Hong Kong’s Cold War Movie Era: How Ideology Shaped Entertainment

The halcyon era of Hong Kong film is often associated with the 1980s, but film critic, writer and researcher Sam Ho notes there was another one before that. “The long 50s were the first golden period of Hong Kong cinema,” says Sam Ho, film critic, writer and researcher. “I call it ‘long 50s’ because it lasted well into the 60s.” 

It was a time when movies were multilingual, with productions in Mandarin, Cantonese, and many other Chinese languages. And it was when Hong Kong movies where very cosmopolitan, with actors, directors and producers from the Shanghainese diaspora, which arrived in Hong Kong during and after the Civil War in China (fought intermittently from 1927 to 1949), while also relying on the widespread diasporic networks that had their main centres in Singapore, Malaysia (then known as Malaya) and the United States. This was also a time when multiple ideologies were butting up against each other other in the Cold War – a conflict in which Hong Kong found itself fully entangled. 

Left and right, communist and capitalist; each end of the political spectrum was trying to win people’s hearts and minds through their own versions of propaganda. Hong Kong’s movie studios fell quite neatly into this dichotomy. The major movie studios from that era are now commonly referred to as “right-wing studios,” in particular Shaw Brothers Studios and MP&GI, which later changed its name to Cathay Studios. Inspired by Hollywood’s star system and embrace of American-style consumerism, their films stood in contrast to more collectivist spirit of the so-called “left wing studios,” also known as “patriotic” film studios. These were represented by Great Wall Movie Enterprises, Feng Huang Motion Picture Company, Sun Luen Film Company and then Chung Yuen Motion Picture Company (a joint venture between Sun Luen and Great Wall). 

These latter four companies merged in 1982, becoming today’s Sil-Metropole Organisation – a Hong Kong-based film company that is a production arm of the Chinese government, and thus has the greatest possible access to co-productions with other film studios in the mainland, and great ease in obtaining permission for filming across the border. The Hong Kong Film Archives is currently holding a retrospective of movies made by the various studios that today form Sil-Metropole Organisation, which allows viewers to get a feeling for these patriotic films. 

A lot of what was put on screen was subtle, as studios from both sides of the political spectrum were trying to entice the audience to go to the cinema first of all for entertainment, but also to feed them an aspirational or educational story. If the right-wing studios were presenting stories in which a growing urban middle class was going to coffee shops and dance clubs, taking up white-collar jobs and embracing Westernised modernity, the patriotic film studios would often have a less individualistic message, with greater emphasis on the collective, on working-class heroes, evil landlords and wealth inequalities, or dramas that unfolded and were resolved thanks to the combined action of citizens in solidarity with each other. Many were also highly entertaining comedies, in which the object of ridicule was the moneyed class.

A clear example of this approach to popular movies was Sun Luen’s inaugural production, called The Prodigal Son, directed by Ng Wui. It is a family drama centred around a spoiled young man who spends his time in dance halls and bars, womanising and throwing away the money his father is working hard to earn as a laundryman in San Francisco. When the father returns he tries to bring his son back to the right path, but his corrupt son repents only after having brought himself and the family to ruin. This being a commercial film, though, after ruin comes redemption and a happy family reunion, in greater respect of working-class hardship and traditional Confucian values.

Great Wall Movie Enterprise tried to appeal to an older audience by making a lot of costume drama movies, reinterpreting classic tales of imperial China with a moral twist, but also contemporary comedies that proved extremely popular, hiding their anti-capitalist messages quite well. Great Wall had for a long time one of the greatest stars of the era, Hsia Moon, who was born in Shanghai in 1933. Her talent and beauty meant that many people would watch any movie she played in, regardless of the plot. And her fame and political loyalty was such that her films were also often screened in the Chinese mainland – until the Cultural Revolution closed China’s doors to Hong Kong movies for more than 10 years. 

