88-478: Alex Law Kai-Yui (Chinese: 羅啟銳 ; 19 August 1952 – 2 July 2022) was a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer. Law was educated at the Diocesan Boys' School, Hong Kong , matriculating in 1971. Law collaborated with Mabel Cheung on many of her most famous films, including the "Migration Trilogy": Illegal Immigrant (1985), An Autumn's Tale (1987) and Eight Taels of Gold (1989). He wrote
176-524: A "Mandarin-only" policy and was hostile to Cantonese filmmaking in China. It also banned the wildly popular wuxia genre of martial arts swordplay and fantasy, accusing it of promoting superstition and violent anarchy. Cantonese film and wuxia film remained popular despite government hostility, and the British colony of Hong Kong became a place where both of these trends could be freely served. Tianyi soon moved
264-446: A big star, aimed at "hit" status, will typically cost around US$ 5 million. A low-budget feature can go well below US$ 1 million. Occasional blockbuster projects by the very biggest stars ( Jackie Chan or Stephen Chow , for example) or international co-productions ("crossovers") aimed at the global market, can go as high as US$ 20 million or more, but these are rare exceptions. Hong Kong productions can nevertheless achieve
352-661: A greater degree of political and economic freedom than mainland China and Taiwan , and developed into a filmmaking hub for the Chinese-speaking world (including its worldwide diaspora ). For decades, Hong Kong was the third largest motion picture industry in the world following US cinema and Indian cinema , and the second largest exporter. Despite an industry crisis starting in the mid-1990s and Hong Kong's transfer to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997, Hong Kong film has retained much of its distinctive identity and continues to play
440-434: A lesser-known performer. Shooting without sound also contributed to an improvisatory filmmaking approach. Movies often went into production without finished scripts, with scenes and dialogue concocted on the set; especially low-budget productions on tight schedules might even have actors mouth silently or simply count numbers, with actual dialogue created only in the editing process. A trend towards sync sound filming grew in
528-571: A level of gloss and lavishness greater than these numbers might suggest, given factors such as lower wages and value of the Hong Kong dollar. Films in the Cantonese language have been made in Hong Kong since the beginning. In the 1950s, it also became a center of Mandarin-language filmmaking after the Communist takeover in mainland China and the entertainment industry shifted from Shanghai to Hong Kong. From
616-476: A major launching pad for movie stardom, through acting courses and widely watched drama, comedy and variety series offered by the two major stations . Possibly even more important is the overlap with the Cantonese pop music industry . Many, if not most, movie stars have recording sidelines, and vice versa; this has been a key marketing strategy in an entertainment industry where American-style, multimedia advertising campaigns have until recently been little used. In
704-498: A market to Hong Kong film as the local one; in the early 1990s the once-robust Taiwanese film industry came close to extinction under the onslaught of Hong Kong imports. They even found a foothold in Japan, with its own highly developed and well-funded cinema and strong taste for American movies; Jackie Chan and Leslie Cheung were some of the stars who became very popular there. Almost accidentally, Hong Kong also reached further into
792-458: A particular speciality of MP&GI/Cathay in entries such as Mambo Girl (1957) and The Wild, Wild Rose (1960). In 1960s, the Motion Picture and General Investments Limited produced a special set of romantic movies which was called Southern and Northern. The first one is The Greatest Civil Wall On Earth (1961), the second one is The Greatest Wedding On Earth (1962) and the third one
880-449: A penchant for stylisation and a disregard for Western standards of realism . This, combined with a fast and loose approach to the filmmaking process, contributes to the energy and surreal imagination that foreign audiences note in Hong Kong cinema. In 2010, the box office gross in Hong Kong was HK$ 1.339 billion and in 2011 it was HK$ 1.379 billion. There were 56 Hong Kong films and 220 foreign films released in 2011. In 2017,
968-581: A prominent part on the world cinema stage. In the West, Hong Kong's vigorous pop cinema (especially Hong Kong action cinema ) has long had a strong cult following , which is now a part of the cultural mainstream, widely available and imitated. Economically, the film industry together with the value added of cultural and creative industries represents 5 per cent of Hong Kong's economy . Unlike many film industries, Hong Kong has enjoyed little or no direct government support, through either subsidies or import quotas. It
