Defining Narrative

 

It’s been a week since my last post, and having thought about what I have written and re-read my research thoroughly, I am happy to say that my focus for this piece has already shifted. Initially, I imagined my documentary would deal with the Hong Kong New Wave in a very educative way ; my intention was to use the footage along with a voice-over to convey essential information about the movement and produce a piece which would educate and create interest for this particular set of forgotten films. However, after writing my first block of research, it strikes me as evident that this would not have worked for the simple reason that simply describing is insufficient to spark interest. Having had sessions, in the context of PIC 2, with Simon Denison, it started dawning on me pretty quickly that taking a critical position towards the Hong Kong New Wave would prove essential to developing a point of view on the movement that could then spark interest towards it. And so, where to start, when the context is so vast? Having looked at the history of Hong Kong cinema and Hong Kong New Wave thoroughly, it appeared obvious to me that a number of angles were possible for me to explore. However, it is only once I started looking beyond what is traditionally defined as the New Wave that I understood which way I wanted to take my film… And this understanding came in the form of the most unexpected film, Mou Tun Fei’s Lost Souls.

Stills from Lost Souls

The history of Mou Tun Fei’s infamous flick is fascinating in itself. In 1980, Shaw Brothers were losing tremendous ground to Golden Harvest (who had produced Bruce Lee and Michael Hui’s film efforts) and Cinema City, and sought to renew its production by bringing in fresh blood. As I explained previously, part of their strategy was to tap into the new talents of the New Wave, but as of 1980, the New Wave was deeply anchored into the independent circuit and was not about to budge from there. And here comes Mou Tun Fei. He had been working for Shaw Brothers since 1977, and had been at the forefront of their horror and crime products, with pieces such as Bank Busters or The Teenager’s Nightmare. A director of some definite visual talent, Mou Tun Fei was also a bag of wind who claimed to have directed a hundred films in Taiwan and to have walked from Europe to Hong Kong after a three years’ break from film. So who better than him to direct a piece about the hardships and ordeals of illegal chinese immigrants into Hong Kong? Looking back, the answer is pretty clear : not Mou Tun Fei. It’s easy to imagine Runme Shaw giving the man the job, without knowing that he had in front of him the man who would later be responsible for one of the most exploitative films ever produced in Hong Kong : Men Behind the Sun. A sick mind, Mou Tun Fei is one of the few artists in Hong Kong film history to have been on the borderline of what is acceptable within Category III films ; Category III corresponding to a classification of films which are defined by their absolute lack of morals and their extreme subversion (and unsurprisingly, Tsui Hark’s Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind stands high on that list). The result is a bizarre film, obviously produced in the context of Shaw Brothers with the intentions of making it a highly politically charged piece. In the end, the politico-social aspect of Lost Souls is only an excuse to put a series of nameless characters through a series of brutal rapes and tortures that are as visceral and well-directed as they are utterly stupid. The film is a monument of gratuity, yet it remains carefully crafted, extremely tense in spite of its utter and sheer stupidity.

Stills from Men Behind the Sun

And so it was while watching this very efficient piece of exploitation film that I realised that what was at the centre of Hong Kong film preoccupations between 1978 and 1984 was politics. Of course, that result was obvious. What popularised Hong Kong television in the first place, during the golden age of TVB and RTHK between 1972 and 1978, was their highly politically and socially charged content. It was a welcome break from chivalry and kung fu stories that concerned the hongkies very little. With the Handover around the corner, Hong Kong people seemed to be going, mainly, for content which dealt with contemporary events, that seemed grounded in reality. This tendency eventually gave rise to films such as Nam Lai Choi’s Men From the Gutter, a classic crime film from 1983 which has remained in memories for its nervous and jarring direction style. Its content, however, while deeply rooted in social reality, is poor in political implications. While its portrait of Hong Kong society is crude, it remains a classic example of a standard crime movie : two cops chase a killer with a grudge against the triads. Yet, there is an entirely parallel movement to the New Wave, that emerged mainly within the studios of Golden Harvest, which saw the rise of a form of Hong Kong entertainment from which an enormous deal of subversion sprouted.

Men From the Gutter

This parallel wave is undefined in theoretical terms, however it nonetheless exists. The reason, perhaps, it is not recognized in its own right as a film movement just like the New Wave, is because it had less to do with directors sharing a vision of films than about social and political factors influencing directors from various studios and generations into exploring similar subjections with a similar subversive outlook. Between 1974 and 1985, both Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest proved themselves able as companies to explore highly entertaining facets of the film industry while delivering corrosive visions about a society everybody in Hong Kong thought was going to degenerate. Perhaps the most representative members of this parallel wave are the Hui Brothers ; three brothers, three comedians who became highly popular on television and brought the cantonese back into cantonese cinema the moment they made the transition to film in 1974. The fact that, in Hong Kong, they were both more famous and more popular than Bruce Lee speaks volumes! While their first film, Games Gamblers Play, was a fairly classical gambling movie, a sort of a comedical twist on George Roy Hill’s The Sting without the american director’s scenical genius, their third film, The Private Eyes made them absolutely legendary. As a matter of fact, critics now consider it to be one of the ten best chinese films ever directed, for a simple reason : for starters, it is absolutely hilarious and it is undoubtedly one of the funniest films directed in Hong Kong, but most importantly, it was one of the first cantonese movies to approach comedy in a highly socially conscious way. And while it was never as corrosive as their 1978 effort, The Contract, in which Michael Hui attempts to destroy the contract which binds him to a highly abusive TV company, it made history through its subversive approach of a genre that people watched especially in order to forget the very troubles that the Hui brothers humorously depicted.

