Hong Kong movies? Kung Fu flicks? Contemporary Asian cinema? Whatever you choose to call the films made in the former English colony of Hong Kong over the last thirty odd years has a way of pinning down what you expect to get from watching them. A wide range of fans from obsessive, kung-fu wannabes, to culture crossing, adventure-loving movie goers, to post-structuralist film students and sinologists have all shared the pleasure of watching the big screen work of Jackie Chan, Wong Kar-wai, John Woo and Ann Hui.
Only recently have western critics caught on to what so many fans have known for decades and begun to write with any sustained energy on that wonderful and unique body of films known as Hong Kong Cinema. It seems that from the peripheries of Western pop cultural consciousness, Hong Kong movies have finally, unmistakably started to infiltrate the very heart of Western consumer culture.
In the bad old days B-movie "grindhouses" created something like a counter-cultural avant garde of Hong Kong film fans in the 70s and early 80s. Then film festivals and societies discovered there were large and enthusastic audiences for the Hong Kong New Wave. It wasn't long before Hollywood's hip directors-du-jour (Tony Scott, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, the the Wachowski brothers) found and flaunted new inspiration from the pace and style of 80s Hong Kong cinema in their 1990s pictures. Soon thereafter, North American and European marketing of HK films for Westerners flourished and Hollywood decided it was time to put Hong Kong stars in their own, American productions.
Success in the Western market, however, coincided with something close to collapse on home turf. The Hong Kong industry, with its studio-based model of production, is staring at a very real threat of
extinction at home in the face of Hollywood's marketing and lobbying juggernaut. U.S. films found a footing in Hong Kong when the local market was weakened by the pre-handover (1997) "grab the profit and
run" mentality, and a post-handover swamping of the local market by
bootleg home videos and VCDs.
Poster Shops in Mongkok
Despite its gory, exploitation-friendly book cover,(a concession to marketing pressures, perhaps?), Hollywood East is a serious invitation to enter the world of Hong Kong movies on its own terms, to learn about the social and cultural environment that produces them, and to get to know, as the subtitle says, "the people who make them".
Designed for neither the expert nor the novice (Hammond's first book Sex and Zen and a Bullet in
the Head served the latter), Hollywood East tugs the reader into the world of Hong Kong
movies, sometimes gently, sometimes with so much furious verbal enthusiasm that it can take your breath away, but always accompanied by a winking, affectionate sense of humour about its subject and
its readers' expectations.
The book might well have been titled The Hong Kong Movie Reader since it consists of a grab bag of essays by Hammond and a handful of other contributors. The kaleidescope approach provides a wide range of views on Hong Kong film, beginning with a delightful, spot-on opening chapter, "In Situ", that focuses on Hong Kong itself.
This opening section is full of indispensable information on the local movie theatre experience (in which "hordes of teens gurgle at Leon Lai in between mobile-phone jingles on opening night"), and the bookstores and poster shops in Mongkok lush with glossy and gaudy pop-movie ephemera. Hammond generously gives space here to the Hong Kong Film Archive, and explains its key role in sustaining the Hong Kong film community.
Devestatingly Haunted
The chapter "The Unexpected" is the first substantial discussion in English of the films of Milky Way Image. This production company, which is headed by Wai Ka-fai and Johnnie To, is leading the way in redefining the serious Hong Kong movie at the turn of the century. MWI has been turning out, with dizzying speed and consistent, breathtaking invention, some of the darkest, most beautiful, most devastatingly haunted movies (The Longest Nite, Expect the Unexpected, The Odd One Dies, Too Many Ways to Be Number One) that Hong Kong has seen.
Although the chapters on John Woo and Jet Li by other contributors don't quite sustain Hammond's high level of commentary, Hollywood East's glorious middle section, "The Chan Canon", more than makes up for it. Can there really be anything left to say about Jackie Chan and his movies, you wonder? Well, "The Chan Canon" reveals that the answer is Yes.
Hammond sets seven savvy western film critics loose on their favorite Chan films, resulting in a brilliant stoned tone poem on Dragons Forever by Chuck Stephens ("Overdressed in an undersized hand-me-down from some washed-up power-popper's steamer trunk...Urquidez strides about the film's showdown set") that mischievously floats the idea of the film's secret undercurrent of homoeroticism. Another high point is Dave Kehr's succinct juxtaposition of Mr. Canton and Lady Rose with Chan's career in what is take is a model of incisive film criticism.
Comic Genius
With further chapters on Shaw Brothers martial arts classics, sex and slasher films (written in such a sharply self-mocking tone that the films' poisonous contents are de-toxified), a fascinating behind-the-scenes primer on film stunts and stunt people by Jude Poyer, a rich if overly pessimistic survey of Wong Kar-wai's art-house films by Jeremy Hansen, and an impressively up-to-date internet resources appendix, Hollywood East seems determined to be cover all the bases.
With so much breadth of content it almost seems churlish to consider what might be missing in Hollywood East but for one thing Hong Kong comedy films could have been given a mite more attention here. No survey of the high points of Hong Kong film is complete without trying to come to grips with the admittedly difficult-to-describe postmodern comic genius of Stephen Chiau.
Other oversights in this otherwise comprehensive volume are the sophisticated middle-class comedies of UFO (United Filmmaker's Organisation); the subversive experimental comedies of an up-and-coming younger generation (Riley Yip's Love is Not a Game But a Joke; Eric Kot's First Love; The Litter
on the Breeze); and the thoughtful dramas that win so many local film awards (Ann Hui's Summer Snow and Eighteen Spring, Stanley Kwan's Hold You Tight and Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong).
While such omissions may rankle the afficionado they don't keep the book from accomplishing what it sets out to do, which is to sharpen the eye, open the heart and quicken the pulse of its readers to the breadth and richness of Hong Kong filmmaking. Hollywood East also gives comfort to those who fear for the future of Hong Kong cinema by celebrating that relentlessly creative energy that neither globalised entertainment complexes nor new political masters can possibly hope to tame.
Hollywood East is available at Amazon.com
Shelly Kraicer is a writer based in Toronto, Canada who specializes
in Chinese language film and maintains a comprehensive web site dedicated to Chinese film.