Hsia’s star power sometimes allowed for films to take a more directly anti-capitalist message. In Tales of the City, a comedy directed by Li Pingqian (one of Great Wall’s main directors), an unemployed man named Yu is facing eviction from his small flat when he gets help from a poor student (played by Hsia Moon) who also happens to be the adopted daughter of his landlord. Yu wins the lottery and goes from being shunned by society to being pursued by everyone, underlining how greed is the main force in a capitalist society. To add greater comedic effect, the lottery ticket gets lost and found various times during the film, with corresponding waxing and waning of Yu’s popularity. 

Another example: Garden of Repose, a 1964 Feng Huang production directed by Zhu Shilin, in which Hsia plays the long suffering wife of a rich man with a very unruly child. It’s a film that critiques the feudal rules of a patriarchal family, inspired by the novel of the same title by Chinese writer Ba Jin. 

The rivalry between the two camps of film companies was both commercial and ideological, which was one of the factors of their alternating fortunes, even if many of their differences crystallised only later, following the political developments in the mainland. “If you look at the movies from the 50s and early 60s, there really isn’t that much difference in terms of content,” says says film critic Paul Fonoroff. “The division shouldn’t be seen as too strict. There are family dramas and comedies from both types of studios – as both right- and left-wing movie studios were first of all trying to be successful at the box office, and the ideology did not hit you in the head. Also, there was a lot of interaction between the different studios, a lot of actors or directors that would switch studios as a career decision.”

Though there was overlap and similarities between the studios, Fonoroff does note one critical difference. “The people making left-wing films definitely had more ideological concerns,” he says. They were usually keen to insert some kind of social commentary into their films. “There are still heroes who save the days, but it is always as part of the community,” he notes. 

One particularity of the left wing studios at this time was that decisions were taken by committees, whilst the right-wing film companies operated in a more top-down manner. And while some left-wing studios had an easier time exporting their movies to the mainland, they had no way of selling films to Taiwan. 

“The intricacies surrounding these two supposedly opposing factions are very interesting,” says Ho. “They worked with each other, they socialised with each other. But actors and directors who switched from left-wing to right-wing film studios would have to make a political declaration to distance themselves from their previous political allegiance. It wasn’t for the studios – but one of the major markets for the right wing companies was the Taiwan market, and that was a requirement of the Kuomintang government: without that written statement the movies may end up not being allowed there.”

Taiwan was the only place that had this type of restrictions, while studios of either persuasion could sell freely, in competition with each other, in countries with a significant Chinese diaspora, in particular in Southeast Asia. Once more, the competition wasn’t as fierce as we could imagine: for large studios like Shaw Brothers, which owned a large number of movie theatres in Asia, it was not uncommon to distribute films made by their rivals in order to always have new productions to keep the audiences entertained. 

Things got more complicated after the Cultural Revolution began. “The production of the left-wing studios decreased in those years, and their films also became much more ideological, which meant that they lost much of their audience,” says Fonoroff. Two of the greatest stars of Great Wall Movie Enterprises, Shek Hwei and her husband Fu Chi — both of whom have their own plaque in the Avenue of the Stars — were in prison for a year for taking part in Cultural Revolution-inspired protests in 1967. Hsia Moon went into semi-retirement, moving to Canada for a while, before returning to Hong Kong as a producer in 1980. She produced Ann Hui’s acclaimed Boat People in 1982.

But the fortunes of the left-wing film studios slowly turned again. As Hong Kong entered its 1980s era of movie greatness, with martial arts movies being exported worldwide, and China once again opened its doors to the world, the left-wing studios were able to take advantage of their old connections and knowledge of the mainland movie scene, and kickstart a new era of commercial — and more subtly political — successes. Then, with the establishment of the Sil-Metropole Organisation, the story came full circle. What started as a collection of left-wing studios has now become one of the biggest players in Chinese cinema, whether in Hong Kong or on the mainland.  

All photos are provided with the courtesy of Sil-Metropole Organisation limited

Integrating Traditional Morality with Modern Reality: Sil-Metropole Retrospective runs at the Hong Kong Film Archive until September 22, 2024. Click here for more information.