Games Gamblers Play

The Private Eyes

The Contract

Bruce Lee’s death in 1973 and the splitting up of the Hui brothers after Security Unlimited in 1981 saw Golden Harvest’s loss of their two most popular figures. And this is how the parallel wave starts. In 1978, Yuen Woo-Ping’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master make Jackie Chan a superstar over night. In 1977, Sammo Hung, a veteran actor from Golden Harvest who, just like Jackie Chan and the rest of the members of their common troup, studied Peking Opera, directs his first film : The Iron-Fisted Monk. Parallel to that, veteran Shaw Brothers choregrapher and actor Liu Chia Liang begins his directing career and comes up with the mediocre Spiritual Boxer in 1975. He quickly fixes up and in 1978 directs The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. In 1979, he directs Dirty Ho. Finally, Jackie Chan directs his first real film in 1979, The Fearless Hyena, while Lau Kar Wing, Liu Chia Liang’s brothers, directs Odd Couple. And thus, a genre, at the crossroads of Bruce Lee and Michael Hui has been born : the Kung Fu Comedy. It is under this genre that this parallel wave excelled, and produced both their best and most corrosive works. While they seem devoid of political content at a glance, the very concept of Kung Fu comedy derives from an attitude which aims to deride traditional chinese culture (especially the mainlander one) and authority. It is particularly striking in Liu Chia Liang’s case. A true sifu (‘master’ in chinese), the son of a disciple of one of the disciples of Wong Fei Hung (one of the most popular characters in chinese culture), Liu Chia Liang started his career as an actor in films about Wong Fei Hung before joining Shaw Brothers in the sixties. He becomes a fixture there thanks to his choregraphic work on Chang Cheh’s epics, before he eventually has a fallout with the Ogre (Chang Cheh’s nickname in the industry) on account of the extreme violence of his films. Liu Chia Liang, who was raised in the martial arts world, disliked violence, as he saw his art as far more noble. Hence, he broke away from Chang Cheh and started directing in 1975. Yet, in 1976, he directs Challenge of the Masters, the first true Kung-Fu Comedy… In which he depicts Wong Fei Hung as a spoiled brat who is unable to fight or show discipline, a stark contrast with the wise, kind, polite and venerable old man that cantonese cinema had been portraying since 1949. Liu Chia Liang swiftly establishes a tradition in his films of disrespectful young men who must learn from their elders yet twist their teachings to survive with the times ; the tradition becomes contagious in 1978 when Yuen Woo-Ping directs Drunken Master in which he sacralizes drunken boxing, a martial discipline that is frowned upon because of its inherent immorality. And so, the directors of Kung Fu comedies began directing highly entertaining martial arts films with a twist, a complete lack of respect which turned into sheer subversion when China banned kung fu and wu xia films on the mainland ; a ban which was only lifted in the eighties… At which point sifu Liu Chia Liang had also become a leading Kung Fu comedy director in mainland China.

Challenge of the Masters

Drunken Master

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

But then again, perhaps the sheer genius of the genre was its ability to sell its audience subversion through entertainment. Because they are highly codified films, it is not difficult to understand their ideology after having seen only a few. The disrespectful, rude, insolent but ultimately virtuous little brat usually played by Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan or Gordon Liu represents a rebellious Hong Kong against a chinese society which seeks to take away their freedom. And the father figure, in those films, is generally unsympathetic ; it materializes itself either in the character of the father, or in the characrter of the master if the father doesn’t embody both functions. Regardless, the father figure in Kung Fu comedies always submits their disciple to highly sadistic training techniques, and seem to revel in watching their disciples suffer from their ordeal. But it is highly surprising when those codes rise from the filmography of a man like Liu Chia Liang, who himself taught martial arts and kung fu. It becomes even more interesting when one considers that Liu Chia Liang directed the last Kung Fu Comedy in existence ; Drunken Master 2 in 1994. The story goes that Jackie Chan produced the film with Liu Chia Liang in mind for directing. In the film, Jackie Chan reprises his role as Wong Fei Hung, although the story does not follow the first installment. Chan portrays a more stupid but less disrespectful Wong Fei Hung in this one, which does not stop the character from coming to blows with his father, brilliantly interpretated by Ti Lung. The film, interestingly, was shot in a very traditional way, very evocative of Liu Chia Liang’s Shaw Brothers period. But the most interesting aspect of this story is that Jackie Chan, who was producing the film, himself came to blows with Liu Chia Liang over artistic differences and ended up firing the old sifu! And thus, the tables were turned, the students kicked out their masters, and while this marked both the end of the Kung-Fu Comedy genre and of Liu Chia Liang’s career, it is an interesting parallel…

