2 results
10 - Food for Thought: Cannibalism in The Untold Story and Dumplings
- Edited by Gary Bettinson, Lancaster University, Daniel Martin, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
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- Book:
- Hong Kong Horror Cinema
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 28 April 2021
- Print publication:
- 23 January 2018, pp 165-184
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Summary
Food features prominently in Hong Kong cinema, from the infamous ‘Eat my rice’ scene in Woo's heroic bloodshed A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987) to special recipes of dueling restaurants in the Hui Brothers’ comedy Chicken and Duck Talk (1988). While in many genres, food brings people together, in Hong Kong horror films, food carries ominous overtones. Cannibalism serves as main course in Herman Yau's The Untold Story (aka Human Meat Buns) and Fruit Chan's Dumplings (the former drawn from a real case and the latter a short and feature). Both explore political and social underpinnings of their time. Untold (1993) is an excellent example of crisis cinema – low budget, high anxiety over Hong Kong's return to China. Dumplings (2004) addresses post-postmodern global fascination with youth culture at any cost. Each marks class distinctions and reflects food's cultural importance in Chinese society. Food for thought!
Directors Yau and Chan have much in common. Both have backgrounds as experienced cinematographers who became prominent directors, writing/co-writing their own movies. Each is associated with the independent film-making movement, due to their documentary-style shooting. Chan has used chiefly non-professionals while Yau had notably collaborated with Anthony Wong. Yau lent his hand to Category III films like Ebola Syndrome (1996) and Whispers and Moans (2007), and Category II films such as Taxi Hunter (1993) and From the Queen to the Chief Executive (2001) that emphasise class divides. Chan likewise addressed class in Made in Hong Kong (1997), Little Cheung (1999), Durian, Durian (2000) and Hollywood Hong Kong (2001). Both film-makers have developed ghost stories, with Yau directing six of the Troublesome Nights series and Chan making Finale in Blood (1993).
Yau and Chan share similar visions. They address social issues and economic inequities. Their ideologies are steeped in class consciousness, with underclass main characters, from abused prostitutes and illegal immigrants to underage, hence voiceless, criminals and labour-intensive workers that undergo escalating injustices. Even Yau's Category III movies have this subtext. These outcasts earn viewers’ sympathy, even, to a degree, Untold's insane serial killer and Dumplings’ freelance former abortionist. Yau avoids a distinctive visual style, instead allowing narrative and characters to move the film ahead, resulting in a quasi-documentary approach; Chan follows suit in his early films, but by Dumplings favours a voyeuristic look that prioritises formalistic style.
1 - ‘A Rose by Any Other Name’: Wong Tin-lam’s The Wild, Wild Rose as Melodrama Musical Noir Hybrid
- Edited by Esther C.M. Yau, The University of Hong Kong, Tony Williams, Southern Illinois University
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- Book:
- Hong Kong Neo-Noir
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 24 April 2021
- Print publication:
- 28 April 2017, pp 13-29
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Summary
Wong Tin-lam's The Wild, Wild Rose (aka Love of the Wild Rose), released into Hong Kong theatres on 5 October 1960, remains critically well received and popular today. Shu Kei describes it as ‘the most distinguished film among MP&GI's [Motion Pictures and General Investment Ltd] 200-odd library … arguably the most extraordinary Mandarin film of the 1960s’. Described as a noir musical, Rose may not be Hong Kong's first noir, but in its style and genre blending, it serves as the apotheosis of early Hong Kong noir, raising the bar for Hong Kong noirs/neo-noirs to come, anticipating standard mixed genres of future Hong Kong film, and creating urban visuals that comment on the Hong Kong of its day. While discussions continue as to whether noir is a genre or style, attuned audiences, academic and popular alike, know noir when seeing it, paradoxically and simultaneously drawn into and forbidden from its world. The widely recognised noir signatures – visual style (blackand-white photography, low-key lighting and shadow effects, low-angled, dutched and disorienting camerawork), downbeat, alienated characters, and cynical attitudes towards life – define a body of work, referenced by the historical period of distinctive output, from 1941 to 1953. With the Western and lush Hollywood musical, film noir may be a truly American nostalgic formation. Most of its screenwriters, the story material on which the movies are based, and its cinematographers are American-born, while some major directors – from Curtiz to Wilder – were émigrés to Hollywood. Hollywood noir style widely influenced cinema, from Melville's Le Samourai (1967) to Woo's Hard-Boiled (1992). Colour Hollywood productions like Polanski's Chinatown (1974) and Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997) are set in 1940s Los Angeles and are more realistic tonally than the earlier historical period. The corruption-oozing Chinatown, an origin story of contemporary Los Angeles development, serves as our consummate noir. Set in Los Angeles, Ridley Scott's cyberpunk Blade Runner (1982) offers up tech noir, set in the near future, its technological gadgetry and plotting reflecting a gritty realism rather than nostalgia.
Rose draws upon several period American noirs and tweaks them, synthesising noir style with melodrama and musical. In searches of international cinema, I’ve discovered no films combining musical, noir and melodrama in such a hybrid form.