FILM 2301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Melodrama, Late Capitalism, Cinema Of Hong Kong
9 May 2018
School
Department
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Professor
Chinese Cinema Readings
Reading One: Space, Place and Spectacle: The Crisis Cinema of John Woo by Tony
Williams
o "So I wanted to make a film that would emphasize traditional values: loyalty,
honesty, passion for justice, commitment to your family. Things I felt were being
lost" - John Woo
o Hong Kong migrated back to China in 1997
o Hong Kong is Chinese and capitalist
o Introductory credits
o The works of John Woo have recently received wider commercial and critical
attention while recognizing that he represents the tip of a fascinating national
cinema,
o His 1986-1992 works are fascinating examples of a cinema that exhibits a
particular crisis
o Deal with the uneasy tensions between the past, present, and future by a director
born in mainland China whose family emigrated to Hong Kong in 1948 as a result
of contemporary turmoils
o Woo is a Catholic but is influenced by national historical and religious traditions
o John Woo creates a cinema that contains a merger of certain aspects common to
both the postmodernist and apocalyptic traditions
o Space, place, spectacle, and the historical areas essential components of this
type of cultural representation
o Hong Kong urban films of Joh Woo reflect an aesthetics of density akin to the
architectural landscape of Hong Kong
o Conflicting elements
o "Space can never be separated from power" which is relevant to any national
community struggling to define an identity against the alien forces of late capitalism
or demonic visions of Chinese communism
o Working in a high concentrated geographic and cinematic community, the films
naturally embrace elements of space, history and identity
o His space and place motifs contain precarious historical and geographic elements
liable to disruption at any time by violent situations
o Every Woo film contains some quiet moments, resembling moments of reflection
which occur in a geographic location that contemplates issues of space and time
threatened by a future historical situation
o Ex. Looking over the Hong Kong landscape in The Killer when Jeff and Sydney
Fung discuss changes in their lives. It is a good space since it witnessed the
reconciliation of these two friends after alienation caused by corporate concerns
o Historical, traditional and local moments in Woo's films are best understood as
cultural motifs that merge boundaries stressing space as an active component of
meaning
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