HONG KONG 1941 (1984)
Years later, a woman narrates her personal story of the Japanese takeover of Hong Kong in 1941.

Years later, a woman narrates her personal story of the Japanese takeover of Hong Kong in 1941.
Hong Kong 1941, from disparate director Po-Chih Leong, is a surprisingly poetic human-scale romantic drama set amidst the horrors of war. Oscillating between lyrical beauty and harrowing brutality, it operates on several levels. Despite its setting, it remains absorbing and enjoyable with a light touch, at least for the first act, but the more one mines the deep strata of subtexts, the darker it gets. As it was never granted general distribution outside Hong Kong, this new 4K restoration from Eureka Entertainment, presented on Limited Edition Blu-ray, is an essential release that deserves to reach a broader audience.
The opening scenes are a framing device in which Nam (Cecilia Yip) watches the sunrise over the sea while reminiscing about the many dawns she has witnessed and recalling the special few she had shared with friends long ago. Fittingly, the original Chinese title, 等待黎明, translates as Waiting for the Dawn. This guarantee that at least one of the protagonists survives does help mitigate some of the more heart-rending happenings that are about to unfold in flashback.
We meet the young Nam, still a teenager, as she staggers down a street in the grip of a seizure and fatefully collides with Fei (Chow Yun-Fat), who helps her along until two local women come to her aid and share their opium pipe to calm her and bring her round. Back then, opium was perfectly legal in Hong Kong, though this is one of the first, albeit subtle, references to the colonial exploitation of the territory by the British, who used an abundance of the drug to destabilise China, resulting in the Opium Wars of the mid-19th-century. Here, though, opium is shown being used as a recreational drug but also for its original medicinal purposes.
Fei is barely tolerated by his uncle (Hon Yee Sang) and aunt (Angela Yu Chien), with whom he lodges while trying to find work since his hopes of becoming an actor are on hold. It seems, by the effortless backflip he performs on a balcony balustrade, he must have started training at a forerunner to the China Drama Academy—a Peking Opera outreach not founded until 1950. Chow Yun-Fat did not attend such a school, but Sammo Hung, the film’s co-producer, co-writer, and stunt coordinator, certainly did. However, those hoping for a kung fu extravaganza will be disappointed, as while there are some tightly choreographed fights and skirmishes, they remain quick and grounded in realism.
Po-Chih Leong cleverly critiques the cultural climate of a colony in decline, as the privations of the wars in Europe and neighbouring mainland China have a knock-on effect on an already depressed economy. The outcome of wars often pivots on the bounty or scarcity of commodities. Here, the British try to regulate rice prices, but greedy merchants form a cartel to withhold supply. The only rice available to the people on the streets is literally sold off the back of a lorry at an inflated price. Sometimes a single bag goes to the highest bidder in the hungry crowd, echoing the socio-economic class divisions throughout society. The control and distribution of rice as a symbol of political dominance becomes a recurring motif.
Likewise, he illustrates the ingrained racism of the colonial system in a vignette that seems almost comedic while revealing a dark heart. Fei attempts to stow away aboard a ship bound for Australia that is evacuating the wives and children of British civil servants as the credible threat of Japanese invasion looms. He finds a cabin that initially appears unoccupied but turns out to be used by a young girl. Realising the potential awkwardness when she discovers him, he turns on the charm and tries to appear the least threatening possible, offering to be her friend for the long voyage. The dynamic quickly turns around as the girl lays down the rules, telling him that they cannot possibly be friends. She sternly demands he kowtows to her and serves her as a slave for the voyage. Whether this is a form of role-play or not, it clearly highlights the social divisions that are already ingrained in the child. Fei realises that even if he escapes Hong Kong, he will not be able to escape such prejudice and discrimination and decides to jump ship.
Back on the island, he takes a casual labour job in a rice warehouse where he runs into Keung (Alex Man) and his cronies, who operate an ingenious scam involving taking just a small amount of rice from each sack to sell on the black market. Instead of dobbing them in, he confronts them, exchanges some banter, and offers Keung his friendship, not knowing that this is Nam’s best friend since childhood. So, the stage is set for a love triangle to develop as Nam attempts to extricate herself from a marriage arranged by her middle-class merchant father (Shih Kien) and plans to elope with Keung instead, although their relationship does not seem to have moved far beyond childhood friendship.
The first act feels more like a coming-of-age romance that could have come out of the French Nouveau Vague – but, thankfully, lacking such pretensions. The dynamic between the three leads is what really carries the entire narrative, and the performances are superb, subtle, and above all believable. It’s considered the breakthrough movie that got all three noticed, although Alex Man had already made his mark in supporting roles for some key wuxia classics, including the rather bonkers Buddha’s Palm (1982), Hidden Power of the Dragon Sabre (1983), Bastard Swordsman (1983), Return of the Bastard Swordsman (1984), and numerous television appearances. Here, he embodies a youthful naivety that erodes as hope turns to despair, his open, carefree smile gradually transitioning over the course of the narrative into a rictus grin—a mask worn for the benefit of others as his experiences and losses change him.
This was an early lead role for Cecilia Yip, who gets to express the full emotional range that her masculine friends attempt to conceal behind bravado. She turns Nam into a complex character that, despite her vulnerability, conjures a remarkable strength that convincingly leads to catalytic actions. She provides a suitable foil for Chow Yun-Fat, who turns in a charismatic performance that won him the Golden Horse for ‘Best Actor’, for which Alex Man had also been nominated.
