this the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/article/1906440/film-review-alls-well-ends-well-lunar-new-year-screwball-classic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/article/1906440/film-review-alls-well-ends-well-lunar-new-year-screwball-classic?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 29 Jan 2016 03:30:45 +0000 The recent discovery of a print of Follow Your Dream, a Cantonese feature that premiered just weeks before the colony's invasion by Japanese forces in December 1941, is literally a dream come true for Hong Kong film buffs. Less than a handful of that year's nearly 100 local productions are available for viewing today, making this star-studded drama an important link to the city's cinematic past. The saga of Guangdong refugees trying to survive in a Hong Kong still at peace, director Lo Dun's... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1844260/film-appreciation-follow-your-dream-real-find-1941?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1844260/film-appreciation-follow-your-dream-real-find-1941?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 29 Jul 2015 15:17:58 +0000 Extremely personal without being autobiographical, Ah Ying (1983) is a defiantly uncommercial drama, which miraculously made it to the big screen during the waning years of Hong Kong's cinematic New Wave. In relating the neo-realistic tale of friendship between an aspiring filmmaker and a budding actress, director Allen Fong Yuk-ping refused to succumb to the narrative's potential for glossy romance. The end result was one of the era's most understated and emotionally subtle masterpieces — it... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1834113/film-appreciation-allen-fongs-subtle-masterpiece-ah-ying-one-ages?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1834113/film-appreciation-allen-fongs-subtle-masterpiece-ah-ying-one-ages?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 08 Jul 2015 13:15:30 +0000 It is rare for an old film to seem like a recently made work set in a past era, but such is the case with Queen of Temple Street. The dated hairstyles and gigantic cellphones mark it as 1990, but the milieu and relationships are so sharply etched that there is a timeless quality to what is possibly Hong Kong's saltiest mother-daughter tale. The pungency comes from the prostitutes who ply their trade in the small brothels lining the titular avenue. This is the world presided over by Hua (Sylvia... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1825143/film-appreciation-lawrence-laus-queen-temple-street-1990?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1825143/film-appreciation-lawrence-laus-queen-temple-street-1990?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:30:00 +0000 Cinematic self-censorship in the run-up to the 1997 handover was evident in the dearth of films daring to grapple with the issue. A hilarious exception was Her Fatal Ways (1990), a work that presciently, and entertainingly, highlighted the China-Hong Kong culture clash. Viewed again nearly two decades after the city's return to the motherland, the film's humour has lost none of its potency and contains as much if not greater resonance within the context of today's yellow umbrellas and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1814788/film-appreciation-alfred-cheungs-her-fatal-ways?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1814788/film-appreciation-alfred-cheungs-her-fatal-ways?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 03 Jun 2015 15:37:23 +0000 Hong Kong's once flourishing Cantonese-dialect film industry was in dire straits when The Youth (1969) was released. It was hoped this provocative exposé might turn the tide. The 1960s had begun with an annual output of more than 200 features, but that number would dwindle to zero by the early 1970s. Although The Youth did little to reverse the trend, it presents today's viewers with a vibrant snapshot of an industry fighting to remain relevant in the face of its base audience's defection to... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1809044/film-appreciation-chor-yuens-youth-1969-campy-verve-surreal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48-hours/article/1809044/film-appreciation-chor-yuens-youth-1969-campy-verve-surreal?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 May 2015 15:29:22 +0000 Five years after Hollywood had fully converted to "talkies", Shanghai cinema was still coming to grips with the new medium in hybrids like Song of China (1935). The ethical drama has a soundtrack containing music, effects and a theme song. But the language from the impressive roster of stars is done with facial expressions rather than words, the subtlety of some of the performances uniquely suiting the script's Confucian theme of filial piety. With its line-up of A-list names, both in front of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1786636/art-house-song-china-1935?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1786636/art-house-song-china-1935?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 May 2015 14:15:15 +0000 Hong Kong cinema's uniqueness is entertainingly displayed in The Rich House, one of just a half-dozen early 1940s local features to have survived into the 21st century. A true blending of East and West, with a central romance between a cafe singer and bohemian author that's more typical of Parisian garrets than Kowloon flats, this 1942 drama's distinctiveness is underlined by the kind of cosmopolitan ambience one associated at the time with Shanghai's Putonghua-dialect cinema rather than... