East Asia studies: history, culture, and politics

Hong Kong Cinema

Hollywood is known throughout the world for its motion pictures, a major cultural artifact both representing and explaining American culture to the rest of the world. Over the years, the size of the American industry has diminished as fewer and fewer films are produced each year. Hollywood is also not the largest film industry in the world in any case, for that would be in India, sometimes referred to as Bollywood. Another major are of production can be found in Hong Kong, and while the vast majority of films produced in Hong Kong never show in the United States, or at best show only in limited venues, the industry has become a major influence in Hollywood over the past decade or so, in part based on the success of Hong Kong films throughout Asia, a market the U.S. would like to get into more deeply; and in part because a number of Hong Kong filmmakers have ene lured to the West and now work in Hollywood itself, among them actors Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat and director Ang Lee.

Among the Hong Kong-influenced films made in recent years are a number of films based on Hong Kong features, such as the Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006). The Departed was based on a 2002 film called Mou gaan dou. Some films have broken new ground with Hong Kong filmmakers in the U.S., such as Face Off (John Woo, 1997), a film that brought Woo's characteristic blend of action and violence to an American production. A different sort of success was achieved by the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000), a Hong Kong-produced film that found a surprisingly large audience in the United States.

Hong Kong movies differ from other Asian movies in a number of respects. For one thing, since Hong Kong was a British protectorate for most of the twentieth century, it is common for these films to have both English and Chinese soundtracks and often to mix the two languages in the dialogue, and when there are sub-titles, there are usually dual sets of sub-titles in both English and one or more Chinese dialects. Still, the success of some Hong Kong films in the U.S. has been surprising given that American audiences tend to shy away from films with sub-titles and even dubbed films in many cases, though the success of certain genre films like the Godzilla pictures from Japan did pave the way for certain Hong Kong releases. The American audience exists in a mass but also exists in various smaller groupings sufficient to support some foreign films, and the success for Hong Kong can be traced back to the 1970s when kung fu movies made their way to Times Square and then the rest of the country, fostering a martial arts craze that persists to this day. On film, kung fu would become as widespread as it did through the films of Bruce Lee, truly a legend in his own time, a legend fueled by his untimely death after making only a few films. The appeal of martial arts in the U.S. can be seen in the fact that a television show called Kung Fu, a Western with a Chinese character, went on the air and lasted for three years.

The television show and movies like Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), the latter starring Bruce Lee, married the martial arts with certain Confucian values, following the Chinese tradition expressed in various Hong Kong films as well. To a degree, such films met with approval in the U.S. because they fit with the American image of the lone hero with a code of honor, the sort of hero populating the Western for decades, though the setting here was less familiar. The appeal of this sort of hero is not surprising, but the fact that Americans have taken to that image as they have and do so even for some Chinese actors is more surprising. As one observer in Hong Kong writes,

Hong Kong film industry is popular all over the world and particularly in East and South-East Asia. Hong Kong movie products can be viewed in theaters and video shelves in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China and South Korea. In Japan too, Hong Kong cinema has exerted its influence. Even in the West, Hong Kong cinema has penetrated and influenced Western film-makers. ("Hong Kong Cinema" para. 2)

Sek Kei writes about the industry in Hong Kong and environs including South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, and the four countries are identified as the region's four "economic dragons," based on their rapid economic and social development. Of the four, only Hong Kong has a strong film industry and has been able to present a concrete and comprehensive case of prosperity and achievement:

In Singapore, a film industry is nonexistent and its entertainment market is dominated by Hong Kong and Western products. In Taiwan, the local film industry went through an unprecedented period of malaise in the '80s, although it did produce a number of distinguished works. The malaise in the Taiwanese film industry was contrary to the vibrant developments in the broader economic and sociopolitical fields. Its entertainment market was dominated by Hong Kong and Western products. (Kei para. 2)

Kei finds three main reasons why the industry has thrived in Hong Kong. First, he notes that Hong Kong is a small city with a dense population, and the film industry has served a need as mass entertainment not greatly affected by competition from the TV and video industries, allowing "the Hong Kong film industry to preserve advantageous conditions for competitive preeminence in the East Asian and Southeast Asian markets" (Kei para. 4). Second, Hong Kong alone among the four countries had a high degree of freedom of expression with little interference from the authorities, especially during the period of British rule. Even after the return of Hong Kong to China, China has maintained a hands-off policy to a greater degree than is true for other Chinese territories, perhaps fearful of damaging the economic success Hong Kong has achieved. Third, the industry has both Chinese and international qualities and aspires to be both East and West, as noted from its time as a British protectorate:

This is its attraction. Because the territory has a large degree of freedom, it is the richest and most dynamic production center of Chinese cinema, including the industry in the Mainland. Hong Kong movies are the most representative examples of Chinese cinema as inheritors and carriers of the special characteristics of Chinese culture and popular folklore, as well as of Chinese people absorbing Western influence on the road to modernization. In this respect, the Chinese-style kung fu genre and Western-style gangster thrillers are typical and successful examples. (Kei para. 6)

These particular genres mirror American Westerns and American gangster films, though perhaps with an energy all their own. This is one reason why they have had a particular appeal for Western audiences.