Chow Yun-Fat had been a star since his major roles in some very popular Hong Kong television series, including 1979’s long-running soapy crime drama 網中人, which translates as People in the Net but is, somewhat confusingly, labelled with the English-language title of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
It was a good year for Chow Yun-Fat, as he was now getting major leading roles on the big screen. He played the male lead in another film set against the backdrop of the fall of Hong Kong, Love in a Fallen City (1984), though still a couple of years ahead of A Better Tomorrow (1986), which would be his international breakthrough.
Another accolade deservedly won by Hong Kong 1941 was the Hong Kong Film Award for best cinematography for Brian Lai. His work here is exemplary for location lighting, and there are many unassumingly brilliant shots involving combinations of interior and exterior, sometimes with added textures of rain and incense smoke. The film was shot entirely on location, mainly in Macau, and in real buildings that retained period interiors and fittings. There are a few beautiful night scenes with flitting bat shadows in the background while flesh tones are brought out by the warmth of lamplight. Brian Lai only has half a dozen credits, with two notable ones being Coolie Killer (1982), in which Cecilia Yip made her screen début, and Ronny Yu’s The Postman Strikes Back (1982), which also starred Chow Yun-Fat.
Imperial Japan began a concerted invasion of China in 1931, occupying Manchuria. After establishing this foothold, they soon exploited the instability caused by the civil war already underway in China between Nationalists and Communists, who failed to produce a united front until it was too late. The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937 as Imperial Japanese forces launched an offensive, quickly expanding across mainland China. The so-called Nanjing Massacre, which is referenced in the film, tends to encompass innumerable atrocities perpetrated by the invading Imperial Japanese forces from 1937 to 1938 as they advanced on the then capital. It’s estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 Chinese were killed, mainly civilians, in a deliberate campaign of terror that saw entire towns destroyed with all their citizens tortured and murdered in the cruellest ways imaginable.
Initially, they stopped short of the Hong Kong territories, which were under British Colonial rule, but this changed after Japan decided to enter World War II by coinciding their invasion of French Indochina with the fall of France to Nazi Germany. What brought them fully into conflict with the Allied forces was the bombing of the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and an all-out assault on the Crown Colony of Hong Kong the following day.
The tone of Hong Kong 1941 changes with the arrival of the Japanese army, which is evoked by inexplicable rumblings, glass falling from a broken window, billowing smoke and fires. There was not enough budget to show the advance of troops or the bombs dropping from aircraft, but sharing the experience with those at street level pulls the viewer into the heart of the story on a personal level. We do see a group of Japanese cavalry riding into town, led by General Kanezawa (Stuart Ong).
While Kanezawa is a definite villain, he has realistic dimensions. He efficiently organises distribution of rice and encourages the singing of Chinese songs, but it’s ambiguous if this is to establish rapport or assert dominance. Most likely the latter. He seems to genuinely believe that the ‘Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere’ is the future and sets about deputising local Hong Kong citizens to co-ordinate business and enforce the new laws. However, the comparative innocence of Fei, Kueng, and Nam is lost when they later witness him beheading Chinese prisoners.
Corruption abounds in the ensuing chaos, and many of the atrocities are perpetrated by collaborators when promised power and position in the new régime. Two of the nastier pieces of work are the previously respected Sergeant Fa-Wing (Paul Chun) and Chairman Liu Yan-Mau (Wu Ma), who are both responsible for the most gruelling scenes of rape, murder, and gratuitous cruelty. One tortuous scene reaches an intensity to rival that famous Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter (1978). A few of the super-tense set pieces, deftly handled by Po-Chih Leong, may elicit the fight-or-flight response by proxy in the helpless viewer.
Leong is a British director who trained at the London Film School and started out working for the BBC as an editor on documentaries and the current affairs programme, Panorama. He used this experience in television production to transfer to Hong Kong’s TVB as a stepping stone into the burgeoning movie industry there. His feature début was gangster crime thriller Jumping Ash (1976), which he co-directed with Josephine Siao, who also co-wrote the script and starred in the movie. His first film as solo-director was the espionage action movie Woo Fook (1977), aka Foxbat, starring Henry Silva. He has since amassed a varied filmography, and of the few I have seen, a stand-out was The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998), a philosophical vampire horror starring Jude Law and Elina Löwensohn. Leong appears in a cameo in Hong Kong 1941 as the benign madman known as ‘The Emperor’, befriended by Keung.
Although we spend less than 100 minutes with these people, we know them as well as if this had been a mini-series, but also we feel the poignant brevity of their time spent together. By focusing on the intimate stories of a few select individuals, the film becomes a kind of fractal representation of the bigger picture. We know that variations of what happens to our three protagonists are being repeated across the city as it falls. We glimpse just a fraction of the horrors of war and occupation from their point of view. The Battle of Hong Kong lasted until 25 December when the Governor of Hong Kong Island surrendered, marking the first time a British Colony had surrendered to any invader.
HONG KONG | 1984 | 100 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | CANTONESE • ENGLISH • JAPANESE
director: Po-Chih Leong.
writers: John Chan & Sammo Hung.
starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Cecilia Yip, Alex Man, Shih Kien, Guk Fung, Paul Chun, Wu Ma, Billy Lau, Stuart Ong.