Drunken Master 2

So what does this tell us? That, essentially, Kung-Fu Comedy is about rebellion, and not just rebellion against one’s elders. It’s about rebellion against injustice, against rules, and against the traditions of old Hong Kong films… much like the New Wave. And why are Law Kar Wing, Liu Chia Liang, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan and Yuen Woo-Ping not considered members of the New Wave? Because the critics who defined the movement, in their pretentiousness, refused to accept that films produced in studios could showcase the same amount of rage and subversion as a film produced in the independent circuit. Yet, there is no doubt about it : those guys contributed to reshaping Hong Kong cinema just as much as the New Wave, if not more. Their contributions occured earlier, and with a much wider public resonance, and by the time Tsui Hark was getting the Film Workshop off the ground, Jackie Chan was breaking popular records with Police Story. So again, what does this tell us? Well, essentially, it only goes to show that the Hong Kong New Wave was only a facet of Hong Kong cinema between 1975 and 1985, a facet which came from a rich yet unhealthy social and political background. Subversion and rage in New Wave movies comes from the same context as the sneaky subversion and irreverence Sammo and his troop put in their movies : absolute fear that China was just around the corner. And, of course, who were the first to leave Hong Kong when the Handover was confirmed? John Woo was the first to leave for the USA, in 1992. Tsui Hark, Kirk Wong and Ringo Lam followed soon after. Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Woo-Ping all eventually pursued an american career, some more successfully than most.

Police Story

And so it seems to me that just plainly describing the New Wave without actually adressing the issue of the handover to China is simply missing the point of the entire subject. Various evidence shows us that Hong Kong cinema, over the seventies, not only became politically and socially aware, it politicized itself. And of course to us westerners this all appears as sheer entertainment but from a chinese perspective, is it even possible to disregard the subversion in making kung fu, one of the pillars of chinese culture, a thing of comedy? And in the same way, can we ignore that the New Wave itself found life when it started putting images on ills and fears which had Hong Kong in their grip? It’s simple to me : every angle of analysis leads back to the fear of the imminent and unescapable return to China. And if not, why did Kung-Fu Comedy die on the dawn of the Handover, never to return? Why did the film-makers who made Hong Kong cinema a thing of beauty all flee the soon-to-be-chinese british colony? And if not, then why virtually every Hong Kong film produced between 1975 and 1985 reflects this stark political reality, even the most exploitative ones like Mou Tun Fei’s Lost Souls? Cecille Tong’s China Behind is particularly eloquent. It ends where Mou Tun Fei’s film begins, when a group of chinese students born under the Cultural Revolution finally make their way into Hong Kong and leave China behind. But China was not behind, nor were its exactions (the Cultural Revolution is thought to have caused up to eight million deaths). In 1989, the images of the repression of the protests in Tianan’men Square put the fear of China back into the people of Hong Kong… Most likely with good reason.

China Behind (1974)

Images of the Cultural Revolution

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1126786/forgotten-stories-huge-escape-hong-kong
An interesting account of the migrations to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution

And just like that, my documentary has become orientated towards politics. Now, I cannot wait for us to have an idea seminar so that I can give shape to my idea, but the very thought of putting film history in context with political history sends chills down my spine. This could be pretty epic.

Click to access v29&30P293.pdf

A brief history of Hong Kong cinema, by Paul Fonoroff : a highly critical account of the history of Hong Kong film, yet fascinating nonetheless.

Reference list :

• Lost Souls, Mou Tun Fei, 1980 (Hong Kong)
• Bank Busters, Mou Tun Fei, 1978 (Hong Kong)
• The Criminals V – The Teenager’s Nightmare, Mou Tun Fei, 1977 (Hong Kong)
• Men Behind the Sun, Mou Tun Fei, 1987 (Hong Kong)
• Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind, Tsui Hark, 1980 (Hong Kong)
• Men From the Gutter, Nam Lai Choi, 1983 (Hong Kong)
• Games Gamblers Play, Michael Hui, 1974 (Hong Kong)
• The Sting, George Roy Hill, 1973 (USA)
• The Private Eyes, Michael Hui, 1976 (Hong Kong)
• The Contract, Michael Hui, 1978 (Hong Kong)
• Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, Yuen Woo-Ping, 1978 (Hong Kong)
• Drunken Master, Yuen Woo-Ping, 1978 (Hong Kong)
• The Iron-Fisted Monk, Sammo Hung, 1977 (Hong Kong)
• Spiritual Boxer, Liu Chia Liang, 1975 (Hong Kong)
• The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Liu Chia Liang, 1978 (Hong Kong)
• Dirty Ho, Liu Chia Liang, 1979 (Hong Kong)
• The Fearless Hyena, Jackie Chan, 1979 (Hong Kong)
• Odd Couple, Lau Kar Wing, 1979 (Hong Kong)
• Challenge of the Masters, Liu Chia Liang, 1976 (Hong Kong)
• Drunken Master 2, Liu Chia Liang, 1994 (Hong Kong)
• Police Story, Jackie Chan, 1985 (Hong Kong)
• China Behind, Cecille Tong, 1974 (Hong Kong)