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1758748/rich-house-1942-shows-hong-kong-cinemas-uniqueness?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1758748/rich-house-1942-shows-hong-kong-cinemas-uniqueness?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 08 Apr 2015 09:01:46 +0000 Part murder mystery, part marital farce, MGM's 1934 screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's bestselling detective novel is also the very definition of "screen chemistry". The reason can be summed up in four words: Nick and Nora Charles. Director W.S. Van Dyke and the married screenwriting team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich recognised the crimes propelling The Thin Man's plot were secondary to the give-and-take between the film's real crux, gentleman sleuth Nick and his wealthy but... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1746196/thin-man-early-mgm-feature-defines-screen-chemistry?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1746196/thin-man-early-mgm-feature-defines-screen-chemistry?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:07:25 +0000 The relationship between Broadway musicals and their Hollywood incarnations has often been out of step, no matter how well executed the choreography. Such is the case with Guys and Dolls (1955), the super-lavish, super-stellar version of a legendary Tony-award-winning show that boasted a spectacular 1,200-performance run earlier in the decade. The source material is by Damon Runyon, once renowned for his fanciful take on a New York underworld populated with rowdies whose rough exteriors conceal... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1709278/guys-and-dolls-classic-hollywood-fusion-stage-and-screen?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1709278/guys-and-dolls-classic-hollywood-fusion-stage-and-screen?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:14:55 +0000 An unexpected consequence of Hong Kong's 2003 Sars outbreak was a renewed interest in one of the oddest productions in the city's cinematic history. After nearly three decades of obscurity, director-writer Patrick Lung Kong's 1970 take on French writer-philosopher Albert Camus' The Plague suddenly attained a prescient relevance for its stylised visualisation of a metropolis in panic over a virulent foe. But that's just one of the factors that make Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow a truly unique... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1701623/film-appreciation-yesterday-today-tomorrow-hong-kong-original?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1701623/film-appreciation-yesterday-today-tomorrow-hong-kong-original?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Feb 2015 15:04:19 +0000 Completed in the late 1960s, but not widely distributed until the early '70s, The Arch ranks among Hong Kong's most unusual cinematic accomplishments of either decade. At a time when local films were pivoting towards macho martial arts epics, director-writer Cecille Tong Shu-shuen's debut feature bucked the trend so radically that more than 40 years later, it has retained a freshness lacking in all but a few of its mainstream contemporaries. On the surface, its Ming dynasty tale traverses the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1693933/ming-dynasty-drama-arch-classic-hong-kong-cinema?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1693933/ming-dynasty-drama-arch-classic-hong-kong-cinema?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 28 Jan 2015 15:42:10 +0000 The middle-class charm that Hong Kong cinema once possessed is on display in My Lucky Star (1963), one of the few black-and-white Shaw Brothers productions with a surviving print. The comedy represented the end of an era both thematically and technically, with the studio poised to shoot exclusively in colour and focus on more macho spectacles. Even more significantly, it was one of King Hu's final starring vehicles before he shifted into directing and became instrumental in establishing the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1675326/film-review-1963s-my-lucky-star-marked-end-era-shaw-brothers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1675326/film-review-1963s-my-lucky-star-marked-end-era-shaw-brothers?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:13:27 +0000 Cantonese-dialect cinema was descending towards oblivion when its fortunes were temporarily buoyed by the release of the martial arts epic Paragon of Sword & Knife in December 1967 and its "Concluding Episode" in September 1968. Of the 192 Cantonese dialect films premiering in 1967-68, more than 50 starred 21-year-old Connie Chan Po-chu, the actress who played Paragon of Sword & Knife's male hero and, with the exception of fellow idol Josephine Siao Fong-fong, was then the most potent box-office... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1627476/art-house-paragon-sword-knife-features-prolific-screen-legend-connie?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1627476/art-house-paragon-sword-knife-features-prolific-screen-legend-connie?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 29 Oct 2014 15:06:10 +0000 A cinematic side-effect of the centenary of the first world war has been a re-examination of war-themed film classics — some still famous, like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and others barely known to audiences even when they were new. Among the latter is 1932's Wooden Crosses, a grim French drama set during the conflict's early stages. Actually, anti-drama would be a more apt term, for director-writer Raymond Bernard did his utmost to remove conventional histrionics and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1605026/art-house-wooden-crosses-little-known-anti-war-masterpiece?