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#17332026633211056-560: A revival and continued to be a very popular form of entertainment, both on stage and television. In the 21st century, Chinese opera is seldom publicly staged except in formal Chinese opera houses. It may also be presented during the lunar seventh month Chinese Ghost Festival in Asia as a form of entertainment to the spirits and audience. More than thirty famous pieces of Kunqu opera continue to be performed today, including The Peony Pavilion , The Peach Blossom Fan , and adaptions of Journey to
1144-504: A showcase for performers from their pioneering television station TVB . The return of Cantonese really took off with the comedies of former TVB stars the Hui Brothers (actor-director-screenwriter Michael Hui , actor-singer Sam Hui and actor Ricky Hui ). The rationale behind the move to Cantonese was clear in the trailer for the brothers' Games Gamblers Play (1974): "Films by devoted young people with you in mind." This move back to
1232-466: A thousand years, reaching its mature form in the 13th century, during the Song dynasty (960–1279 AD). Early forms of Chinese theater are simple; however, over time, various art forms such as music, song and dance, martial arts, acrobatics, costume and make-up art, as well as literary art forms were incorporated to form traditional Chinese opera. Performers had to practice for many years to gain an understanding of
1320-476: A tiger that killed his father. In The Dancing Singing Woman (踏謡娘), which relates the story of a wife battered by her drunken husband, the song and dance drama was initially performed by a man dressed as a woman. The stories told of in these song-and-dance dramas are simple, but they are thought to be the earliest pieces of musical theatre in China, and the precursors to the more sophisticated later forms of Chinese opera. These forms of early drama were popular in
1408-548: A woman performer under the alias Song Liling and enters a 20-year relationship with French civil servant René Gallimard. The latter is unaware that female roles in Peking opera are actually played by men due to women being barred from the stage. An update in January 2022 for the game Genshin Impact includes a story quest that features a musical number from the character Yun Jin that is in
1496-506: Is The Greatest Love Affair On Earth (1964). This set of movies was partly spoken in Cantonese and partly spoken in Mandarin. The set of movies portrayed differences between Northern and Southern China; in addition to the language differences, the movies also depicted cultural aspects such as weddings and food. The movies' main theme was a kind of cultural integration between North and South. In
1584-442: Is a thoroughly commercial cinema: highly corporate, concentrating on crowd-pleasing genres like comedy and action, and relying heavily on formulas , sequels and remakes . Hong Kong film derives a number of elements from Hollywood, such as certain genre parameters, a "thrill-a-minute" philosophy and fast pacing and film editing. But the borrowings are filtered through elements from traditional Chinese drama and art , particularly
1672-410: Is divided into recitative and Beijing colloquial speech, the former employed by serious characters and the latter by young females and clowns. Character roles are strictly defined, and each character have their own elaborate make-up design. The traditional repertoire of Beijing opera includes more than 1,000 works, mostly taken from historical novels about political and military struggles. At the turn of
1760-675: Is the Canjun Opera (參軍戲, or Adjutant Play) which originated from the Later Zhao Dynasty (319–351 AD). In its early form, it was a simple comic drama involving only two performers, where a corrupt officer, Canjun or the adjutant , was ridiculed by a jester named Grey Hawk (蒼鶻). The characters in Canjun Opera are thought to be the forerunners of the fixed role categories of later Chinese opera, particularly of its comic chou (丑) characters. Various song and dance dramas developed during
1848-568: The China Sun Motion Picture Company . In 1924, they moved their operation to the Mainland after government red tape blocked their plans to build a studio. With the popularity of talkies in the early 1930s, the problem of China's various spoken dialects had to be grappled with. Hong Kong was a major center for Cantonese , one of the most widely spoken, and political factors on the Mainland provided other opportunities. In 1932,
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#17332026633211936-762: The Shaw brothers , who formed the Tianyi Film Company , teamed up with Cantonese opera singer Sit Gok-Sin [ zh ; 薛覺先 ] to make the first Cantonese talkie, White Gold Dragon [ zh ] , in Shanghai. This film proved to be very successful, and in 1934, they established a branch of the Tianyi Studio in Kowloon to make Cantonese films. The government of the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party wanted to enforce
2024-647: The Six Dynasties period. During the Northern Qi Dynasty, a masked dance called the Big Face (大面, which can mean "mask", alternatively daimian 代面, and it was also called The King of Lanling, 蘭陵王), was created in honour of Gao Changgong who went into battle wearing a mask. Another was called Botou (撥頭, also 缽頭), a masked dance drama from the Western Regions that tells the story of a grieving son who sought
