A collection of filmmaking exploits from the pages of a column director Li Han-hsiang wrote, very loosely based on thirty years experience as a Hong Kong filmmaker.
Passing Flickers is a film likely to interest avid fans of classic Hong Kong film, students of filmmaking, or anyone looking for something irreverent and offbeat. Though it is fictional, features a couple of actors better recognized for their contribution to kung fu movies, and focuses on some of the back story surrounding martial arts film production, this effort has very little to do with martial arts filmmaking specifically.
Director Li han-hsiang had been with Shaw Brothers for well over 30 years, dating back to a small role in a 1956 film entitled The Orphan Girl. He’s best known for directing some of Shaw Brothers’ best historical dramas and comedies. These films include Kingdom and the Beauty, The Warlord, and a series of films depicting the exploits of Emperor Chien Lung. Martial arts films were not his forte, but Passing Flickers, which is based in part on Li’s own newspaper column that he wrote for two years encompasses the filmmaking apparatus that produced such films.
As stated before, the film is fictional and plays out in a series of scenes that are not strung together by any plot. What the viewer gets are snapshots of what it might have been like to walk among the Shaw Brothers sets as films were being made. The screen is filled with images of massive collections of costumes and props, writers at work, and the make-up technician who is responsible for sticking to bodies beards, eyebrows, and other bits of fake hair meant for places that shall remain unmentioned here. A technique frequently used by Li is to begin filming a scene as if we’re watching the finished work. Then a director yells cut (in English) and the camera pulls away to show crew members tossing snow from the rafters, running a rain machine, holding a wire, or simply waiting for when they’ll be needed for something.
If there is a protagonist in the film, its Lau Wing. Lau started out in Bruce Lee’s first three films and went on to appear in many martial arts films, as well as a few of Li han-hsiang’s films. Lau plays a star actor with a lousy work ethic. His fellow cast and the crew of his movies have little respect for him. In one scene, he ends up the butt of a joke when he’s asked to ad lib a crazy style of martial arts and the entire crew simply walks out in the middle of his impassioned performance. (I’m guessing his flips were performed by Yuen Wah.) Lau reappears throughout Passing Flickers in different films while constantly forgetting his lines or showing up late, although the focus drifts to other players. In one vignette, a female uses her sex appeal to strong arm a producer into getting her a directing gig. One of the best performances comes from longtime kung fu actor Guk Fung (AKA Ku Feng), who plays an agitated director constantly having the shots in his historical martial arts film ruined by petty things such as the appearance of Lau’s gold watch on his wrist. Finally, cast members from a gangster film mistakenly storm onto the set with fake guns blazing. Once told they have come to the wrong studio, they begin firing their guns again as they leave.
There is a surprising amount of nudity and crude sexual hijinks in the film, which is in part a nod to the many adult-themed films that Hong Kong has produced over the years. Whether true or not, the male crew all act like 13-year old misfits whenever an actress disrobes for a scene. But the directors act worse by using their power to take advantage of the poor girls. These scenes are gratuitously overlong and exploitive which may have been a way to increase audience sizes at the time of the film’s release. The place where Li does use sexuality in a very interesting way is in two perspective shots reminiscent of The Graduate where the bare legs of the manipulative, female director dwarf that of the male martial arts fighters in the distance.
Li Han-hsiang probably could have made a more thorough and serious film about Hong Kong’s film industry that would have been more informative and enlightening. Certainly the industry that gave us so many brilliantly entertaining films deserves it, but that doesn’t seem to be his intention. Rather, Passing Flickers looks at the industry as trite and disposable, something the title may suggest. Perhaps once you get closer to the source of these films, the further you get from the magic of watching them. For the average viewer, it is irrelevant. Passing Flickers may amount to little more than a casual glance at the HK film industry from the mind of an entrenched cynic, but with so few films covering the same topic, it has its place.
by Mark Pollard