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1605026/art-house-wooden-crosses-little-known-anti-war-masterpiece?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 01 Oct 2014 14:09:09 +0000 A ferocious competitor and the death of a stellar headliner helped turn The Lotus Lamp (1965) into one of its decade's most resilient blockbusters. Ironically, the potentially crippling challenges that enhanced the lavish epic by endowing it with a special dimension continue to weave a fascinating spell. The huangmei ("yellow plum") genre, a semi-operatic Putonghua-dialect costume saga, was at its peak when the Shaw Brothers announced a project that seemed certain to guarantee success. The... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1589255/art-house-lotus-lamps-box-office-success-mostly-due-death-star-lin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1589255/art-house-lotus-lamps-box-office-success-mostly-due-death-star-lin?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:30:47 +0000 One of Hollywood's last major silent spectacles returns to the city as a restored print that recreates the 1927 black-and-white original's musical score and colour tinting, along with an extra half-hour of footage which was excised before the film's general release. Provided with such a showcase, it is gratifying to discover that Wings lives up to its reputation. Winner of the first Academy Award for best picture and another for best engineering effects, the first world war-era aviation drama... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1583829/art-house-aerial-battles-1927s-wings-are-still-impressive?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1583829/art-house-aerial-battles-1927s-wings-are-still-impressive?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 03 Sep 2014 16:17:03 +0000 "The film's main character is a moon cake." That's the apt assessment by Festival Moon scriptwriter, Shen Ji, of his tale's chief dramatic ingredient. Under the skilled direction of Zhu Shilin, the delicacy at this 1953 movie's centre is a bittersweet confection divorced from its traditional cultural roots and transformed into a symbol of the corruption and inequality of Hong Kong's capitalistic system. The inaugural production of the left-wing Feng Huang studio, this classic of 1950s... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1572721/art-house-festival-moon-highlights-inequality-hong-kong-past-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1572721/art-house-festival-moon-highlights-inequality-hong-kong-past-and?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Aug 2014 17:11:59 +0000 Prior to the 1940s, Chinese celluloid featured numerous bad women. Usually, these were supporting characters — and if they were in leading roles, they'd be redeemed to a semblance of virtue by the final reel. The rare exceptions were the anti-heroines essayed by Bai Guang, an actress-singer who reached the pinnacle of Shanghai celebrity during the second world war and continued her upward spiral after moving to Hong Kong in 1949. Recruited by former mainland mogul S.K. Chang (aka Zhang Shankun)... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1562502/art-house-blood-will-tell-features-1940s-mainland-star-bai-guang-bad?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1562502/art-house-blood-will-tell-features-1940s-mainland-star-bai-guang-bad?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 30 Jul 2014 14:54:02 +0000 Defying the conventional image of a Hollywood screen goddess, Anna Magnani was 47 years old and an icon of Italian neo-realist cinema when she was tapped for her English-language debut in Daniel Mann's The Rose Tattoo (1955). In terms of physical attributes, she couldn't have been further from A-listers such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. And if the usual casting tradition had been followed, a "pretty" actress would have been "uglified" to play the role of an anything-but-glamorous... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1557173/art-house-neo-realist-icon-anna-magnani-shines-hollywoods-rose?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1557173/art-house-neo-realist-icon-anna-magnani-shines-hollywoods-rose?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Jul 2014 15:10:41 +0000 The titles are similar — An Autumn Afternoon; The End of Summer; Late Autumn; Early Spring; Early Summer — as are the motifs found in Yasujiro Ozu's oeuvre from the late 1940s until his death in 1963. Yet, like Monet's water lilies or Van Gogh's haystacks, there is brilliant variety in the artist's exploration of his subjects, and the results are mesmerising and eternally fresh. The first in Ozu's post-second world war "seasonal" family sagas, Late Spring is also considered by many aficionados... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1544274/art-house-yasujiro-ozus-late-spring-purest-distillation-his-style?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1544274/art-house-yasujiro-ozus-late-spring-purest-distillation-his-style?