2112-531: The Song dynasty (960–1279) and Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Acts based on rhyming schemes and innovations such as specialized roles like Dan (旦, dàn, female), Sheng (生, shēng, male), Hua (花, huā, painted-face) and Chou (丑, chŏu, clown) were introduced into the opera. Although actors in theatrical performances of the Song Dynasty strictly adhered to speaking in Classical Chinese onstage, during
2200-606: The Tang dynasty where they further developed. For example, by the end of the Tang Dynasty the Canjun Opera had evolved into a performance with more complex plot and dramatic twists, and it involved at least four performers. The early form of Chinese theatre became more organized in the Tang dynasty with Emperor Xuanzong (712–755), who founded the " Pear Garden " (梨园/梨園; líyuán), the first academy of music to train musicians, dancers and actors. The performers formed what may be considered
2288-538: The costume film and especially comedy. Violence also grew more intense and graphic, particularly at the instigation of martial arts filmmakers. Director Lung Kong blended these trends into the social-issue dramas which he had already made his speciality with late 1960s Cantonese classics like The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967) and Teddy Girls (1969). In the 1970s, he began directing in Mandarin and brought exploitation elements to serious films about subjects like prostitution ( The Call Girls and Lina ),
2376-652: The 1930s. Major studios that thrived in this period were Grandview, Universal, and Nanyang (which later became the Shaw Brothers Studio that would have an enduring influence on Chinese film). Another important factor in the 1930s was the second Sino-Japanese War . "National defense" films—patriotic war stories about Chinese resisting the Japanese invasion—became one of Hong Kong's major genres; notable titles included Kwan Man Ching's Lifeline (1935), Chiu Shu Sun's Hand to Hand Combat (1937) and Situ Huimin 's March of
2464-586: The 1940s, theater was well established in the Communist-controlled areas. In the early years of the People's Republic of China, development of Peking opera was encouraged; many new operas on historical and modern themes were written, and earlier operas continued to be performed. As a popular art form, opera has usually been the first of the arts to reflect changes in Chinese policy. In the mid-1950s, for example, it
2552-602: The 1960s to mid-1970s, Mandarin film productions became dominant, especially those made by the Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong. There was also a short-lived period whereby Hokkien films were produced in Hong Kong, and there were also films made in the Teochew dialect . Cantonese films made a comeback in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, films have been made mostly in Cantonese. For decades, films were typically shot silent , with dialogue and all other sound dubbed afterwards. In
2640-534: The 20th century, Chinese students returning from abroad began to experiment with Western plays. Following the May Fourth Movement of 1919, a number of Western plays were staged in China, and Chinese playwrights began to imitate this form. The most notable of the new-style playwrights was Cao Yu (b. 1910). His major works— Thunderstorm , Sunrise , Wilderness , and Peking Man —written between 1934 and 1940, have been widely read in China. The Republican Era saw
2728-491: The British authorities passed a law in 1963 requiring the subtitling of all films in English, supposedly to enable a watch on political content. And that making a virtue of necessity, studios included Chinese subtitles as well, enabling easier access to their movies for speakers of other dialects. Subtitling facilitated the movies' popularity in the West. During this period, Cantonese opera on film dominated. The top stars were
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2816-436: The British returned in 1945. A more important move by the Japanese may have been to melt down many of Hong Kong's pre-war films to extract their silver nitrate for military use. Postwar Hong Kong cinema, like postwar Hong Kong industries in general, was catalysed by the continuing influx of capital and talents from Mainland China. The Hong Kong population in 1940 was around 1 million and rose to around 3.9 million in 1967;
2904-830: The Chinese diaspora. Its popularity declined sharply in the second half of the 20th century as a result of both political and market factors. Language policies discouraging topolects in Taiwan and Singapore, official hostility against rural religious festivals in China, and de-Sinicization in Taiwan have all been blamed for the decline of various forms in different times, but overall the two major culprits were Cultural Revolution — which saw traditional culture systematically erased, innumerable theatre professionals viciously persecuted, and younger generation raised with far lesser exposure to Chinese opera – and modernization, with its immense social impact and imported values that Chinese opera has largely failed to counter. The total number of regional genres
