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Connections and Crossovers: Cinema and Theatre in Hong Kong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Frank Bren
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Abstract

From the run-up to its return to Chinese rule in July 1997 to the stock-market crash in October, Hong Kong has seldom been out of the news during the past year. But the attention paid to its political and economic provenance has not been matched by much interest in its cultural output – despite the existence in Hong Kong of a cinema industry with a prodigious output now approaching ten thousand films. Although a professional theatre has been a relatively more recent development, the connections between film and theatre in Hong Kong have always been close – from the film adaptations of Cantonese opera in the 1930s, through the ‘female’ films of the post-war period and the western following for Bruce Lee's kung fu movies, to the present dominance of the cross-generic production company, Springtime, in the 1990s, with a creative interest in its own past which verges on the metatheatrical. Frank Bren, who is presently living and working in Hong Kong, here captures something of the history and the distinctive flavour of the overlapping movie and theatre industries, and assesses why the relationship remains mutually profitable in artistic as well as economic terms.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 53 , February 1998 , pp. 63 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

Notes and References

1. Later that year, Maggie Cheung earned the first of several ‘best actress’ statuettes for her role as the Shanghai screen legend, Ruan Lingyu, in Stanley Kwan's film, Centre Stage. Leslie Cheung, memorable in films like A Better Tomorrow (dir. John Woo) and Rouge (dir. Stanley Kwan), was making a ‘comeback’ after a brief retirement to Canada. He would soon earn international acclaim for his work in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, joint winner with Jane Campion's The Piano of the Cannes Palme d'Or. As Stephen Chow's recent films were consistently outgrossing all others (including Jackie Chan's), perhaps his presence in the film made it doubly ‘hot’.

2. Or ‘heroic bloodshed’ films, an action sub-genre primarily identified with Woo.

3. From Hong Kong's first feature in 1913 to 30 June 1996, 8,500 features had been produced in Hong Kong, almost 8,000 since the Second World War. Other complex developments included competiton between the Mandarin and Cantonese-language industries (the former largely from Shanghai emigrés) from as early as the mid-1930s.

4. Since the late 1970s, the Hong Kong International Film Festival has rescreened several of these films in the festival's important retrospective programmes under various theme headings – swordplay films, Cantonese melodrama, etc. Until recently, the catalogues of these retrospectives provided the only comprehensive research materials in English on these films, which were rarely studied, or even mentioned in ‘world’ cinema encyclopedias.

5. I Have a Date with Spring, by Raymond To, was first staged by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre at City Hall Theatre, Hong Kong, from 16 to 31 October 1992. Revivals were staged at the Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre Theatre in Hong Kong from 17 to 23 June 1993, and at the Tsuen Wan Town Hall auditorium, Kowloon, from 2 to 4 July 1993.

6. This is from my viewings of the film. I did not see the stage version. I did see both screen and stage versions of Mad Phoenix – the former being extremely faithful to the latter.

7. Both for their roles in this film – Alice Lau as ‘best newcomer’ and Lo Koon-lan as ‘best supporting actress’ – at the Hong Kong Film Awards for 1995.

8. This short feature was co-produced by the American, Benjamin Brodsky, and three Hong Kong film-makers – including Li Menwei, the ‘father of Hong Kong cinema’.

9. A ballroom-dancing story which was a cult hit in the USA in 1997.

10. The Legend of the Mad Phoenix was originally staged by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre for sixteen performances at the Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre theatre from 28 October to 9 November 1992. Revivals were staged from 11 to 15 January 1995 and at Shatin Town Hall from 20 to 22 January 1995. The 1997 film – and the restaged play – reduced the title to Mad Phoenix.

11. Hong Kong became an ‘SAR’ (Special Administrative Region) of China from 1 July 1997.

12. Law Kar delivered a paper in October 1997 on the subject of the American-Hong Kong Film Connection, at a conference on Hong Kong cinema at the University of Illinois in Urbana–Champaign.

13. Fonoroff's, book, Silver Light: a Pictorial History of Hong Kong Cinema, 1920–1970 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1997)Google Scholar, is one of the best recent studies of Hong Kong cinema. Fonoroff is a long-time critic of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema, occasionally ‘guesting’ in foreigner roles in Hong Kong films.

14. There were four performances at the Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, from 16 to 18 May 1997.

15. In August 1942, the South China Motion Picture Performers' Federation had ‘four plays under production, two in Mandarin and two in Cantonese’. This was in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation. One of the plays, written by Cho Yu, had ‘some time ago’ had a ‘record run of 26 days in one theatre’ – as reported in the Hongkong News (then Hong Kong's only English-language daily, run by Japanese business interests) on 22 August 1942.

16. See Jarrett, V. H. G, Old Hong Kong (1934)Google Scholar, Public Records Office, Hong Kong.