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:14:38 +0000 Not unlike James Dean himself, Giant (1956) is simultaneously subversive and thoroughly Hollywood. The sprawling 201-minute saga of Texas cattle and oil represents American-style filmmaking at its most epic — with the cinematography, panoramic vistas, and lavish sets being evidence of just what the studio system could achieve. Giant's marquee is also stellar. The chief reason for the movie's continued fame is its integral part in the Dean legend as the last of his three starring roles, released... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1529246/art-house-giant-shows-hollywood-studio-system-its-best?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1529246/art-house-giant-shows-hollywood-studio-system-its-best?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Jun 2014 14:49:35 +0000 As the colonial era reached its twilight in the 1950s, a spate of Hollywood films emerged that showed European-controlled African and Asian realms in an exotic, nostalgic light. British Africa in King Solomon's Mines (1950), French Polynesia in South Pacific (1958), and Hong Kong in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) were three prominent examples. But in terms of artistry, they are continents away from The River (1951), an independent production by Kenneth McEldowney shot on location in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1511246/art-house-river-based-memories-british-raj-1920s?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1511246/art-house-river-based-memories-british-raj-1920s?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 14 May 2014 15:14:17 +0000 THE REACTION OF OPENING NIGHT audiences is rarely an accurate gauge of a picture’s worth, particularly star-laden blockbusters with a notoriously partisan following. But this was hardly the case with the 1988 premiere of Gangs, a neo-realist work with a cast of newcomers that marked the feature debut of director Lawrence Lau Kwok-cheung. As the lights came on in the Ko Shan Theatre, then a screening venue for the Hong Kong International Film Festival, there was palpable excitement among the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1505846/art-house-1988s-gangs-started-mini-wave-neo-realist-youth-films?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1505846/art-house-1988s-gangs-started-mini-wave-neo-realist-youth-films?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 May 2014 14:49:34 +0000 Even during an era in which martial arts spectacles flooded the market, there was something unique about the way that The 14 Amazons (1972) took mainstream conventions to new heights and transformed them into something refreshingly modern. Director-writer Cheng Kang’s take on the legendary Song dynasty tale was both typical and atypical of the super-productions churned out by Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong’s largest film enterprise. Not for him the celluloid poetry of former studio colleague King Hu,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1499955/art-house-14-amazons?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1499955/art-house-14-amazons?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:40:30 +0000 Today's movie-goers, desensitised by three decades of Cantonese celluloid inundated with errant teen lasses, might find it difficult to imagine the original impact of Lonely Fifteen, the neorealist drama that opened the floodgates in 1982. Sure, there had been plenty of screen bad girls in the years preceding this New Wave classic, most famously the heroines and anti-heroines of Teddy Girls (1969). But the swinging '60s-style sex and drugs encountered by that earlier generation was laughably... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1482913/art-house-lonely-fifteen-started-trend-bad-girl-movies?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1482913/art-house-lonely-fifteen-started-trend-bad-girl-movies?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Apr 2014 14:39:17 +0000 During the week of Christmas 1983, Hong Kong aficionados of old Hollywood lore were delighted to see, among the holiday glitter, an iconic image of James Dean plastered over walls across town. The image was on posters for a rerelease of Nicholas Ray's classic 1955 drama, Rebel Without a Cause. The film was then nearly 30 years old, but it was still such a crowd-pleaser that it enjoyed occasional revivals in the city's major cinemas. Plenty of Hongkongers celebrated the New Year of 1984 by... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1459337/art-house-james-dean-all-his-glory-rebel-without-cause?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1459337/art-house-james-dean-all-his-glory-rebel-without-cause?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Apr 2014 14:44:15 +0000 On the eve of Japan's invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941, the local film industry was experiencing a golden age with more than 80 features released during the year's first 11 months. Less than a handful of these works from this era are still available for viewing today, with Roar of the People notable not only for the quality of its extant print but also as an excellent example of the kind of morale-boosting war propaganda permitted in the colony but banned in enemy-occupied regions within... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1422974/art-house-roar-people-looks-wartime-life-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1422974/art-house-roar-people-looks-wartime-life-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:26:08 +0000 In the history of Chinese cinema, few Hong Kong productions represented the hopes and dreams of mainland filmmakers more eloquently than Orphan Island Paradise. The classic film tells the grim story of the people of Shanghai as they fight invasion during the early stages of the Sino-Japanese war, when the foreign concessions administered by Western powers formed an "orphan island" still free of Tokyo's direct intervention. Yet such was the sensitivity of expressing overtly anti-Japanese... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1416683/art-house-hks-first-putonghua-feature-orphan-island-paradise?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1416683/art-house-hks-first-putonghua-feature-orphan-island-paradise?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 05 Feb 2014 14:26:31 +0000 Hong Kong cinema was facing huge challenges when the Shaw Brothers unspooled Double Bliss for Lunar New Year 1970. The debut of free-to-air TV just over two years earlier, and the temporary collapse of the Cantonese movie market, had made traditional holiday comedies box-office poison. These were major inducements for famed director Chun Kim to frenetically, often entertainingly, attempt to repackage the genre in ultra-modern garb. The result is a familiar tale of antagonistic fathers who... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1407768/art-house-double-bliss-celebrates-spirit-1971?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1407768/art-house-double-bliss-celebrates-spirit-1971?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 22 Jan 2014 15:00:30 +0000 The 2011 centenary of China's Xinhai Revolution, which ended millennia of imperial rule and ushered in the republican era, presented filmmakers with a revolutionary challenge: how to make the subject matter appealing to modern audiences while traversing complex ideological and historical terrain, yet steering clear of offending the mainland censors. Director Herman Yau Lai-to took up the challenge by attempting to subvert convention in his homage to Qiu Jin, a feminist rebel nicknamed The Woman... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1402347/art-house-feminist-revolution-woman-knight-mirror-lake?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1402347/art-house-feminist-revolution-woman-knight-mirror-lake?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:51:27 +0000 In light of Blackmail's pioneering status - not only as Alfred Hitchcock's first sync-sound production, but also Britain's first "talkie" - it is ironic that, more than 80 years later, the 1929 film's silent version is the one usually chosen for retrospective screenings. The "master of suspense" was always fascinated by new technologies, some of which, like sound, proved lasting, while others, such as the 3-D he used a quarter of a century later in Dial M for Murder (1954), were a passing... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1391095/arthouse-blackmail?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1391095/arthouse-blackmail?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 31 Dec 2013 19:13:31 +0000 Despite his reputation as "the most Japanese of all directors", Yasujiro Ozu's oeuvre has a universal quality that overcomes its cultural specificity. This was evident relatively early on in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941). Telling the tale of an elite Tokyo household beset by personal and financial problems, the script's underlying premise was partially based on American drama Over the Hill (first made as a silent film in 1920 and then a talkie in 1931). Not that there is... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1379855/art-house-brothers-and-sisters-toda-family?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1379855/art-house-brothers-and-sisters-toda-family?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 18 Dec 2013 13:25:25 +0000 There is a timelessness about Mr Hulot’s 1953 seaside escapades that makes it hard to believe the Frenchman’s adventures are already 60 years old. The first of four celluloid outings by Monsieur Hulot saw director-writer-star Jacques Tati creating a personage that rivalled Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp in his ability to make comedic gold out of simple situations. Not since Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) had silent picture techniques been so cleverly adapted for the talking screen. The emphasis... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1363016/art-house-jacques-tati-strikes-comedy-gold-mr-hulots-holiday?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1363016/art-house-jacques-tati-strikes-comedy-gold-mr-hulots-holiday?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:45:15 +0000 From the vantage point of nearly half a century, director and writer Jacques Demy's homage to Hollywood musicals today comes across as a time capsule of swinging '60s European pop culture. Ultra mod and très français, The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) uniquely combined New Wave aesthetics with a veneration for an earlier generation of American song-and-dance confections. In the process, Demy reinvented the genre on French soil or, more precisely, on the paving stones of the picturesque... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1345392/art-house-young-girls-rochefort-real-song-and-dance?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1345392/art-house-young-girls-rochefort-real-song-and-dance?