2992-453: The Dragon (a.k.a. The Return of the Dragon , 1972), each of which broke Hong Kong box office records. Bruce Lee appeared with minor Hollywood actors in the larger budget Enter the Dragon (1973), a co-production with Warner Bros. Lee's death under mysterious circumstances made him a cult hero. Lee played a key role in opening foreign markets to Hong Kong films. Lee's films, enjoyed throughout
3080-718: The Fire Formation (1970) (Logan, 1995). Fantasy wuxia (swordplay) serials with special effects drawn on the film by hand, such as The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute (1965) starring teen idol Connie Chan Po-chu in the lead male role, were also popular, as were contemporary melodramas of home and family life, including the dramatisation of sibling rivalries in Our Sister Hedy (1957) starring Julie Yeh Feng . In Mandarin production, Shaw Brothers and Motion Picture and General Investments Limited (MP&GI, later renamed Cathay) were
3168-581: The Hui Brothers, and allowed them greater creative latitude than was traditional. California-born, Bruce Lee only found minor roles in U.S. films and television at first, as foreign actors were often criticized and not widely accepted by the audience during the 1970s in North America. Bruce expressed that the true orientals were not shown, especially in Hollywood, and most audiences still viewed Asian people as stereotypes (e.g. with flat eyes and pigtails). Moreover,
3256-572: The Ming and early Qing dynasties was Kunqu , which originated in the Wu cultural area . A famous work in Kunqu is The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu . Kunqu later evolved into a longer form of play called chuanqi , which became one of the five melodies that made up Sichuan opera . Currently Chinese operas continue to exist in 368 different forms, the best known being Beijing opera , which assumed its present form in
3344-599: The Partisans (1938). The genre and the film industry were further boosted by emigre film artists and companies when Shanghai was taken by the Japanese in 1937. This of course came to an end when Hong Kong itself fell to the Japanese in December 1941. But unlike on the Mainland, the occupiers were not able to put together a collaborationist film industry. They managed to complete just one propaganda movie, The Attack on Hong Kong (1942; a.k.a. The Day of England's Collapse ) before
3432-591: The Pipa which became highly popular, and became a model for Ming dynasty drama as it was the favorite opera of the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang . The presentation at this point resembled the Chinese opera of today, except that the librettos were then very long. The operatic artists were required to be skilled in many fields; according to Recollections of Tao An (陶庵夢憶) by Zhang Dai , performers had to learn how to play various musical instruments, singing and dancing before they were taught acting. The dominant form of
3520-527: The Red Lotus (1965), King Hu 's Come Drink with Me (1966) and Dragon Inn (1967, made in Taiwan; a.k.a. Dragon Gate Inn ), and Chang Cheh 's Tiger Boy (1966), The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and Golden Swallow (1968). Mandarin-dialect film in general and the Shaw Brothers studio in particular began the 1970s in apparent positions of unassailable strength. Cantonese cinema virtually vanished in
3608-504: The Third World, were often taken as symbolising the rebellious pride of insurgent Asia. Meanwhile, the explosions of Cantonese and kung fu and the success of Golden Harvest created more space for independent producers and production companies. The era of the studio juggernauts was past. The Shaws nevertheless continued film production until 1985 before turning entirely to television. The rapidly growing permissiveness in film content that
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3696-538: The West , Romance of the Three Kingdoms . In 2001, Kunqu was recognized as Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) Face paint plays a significant role in portraying the internal complexities of the performer's character with hundreds of combinations of colours and patterns. Below are some general meanings which may be further focused on extremely specific details depending on
3784-733: The West, building upon the attention gained during the 1970s kung fu craze. Availability in Chinatown theatres and video shops allowed the movies to be discovered by Western film cultists attracted by their "exotic" qualities and excesses. An emergence into the wider popular culture gradually followed over the coming years. The trailblazer was production company Cinema City , founded in 1980 by comedians Karl Maka , Raymond Wong and Dean Shek . It specialised in contemporary comedy and action, slickly produced according to explicitly prescribed commercial formulas. The lavish, effects-filled spy spoof Aces Go Places (1982) and its numerous sequels epitomised
3872-553: The Yuan Dynasty actors speaking or performing lyrics in the vernacular tongue became popular on stage. In the Yuan poetic drama, only one person sang for all of the four acts, but in the poetic dramas that developed from Nanxi during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), all the characters were able to sing and perform. Playwright Gao Ming late in the Yuan dynasty wrote an opera called Tale of
