Abstract
This chapter examines the fate of traditional modes of practice, as well as of local storytelling norms, in contemporary Hong Kong cinema. It contests some widely-held yet arguably specious assumptions: first, that the "Mainlandization" and "Hollywoodization" of Hong Kong cinema eradicate local filmmaking practices and aesthetic norms; and second, that the local routine of piecemeal script construction yields slapdash plotting, and thus is inferior to the screenplay practices advocated in Mainland China and Hollywood. This chapter argues that not only have local work routines endured in spite of institutional change, but that those practices yield films of considerable complexity and ambition. The chapter's major case studies - Wu Xia (2011), Mad Detective (2007), and Blind Detective (2013) - can be assimilated to a nascent puzzle film trend in Hong Kong cinema. Disputing claims of a "post-Hong Kong cinema," this chapter draws on primary interviews with Hong Kong filmmakers in detailing both the PRC coproduction system and the characteristic script practices employed by Peter Chan, Johnnie To, and the Milkyway Image film studio.
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Notes
- 1.
SARFT, Mainland China’s state censorship body, supervises the country’s film, television, and radio industries. Its branches include the Film Bureau, whose function includes the censorship of all films released in the Mainland.
- 2.
See Chan (2009) ‘Policies for a Sustainable Development of Hong Kong Film Industry.’ Public Policy Digest (July). http://www.ugc.edu.hk/rgc/ppd1/eng/04.htm. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
- 3.
More recently, NBC’s Hannibal offers an updating of this narrative schema. For his part, Peter Chan cites the contemporary US television series CSI and House as influences on Wu Xia. Author interview with Peter Chan, 3 April 2014, Hong Kong.
- 4.
This work method became systematized by local studios such as Golden Harvest and Cinema City in the 1980s (Bordwell 2000, p. 121; p. 172).
- 5.
Notes one of Chan’s scenarists: ‘The typical way our company operates is to make revisions to the screenplay while we shoot the film – it’s been like this since He’s a Woman, She’s a Man. We’d be discussing the script and changing the lines on set every day’ (quoted in Li 2012, p. 86).
- 6.
Author interview with Peter Chan, 3 April 2014, Hong Kong. All subsequent quotes attributed to Chan derive from this interview.
- 7.
According to Kimburley Wing-yee Choi and Steve Fore (2015, p. 146), SARFT liberalized the preproduction script mandate in 2004, thereafter requiring only a plot synopsis. However, Hong Kong filmmakers still today submit fully composed preproduction scripts to the state authorities.
- 8.
See for further information Bettinson 2016, pp. 44–45.
- 9.
This plot outline and the analysis that follows pertain to the Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese version of the film released under the title Wu Xia. An alternative international cut—reedited and distributed by The Weinstein Company, and retitled Dragon—alters the film’s original plot structure in various ways. For a comparative analysis of Dragon and Wu Xia, see Bettinson 2016.
- 10.
Slipperier still, the flashbacks are apt to slide between narrators. A flashback might be launched by Jinxi, but completed by Xu. In one scene, Jinxi’s flashback is hijacked by Xu, skewing the narration’s replay toward the detective’s own speculative version of events. Further narrational complexity springs from the referential nature of the flashbacks assigned to Xu. Whereas some of the narration’s replays are to be grasped as Xu’s conjectures, others are intended as Xu’s unequivocal memory of actual past events. Then there is the narration’s propensity to ambiguate not only the past (as in the conflicting accounts of the robbery) but the narrative future as well. On occasion, a flash-forward will present a possible future which then bleeds into an actualized event; hence the narration both suppresses and flaunts its capacity not only to skip over significant portions of story time, but to radically disarray the viewer’s knowledge.
- 11.
In the Weinstein Company’s reedited version (Dragon), the definitive revelation of Jinxi’s identity arrives sooner than in Peter Chan’s Director’s Cut, thanks to the deletion and redistribution of scenes from the film’s first half.
- 12.
There is an economic explanation too: as a mainstream commercial venture, Wu Xia cannot risk a resolution wholly reveling in Rashomon-esque ambiguity.
- 13.
- 14.
‘My first influence [as a child] was Zhang Che’s movies,’ notes Chan. ‘The Chor Yuen detective movies arrived when I was in my teens – I probably watched every single one of them.’
- 15.
Like Wu Xia, Chan’s previous China coproduction—The Warlords—finds a source in a 1970s swordplay saga signed by Zhang Che (The Blood Brothers [1973]).
- 16.
This is not to claim that all Hong Kong films construct demanding narrations, only that some Hong Kong films do, and, moreover, that the local tradition of filmmaking is not inimical to sophisticated storytelling.
- 17.
Both To and Wai cut their teeth in the Hong Kong television industry, directing and writing mini-series and made-for-TV movies at TVB during the 1970s.
- 18.
Author interview with Shan Ding, 5 April 2014, Hong Kong. All subsequent quotes attributed to Shan Ding derive from this interview.
- 19.
Outlandish as it seems, this gambit is not anomalous even for purely local productions. Other Hong Kong filmmakers employ fake scripts in order to attract financiers; see Szeto and Chen (2013, p. 13).
- 20.
Another gambit occurs when shooting commences, though only in the case of local Hong Kong productions for which there is no strict release date already imposed (such as Mad Detective, or Soi Cheang’s Accident [2009]). ‘The standard procedure [at the start of a Milkyway production],’ states Shan Ding, ‘is to shoot for a couple of days and then shut down production for a month or so.’ This hiatus enables Wai’s staff to finesse the film’s story premise, and reassures investors that production is underway. Other studio departments also undertake further planning during this interval. The filmmakers may then use these revisions to persuade financiers to pour further capital into the production.
- 21.
From To’s perspective, this method limits the prospect of ‘creative interference’ from stars and their business representatives, enabling him to ‘protect the story’ and retain overall artistic control. Author interview with Au Kin-yee, 5 April 2014, Hong Kong—all subsequent quotes attributed to Au Kin-yee derive from this interview.
- 22.
Johnnie To discusses this aspect of his process in Ingham 2009, p,136.
- 23.
For a detailed account of Milkyway’s sound-design strategies, see Bettinson 2013.
- 24.
In fact, Mad Detective became moderately successful in Western markets. Budgeted at less than HK $5m, the film also proved domestically profitable, generating revenues of HK $12m at the Hong Kong box office.
- 25.
Such was the necessity for postproduction plotting that the editing phase consumed three months of a nine-month production schedule, a fairly extensive period by local standards.
- 26.
Financier Media Asia rejected the initial treatment for Milkyway’s locally produced Motorway (2012), necessitating substantial revisions by writer Joey O’Bryan. Author interview with Joey O’Bryan, 20 April, 2013.
- 27.
Thanks to the Milkyway writing staff, Blind Detective’s crime and romance plotlines are deftly interlinked. In one subjective replay, a murdered schoolgirl counsels Johnston on his romantic tribulations.
- 28.
As if in defiance of Mainland encroachment, the closing credits of Kung Fu Killer pay tribute to an assembly line of local industry figures ‘for upholding the fine tradition of Hong Kong action cinema.’
- 29.
Interestingly, a number of these ostensibly local productions were part-funded by Mainland Chinese companies; see Cheung 2015, p. 57.
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Bettinson, G. (2016). Hong Kong Puzzle Films: The Persistence of Tradition. In: Bettinson, G., Udden, J. (eds) The Poetics of Chinese Cinema. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55309-6_7
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