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:39:00 +0000 Cinematic sublimity is an apt description for the works of Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963), from his initial hits in pre-second world war Tokyo until the end of his career some three decades later. Late Autumn (1960), the director's third-to-last opus, may be wintry within the context of his filmography's timeline, but it exudes the same timeless aura as other "seasonal" Ozu classics such as Late Spring (1949) and Early Summer (1951), along with the auteur's most internationally famous film, Tokyo... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1339802/art-house-late-autumn-example-japanese-director-yasujiro-ozus-genius?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1339802/art-house-late-autumn-example-japanese-director-yasujiro-ozus-genius?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 30 Oct 2013 14:41:46 +0000 Nothing fosters cinematic satire better than a repressive regime in the midst of tentative reform. Such a situation existed on the mainland prior to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, when gems such as The Black Cannon Incident (1985) and The Troubleshooters (1988) shone hilarious light on the changing social mores that were challenging a stagnant system. Some 20 years earlier, it was Communist Party of Czechoslovakia's leader Alexander Dubcek's attempts at liberalisation that fomented a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1329491/art-house-firemans-ball?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1329491/art-house-firemans-ball?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Oct 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Perhaps the best-kept secret about Hong Kong's film history is the existence of dialect industries beyond Cantonese and Putonghua ones. We're not talking about ancient history, but the 1950s to '60s, when the then-British colony's motion picture business catered to Taiwanese and Southeast Asian audiences with linguistic roots in northeastern Guangdong's Chaozhou (aka Teochew, or Chiuchow) region and southern Fujian's Xiamen (Amoy). Hundreds of Teochew (as the dialect is known among its overseas... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1324484/art-house-hidden-cinematic-history-dialect-films?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1324484/art-house-hidden-cinematic-history-dialect-films?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Oct 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Bruce Lee and Josephine Siao Fong-fong's appearances in An Orphan's Tragedy are undoubtedly today's chief selling points for this 1955 Cantonese adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. But beyond the adolescent presence of two future superstars, the drama has much to offer as a microcosm of Hong Kong's mid-1950s film world, and is also a demonstration of how foreign literature was adapted to suit its audience. Dickens' tale was familiar to local readers and cinemagoers, as David... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1309116/art-house-orphans-tragedy-takes-dickensian-twist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1309116/art-house-orphans-tragedy-takes-dickensian-twist?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 In a discussion of the influential trends in early post-second world war Cantonese cinema, it would be hard to come up with a better example than The Prodigal Son. On the surface, this 1952 work is a conventional all-star mainstream comedy-drama which follows the familiar plot line of a wastrel eventually getting his comeuppance. But in the hands of director-writer Ng Wui, the humour and pathos are underlined with progressive themes so skilfully presented as non-didactic entertainment, that the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1300646/art-house-prodigal-son-set-trend-postwar-cantonese-cinema?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1300646/art-house-prodigal-son-set-trend-postwar-cantonese-cinema?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Shaw Brothers, which for many years was Hong Kong's largest motion picture studio, saw little value in preserving its black-and-white library after making the transition to Eastman colour in the 1960s. As a result, when its catalogue of more than 700 feature films was digitalised in the new millennium, less than 10 were of monochrome classics. Back Door, an all-star tearjerker that swept the awards at the 7th Asian Film Festival in 1960, was one of the few to survive, making it a must-see for... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1298902/art-house-revisiting-back-door-all-star-tearjerker?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1298902/art-house-revisiting-back-door-all-star-tearjerker?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 28 Aug 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Taiwan's motion picture industry was in rapid decline three decades ago when a sad clown heralded a new phase in the island's cinematic history. The title character of The Sandwich Man Films produced in Taipei in the late 1970s had fallen into a rut, dominated by insipid romances with similar plots, and stars in sagas lacking a local flavour. The Sandwich Man Eschewing screen idols and tinseled gloss, three fledgling directors adapted a trio of tales narratively unconnected but thematically cut... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1297228/art-house-sandwich-man?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1297228/art-house-sandwich-man?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:00:00 +0000