3960-572: The actors with sound, often waiting for vocal cues or physical signals such as the stomp of a foot. Traditionally, musicians often performed from memory – a feat made even more impressive considering pieces or sections of compositions were subject to infinite variations and often repeated. The orchestra utilized a pentatonic scale until a 7-note scale was introduced by Mongolia during the Yuan Dynasty . The two extra notes functioned similarly to accidentals within western notation . The instruments in
4048-442: The atomic bomb ( Hiroshima 28 ) and the fragility of civilised society ( Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1970), which portrayed a plague-decimated, near-future Hong Kong). The brief career of Tang Shu Shuen , the territory's first noted woman director, produced two films, The Arch (1968) and China Behind (1974), that were trailblazers for a local, socially critical art cinema . They are also widely considered forerunners of
4136-613: The beginning of the Cultural Revolution . During the Cultural Revolution, most opera troupes were disbanded, performers and scriptwriters were persecuted, and all operas were banned except the eight "model operas" that had been sanctioned by Jiang Qing and her associates. Western-style plays were condemned as "dead drama" and "poisonous weeds", and were not performed. After the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976, Beijing Opera enjoyed
4224-529: The bifurcation of the industry into two parallel cinemas, one in Mandarin, the dominant dialect of the Mainland emigres, and one in Cantonese , the dialect of most Hong Kong natives. The distinction between the two languages is in sound. During the silent film age the written language was Chinese and was known to all, no matter the language spoken. Subtitles allow both markets access to films. Mandarin movies sometimes had much higher budgets and more lavish production. Reasons included their enormous export market and
4312-462: The box office gross was HK$ 1.85 billion compared with HK$ 1.95 billion in 2016. 331 films were released in 2017, dropped from 348 the year before. According to Paul McDonald, a star system emerged in Hollywood as talent scouts, coaches, and publicists were involved with finding performers and making them into stars. In the vertically integrated Hollywood film industry of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, these responsibilities were all undertaken by
4400-610: The current commercially troubled climate, the casting of young Cantopop idols (such as Ekin Cheng and the Twins ) to attract the all-important youth audience is endemic. In the small and tightly knit industry, actors (as well as other personnel, such as directors) are kept very busy. During previous boom periods, the number of movies made by a successful figure in a single year could routinely reach double digits. Films are typically low-budget when compared with American films . A major release with
4488-400: The development of early films was tightly bound to Chinese opera , for centuries the dominant form of dramatic entertainment. Opera scenes were the source for what are generally credited as the first movies made in Hong Kong, two 1909 short comedies entitled Stealing a Roasted Duck and Right a Wrong with Earthenware Dish . The director was stage actor and director Liang Shaobo. The producer
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#17332026633214576-695: The directors usually got him to do something just to be exotic. When Golden Harvest's The Big Boss (a.k.a. The Fists of Fury , 1971) came into theatres, it jump-started Lee's career into stardom and made martial arts and kung fu a global trend. In 1976, Shaw Brothers made a series of true crime films. The first, The Criminals , took in HK$ 838,067, ranking at #33 in the Hong Kong box office for that year. Following its success, Shaw Brothers made The Criminals 2 – Homicides that same year, followed by three more films ( The Criminals 3 – Arson , The Criminals 4 – Assault and The Criminals 5 – The Teenager's Nightmare )
4664-467: The early 1980s, but has been relatively rare onscreen since. In 1970, former Shaw Brothers executives Raymond Chow and Leonard Ho left to form their own studio, Golden Harvest . The upstart's more flexible and less tightfisted approach to the business outmaneuvered the Shaws' old-style studio. Chow and Ho landed contracts with rising young performers who had fresh ideas for the industry, like Bruce Lee and
4752-400: The entire film production operation from Shanghai to Hong Kong and reorganised Tianyi into Nanyang ( 南洋 ) Productions. The name 粵語長片 ( pinyin : Yuèyǔ cháng piàn ; Jyutping : jyut6 jyu5 coeng4 pin3*2 ) soon became the standard name for black and white Cantonese movies. Filmed Cantonese operas proved even more successful than wuxia and constituted the leading genre of
4840-709: The expertise and capital of the Shanghai filmmakers. For decades to come, Cantonese films, though sometimes more numerous, were relegated to second-tier status. Most of the films reviewed by the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration come with subtitles, although there is no law requiring them. According to Shu Kei (also known as Kenneth Ip), the reason for the inclusion of English subtitles must have been to target overseas audiences, while Chinese subtitles were added to reach those who could read Chinese, but could not understand Cantonese. The books City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema (1999) and "Yang, 2003" falsely claim that
