Authors: David Bordwell,Kristin Thompson
B0041VYHGW EBOK (197 page)
12.57 Rapid movements into and out of the frame are characteristic of Hong Kong film style. In this shot from
Peking Opera Blues,
the sheriff and his captive rise into the foreground as the three heroines watch from the rear.
Seeing the success that modern cops-and-crooks films were then enjoying, Tsui partnered with John Woo on
A Better Tomorrow
(1986), a remake of a 1960s movie
(
12.58
).
Woo was something of an in-between figure, having been a successful studio comedy director during the 1970s. With Tsui as producer,
A Better Tomorrow
became Woo’s comeback effort, one of the most successful Hong Kong films of the 1980s and a star-making vehicle for the charismatic Chow Yun-fat. Tsui, Woo, and Chow teamed again for a sequel and for the film that made Woo famous in the West,
The Killer
(1989), a lush and baroque story of the unexpected alliance between a hitman and a detective
(
12.59
).
12.58 John Woo’s debt to the Western: a striking long shot as a hero walks to meet his fate in
A Better Tomorrow.
12.59 Cop and hitman as blood brothers in
The Killer.
Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early 1990s simmered with almost reckless energy. The rushed production schedules didn’t allow much time to prepare scripts, so the plots, borrowing freely from Chinese legend and Hollywood genres, tended to be less tightly unified than those in U.S. films. They avoided tight linkage of cause and effect in favor of a more casual, episodic construction—not, as in Italian Neorealism, to suggest the randomness of everyday life but rather to permit chases and fights to be inserted easily. While action sequences were meticulously choreographed, connecting scenes were often improvised and shot quickly. Similarly, the kung-fu films had often bounced between pathos and almost silly comedy, and this tendency to mix tones continued through the 1980s. In
A Better Tomorrow,
for example, Tsui appears in a slapstick interlude involving a cello. Again, because of rushed shooting, the plots often end abruptly, with a big action set-piece but little in the nature of a mood-setting epilogue. One of Tsui’s innovations was to provide more satisfying conclusions, as in the lilting railroad station finale of
Shanghai Blues.
CONNECT TO THE BLOG
Since one of David’s specialties is Hong Kong cinema, he often blogs on the subject. For a discussion of Edward Yang and Charles Wang in “Two Chinese men of the cinema,” see
www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=1097
. On
Ashes of Time,
see “Ashes to Ashes (Redux),” at
www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=3133
. For stylistic analysis of
City of Violence,
see “A glance at blows,” at
www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=3208
. On director Tsui Hark and his production work, see “Happy Birthday, Film Workshop,” at
www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=4210
.
At the level of visual style, Hong Kong directors brought the action film to a new pitch of excitement. Gunmen (and gunwomen) leaped and fired in slow motion, hovering in midair like 1970s swordfighters and kung-fu warriors. John Woo, who had been an assistant director for Chang Cheh, pushed such shots to extravagant limits. Directors also developed florid color designs, with rich reds, blues, and yellows glowing out of smoky nightclubs or narrow alleyways. Well into the 1990s, unrealistically tinted mood lighting was a trademark of Hong Kong cinema
(
12.60
).
Above all, everything was sacrificed to constant motion; even in dialogue scenes, the camera and the characters seldom stood still.
12.60 Stylized blocks of light for
The Longest Nite
(1998).
Aiming to energize the viewer, the new action directors built on the innovations of King Hu and his contemporaries. They developed a staccato cutting technique based on the tempo of martial-arts routines and Peking Opera displays, alternating rapid movement with sudden pauses. If shot composition was kept simple, an action could be cut to flow across shots very rapidly, while another cut could accentuate a moment of stillness
(
12.61
–
12.63
).
Most Hong Kong directors were unaware of the Soviet Montage movement, but in their efforts to arouse viewers kinesthetically through expressive movement and editing, they were reviving ideas of concern to 1920s filmmakers.
12.61 Crisp editing in
Yes, Madam!
In a shot only 7 frames long, Michele Yeoh swings swiftly …
12.62 … to knock the villain spinning (15 frames) …
12.63 … before she drops smoothly into a relaxed posture on the rail (17 frames).
The 1990s brought the golden age of Hong Kong action cinema to a close. Jackie Chan, John Woo, Chow Yun-fat, Sammo Hung, and action star Jet Li began working in Hollywood, with Yuen Wo-ping designing the action choreography for
The Matrix
(1999) and
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(2000). A recession after Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China depressed the local film industry. As Hollywood began imitating Hong Kong movies (as in
The Replacement Killers,
1998), local audiences developed a taste for U.S. films. At the same time, the art-cinema wing became more ambitious, and festivals rewarded the offbeat works of Wong Kar-wai (see the analysis of
Chungking Express,
pp. 417
–
422
). The action tradition was maintained by only a few directors such as Johnnie To, whose laconic film noir
The Mission
(1999) brought a leanness and pictorial abstraction to the gangster genre.
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