4928-459: The face of Mandarin studios and Cantonese television, which became available to the general population in 1967; in 1972 no films in the local dialect were made. The Shaws saw their longtime rival Cathay ceasing film production, leaving themselves the only megastudio. The martial arts subgenre of the kung fu movie exploded into popularity internationally, with the Shaws driving and dominating the wave. But changes were beginning that would greatly alter
5016-432: The facial location of the colour. The musical components of Chinese opera are created as an inseparable entity from voice and dance/movement. Both the musicians and the actors contribute to composing musical accompaniment. This collaborative process is reflected within the production by the immaculate synchronicity between the actors' movements and the sounds of the orchestra. The musicians are required to flawlessly support
5104-524: The female duo of Yam Kim Fai and Pak Suet Sin (Yam–Pak for short). Yam specialised in male scholar roles to Pak's female leads. They made over fifty films together, The Purple Hairpin (1959) being one of the most enduringly popular (Teo, 1997). Low-budget martial arts films were also popular. A series of roughly 100 kung fu movies starring Kwan Tak Hing as historical folk hero Wong Fei Hung were made, starting with The True Story of Wong Fei Hung (1949) and ending with Wong Fei Hung Bravely Crushing
5192-420: The first forays into up-to-date special effects technology, sprang up quickly. To this surface dazzle, the new cinema added an eclectic mixing and matching of genres, and a penchant for pushing the boundaries of sensationalistic content. Slapstick comedy, sex, the supernatural, and above all action (of both the martial arts and cops-and-criminals varieties) ruled, occasionally all in the same film. Some of
5280-528: The first known opera troupe in China, and they performed mostly for the emperors' personal pleasure. To this day operatic professionals are still referred to as "Disciples of the Pear Garden" (梨园弟子 / 梨園弟子, líyuán dìzi). By the Song Dynasty, Canjun Opera had become a performance that involved singing and dancing, and led to the development of Zaju (雜劇). Forms such as the Zaju and Nanxi (南戏) further matured in
5368-582: The following year. The first movie in The Criminals series included three true stories: The Human Torsos , The Stuntmen, and Valley of the Hanged ; each story was filmed by a different director. Valley of the Hanged told the story of a triple murder in Hong Kong, as well as a story about an unfaithful wife humiliating her husband. The Shaw Brothers' films attracted audiences with bizarre true stories featuring erotic and violent scenes. Their films also portrayed
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#17332026633215456-684: The genre. Historical costume epics often overlapped with the Huángméidiào , such as in The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959). (Both of the above examples were directed by Shaw's star director, Li Han Hsiang ). Romantic melodramas such as Red Bloom in the Snow (1956), Love Without End (1961), The Blue and the Black (1964) and adaptations of novels by Chiung Yao were popular. So were Hollywood-style musicals , which were
5544-406: The hectic and low-budget industry, this method was faster and more cost-efficient than recording live sound, particularly when using performers from different dialect regions; it also helped facilitate dubbing into other languages for the vital export market (for example, Standard Mandarin for mainland China and Taiwan). Many busy stars would not even record their own dialogue, but would be dubbed by
5632-606: The iconic films during this period include The Killer (1989), by John Woo , which is archetypal of the heroic bloodshed genre. During this period, the Hong Kong industry was one of the few in the world that thrived in the face of the increasing global dominance of Hollywood. Indeed, it came to exert a comparable dominance in its own region of the world. The regional audience had always been vital, but now more than ever Hong Kong product filled theatres and video shelves in places like Thailand , Singapore , Malaysia , Indonesia and South Korea . Taiwan became at least as important
5720-402: The industry by the end of the decade. Paradoxically, television would soon contribute to the revival of Cantonese in a movement towards more down-to-earth movies about modern Hong Kong life and average people. The first spark was the ensemble comedy The House of 72 Tenants , the only Cantonese film made in 1973, a resounding hit. It was based on a well-known play and produced by the Shaws as
5808-573: The last major milestone of the decade, the so-called Hong Kong New Wave that would come from outside the traditional studio hierarchy and point to new possibilities for the industry. The 1980s and early 1990s saw seeds planted in the 1970s come to full flower: the triumph of Cantonese, the birth of a new and modern cinema, superpower status in the East Asian market, and the turning of the West's attention to Hong Kong film. A cinema of greater technical polish and more sophisticated visual style, including
5896-571: The late 1990s and this method is now the norm, partly because of a widespread public association with higher quality cinema. During its early history, Hong Kong's cinema played second fiddle to that of the mainland , particularly the city of Shanghai, which was then the movie capital of the Chinese-speaking world. Very little of this work is extant: one count finds only four films remaining out of over 500 produced in Hong Kong before World War II . Detailed accounts of this period therefore have inherent limitations and uncertainties. As in most of China,
5984-510: The local audience for Hong Kong cinema paid off immediately. Games Gamblers Play initially made US$ 1.4 million at the Hong Kong box office, becoming the highest-grossing film up to that point. The Hui movies also broke ground by satirising the modern reality of an ascendant middle class, whose long work hours and dreams of material success were transforming the colony into a modern industrial and corporate giant. Cantonese comedy thrived and Cantonese production skyrocketed; Mandarin hung on into
6072-445: The mid-19th century and was extremely popular in the latter part of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). In Beijing opera, traditional Chinese string and percussion instruments provide a strong rhythmic accompaniment to the acting. The acting is based on allusion: gestures, footwork, and other body movements express such actions as riding a horse, rowing a boat, or opening a door. Spoken dialogue
6160-435: The much-imitated "Cinema City style". Chinese opera Traditional Chinese opera ( traditional Chinese : 戲曲 ; simplified Chinese : 戏曲 ; pinyin : xìqǔ ; Jyutping : hei3 kuk1 ), or Xiqu , is a form of musical theatre in China with roots going back to the early periods in China. It is an amalgamation of various art forms that existed in ancient China, and evolved gradually over more than
6248-436: The music and topolect ; the stories are often shared and borrowed. With few exceptions (such as revolutionary operas and to some extent Shanghai operas ) the vast majority of Chinese operas (including Taiwanese operas ) are set in China before the 17th century, whether they are traditional or newly written. For centuries, Chinese opera was the main form of entertainment for both urban and rural residents in China as well as
6336-478: The orchestra were divided into two categories: Traditional Chinese string instruments used in Chinese Opera include: Traditional Chinese percussion instruments used in Chinese Opera include: Traditional Chinese woodwind instruments used in Chinese Opera include: The Peking opera subgenre is the focal point of the 1988 play M. Butterfly , in which a spy for the Chinese government disguises himself as
6424-458: The ordinary aspects of Hong Kongers' lives, such as playing mahjong, a popular form of gambling. By the end of the 1970s, Golden Harvest was the top studio, signing with Jackie Chan, the kung fu comedy actor-filmmaker who would spend the next 20 years as Asia's biggest box office draw. Raymond Chow built upon Lee's success with The Big Boss (a.k.a. Fists of Fury , 1971), Fist of Fury (a.k.a. The Chinese Connection , 1972) and The Way of
6512-664: The population increased around 2.9 million during this period. This became a flood with the 1946 resumption of the Chinese Civil War (which had been on hold during the fight against Japan) and then the 1949 Communist victory. These events definitively shifted the center of Chinese-language cinema to Hong Kong. The colony also did big business exporting films to Southeast Asian countries (especially but not exclusively due to their large Chinese expatriate communities) and to Chinatowns in Western countries. The postwar era also cemented
6600-460: The revolutionary energy of the current sociopolitical climate. This operatic style built its foundation from the folk traditions of the rural community while also becoming influenced by European music. Opera may be used as commentaries on political affairs, and in November 1965, the attack on Beijing deputy mayor Wu Han and his historical play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office as anti- Mao , signaled
6688-464: The rise of Yue opera and all female Yue Opera troupes in Shanghai and Zhejiang. A woman-centric form, with all female casts and majority female audience members, plots were often love stories. Its rise was related to the changing place of women in society. In the 1930s, theatrical productions performed by traveling Red Army cultural troupes in Communist-controlled areas were consciously used to promote party goals and political philosophy. By
6776-592: The roles. Exaggerated features and colors made it easier for the audience to identify the roles portrayed. There are over a hundred regional branches of traditional Chinese opera today. In the 20th century, the Peking opera emerged in popularity and has come to known as the "national theatre" of China, but other genres like Yue opera , Cantonese opera , Yu opera , kunqu , qinqiang , Huangmei opera , pingju , and Sichuan opera are also performed regularly before dedicated fans. Their differences are mainly found in
6864-428: The screenplay for Cheung's The Soong Sisters (1997). This article about a Hong Kong film director is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Cinema of Hong Kong The cinema of Hong Kong ( Chinese : 香港電影 ) is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese-language cinema, alongside the cinema of China and the cinema of Taiwan . As a former Crown colony , Hong Kong had
6952-496: The second half of the 1960s, the Shaws inaugurated a new generation of more intense, less fantastical wuxia films with glossier production values, acrobatic moves and stronger violence. The trend was inspired by the popularity of imported samurai movies from Japan, as well as by the loss of movie audiences to television. This marked the crucial turn of the industry from a female-centric genre system to an action movie orientation. Key trendsetters included Xu Zenghong's Temple of
7040-490: The studios themselves. The studios made the stars and, due to notoriously restrictive terms imposed by exclusive services contracts, the studios also owned the stars. As is common in commercial cinema, the industry's heart is a highly developed star system . In earlier days, beloved performers from the Chinese opera stage often brought their audiences with them to the screen. For the past three or four decades, television has been
7128-518: The style of Chinese opera The Divine Damsel of Devastation , which went viral as it was the first time many people around the world have heard Chinese opera. Even Yang Yang, the Chinese voice of Yun Jin , was surprised about it. In the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once , one of Evelyn's multiverse counterparts became a prodigious Chinese opera singer after being blinded in a childhood accident. Evelyn assimilates this version's abilities to improve her self-confidence and breath control during
7216-408: The top studios by the 1960s, and bitter rivals. The Shaws gained the upper hand in 1964 after the death in a plane crash of MP&GI founder and head Loke Wan Tho . The renamed Cathay faltered, ceasing film production in 1970 (Yang, 2003). A musical genre called Huángméidiào ( 黃梅調 ) was derived from Chinese opera ; the Shaws' record-breaking hit The Love Eterne (1963) remains the classic of
7304-402: Was a theatrical colleague of Liang Shaobo's who would become known as the "Father of Hong Kong Cinema". In another borrowing from opera, Lai played the role of wife himself. His brother played the role of husband, and his wife a supporting role as a maid, making her the first Chinese woman to act in a Chinese film, a milestone delayed by longstanding taboos regarding female performers. Zhuangzhi
7392-578: Was an American, Benjamin Brodsky (sometimes transliterated 'Polaski'), one of a number of Westerners who helped jumpstart Chinese film through their efforts to crack China's vast potential market. Credit for the first Hong Kong feature film is usually given to Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (1913), which also took its story from the opera stage, was helmed by a stage director and featured Brodsky's involvement. Director Lai Man-Wai (Li Ming Wei or Li Minwei in Mandarin )
7480-464: Was determined to be more than 350 in 1957, but in the 21st century the Chinese government could only identify 162 forms for its intangible cultural heritage list, with many of them in immediate danger of disappearing. For young people, Chinese opera is no longer part of the everyday popular music culture, but it remains an attraction for many older people who find in it, among other things, a national or regional identity. An early form of Chinese drama
7568-517: Was general in much of the world affected Hong Kong film as well. A genre of softcore erotica known as fengyue became a local staple (the name is a contraction of a Chinese phrase implying seductive decadence). Such material did not suffer as much of a stigma in Hong Kong as in most Western countries; it was more or less part of the mainstream, sometimes featuring contributions from major directors such as Chor Yuen and Li Han Hsiang and often crossbreeding with other popular genres like martial arts,
7656-573: Was the first to benefit under the Hundred Flowers Campaign , such as the birth of Jilin opera . In 1954 there were approximately 2000 government-sponsored opera troupes working throughout China each consisting of 50–100 professional performers. Despite its popularity, Peking opera made up a small percentage of these troupes. After the Chinese Communist Revolution a new genre emerged known as Schinggo opera which encompassed
7744-501: Was the only film made by Chinese American Film, founded by Lai and Brodsky as the first movie studio in Hong Kong, and was never actually shown in the territory. The following year, the outbreak of World War I put a large crimp in the development of cinema in Hong Kong, as Germany was the source of the colony's film stock. It was not until 1923 that Lai, his brother and their cousin joined with Liang Shaobo to form Hong Kong's first entirely Chinese-owned-and-operated production company,
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