Hollywood is a haunted place-haunted by its own past, haunted by television, haunted by the omnipresence of advertising and publicity images in our society. These ghosts have drained Hollywood of much of its energy, leaving many of our filmmakers with the glum impression that all of the stories have already been told and that all of the images have already been seen.
To ward off the ghosts, these filmmakers have moved to what might be called the ”second degree” of cinema, making movies that assume the audience`s familiarity with the story (and hence, in films such as ”Top Gun” and ”Beverly Hills Cop II,” barely bother to tell it), or movies that seem to consist entirely of quotes from old films (Brian De Palma`s raids on Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas`s raids on John Ford), or movies that push a decorative, stylized imagery for its own sake, in the belief that the direct, straightforward images have been all used up (the work of Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, Ridley Scott and many of the other British visitors).
But in Asia, it seems, there are no ghosts-apart from those that populate the supernatural stories that make up one of Hong Kong`s most popular genres. The busy national cinemas of Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and China still occupy the first degree of film-making. They plunge, without apology, irony or nostalgia, directly into the traditional genre forms, bringing the same unselfconscious conviction to every story they tell, from kung fu comedies to three-handkerchief melodramas.
If, in America, filmmakers and filmgoers seem to have entered into a tacit conspiracy against the raw material of movies-both groups are anxious to prove that they`re hipper than the familiar fictions they relate-in Asia there is neither condescension nor calculation. Audiences and directors meet on the same level of immediate enjoyment, and their films yield a tremendous pleasure-the same pleasure that was Hollywood`s in the `30s and `40s.
Those are the happy impressions left by ”Eastern Horizons,” a major, 39-film survey of recent Asian cinema mounted this month as part of the Toronto Festival of Festivals.
Assembled by critic David Overbey, the series was a superb demonstration of the programmer`s art, with a selection that not only suggested a strong identity for each of the national cinemas involved (the four above, plus Korea and token representation from Vietnam), but also evoked the distinct directorial personalities within each industry and gave an overview of the most popular genres in each country. Many of the films in the Toronto series
(as well as some additional titles) will be reaching Chicago in the next few weeks, some as part of an Asian festival at Facets Multimedia Center beginning Friday, others as part of the Chicago International Film Festival, which begins Oct. 19.
For Western audiences, the films of Hong Kong are the most immediately accessible and entertaining of this group, for reasons that seem fairly clear- as a British colony, Hong Kong well knows the ways of the West, and many of its films are directly based on Hollywood forms.
For example, John Woo`s ”A Better Tomorrow,” a 1986 release that has become the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong history, has a plot line lifted straight from a Warner Bros. film of the `30s: Tse-ho is a prosperous gangster, his brother Tse-kit is an idealistic young cop. When their father is killed in some gangland crossfire, the cop holds his brother responsible, and it is up to the latter to redeem himself by going straight and bringing down the crime syndicate of which he was a part.
”The Untouchables” treats similar material as nostalgic myth, hiding behind a false naivety and ostentatious camera tricks. But Woo puts no distance between himself and his material-he isn`t interested in striking attitudes, but only in making the best gangster film he can.
The clarity and conviction that Woo brings to the delineation of the moral issues, the tight and logical construction of the screenplay and the great dash and scale Woo gives to the extravagant action scenes combine to create a nearly perfect entertainment, made vivid and real by Woo`s resolve to remain inside his story and close to his characters.
Similarly, Silvia Chang`s ”Passion” is an amazingly close Hong Kong transposition of a glossy Hollywood ”women`s picture” of the `50s-the kind that used to star Lana Turner and her wardrobe. Chang, one of Hong Kong`s leading female stars, directs herself as a woman in love with the husband of her best friend (Cora Miao, another major Hong Kong performer); it takes place in flashback against a dreamy background of country clubs, luxury apartments and sprawling suburban homes.
There isn`t a Western director alive who could treat this material as anything other than camp, but Chang`s sincerity and commitment pay off in some strongly wrought emotion. Astoundingly, this first feature also displays an understanding of classical Hollywood visual rhetoric-the use of framing and cutting to analyze the relationships between the characters-that has been all but lost in America.
But Chinese culture plays a role in these films as well-particularly through the influence of the Peking Opera and its tradition of eye-popping acrobatics and balletic fight scenes.It`s a tradition that first reached our shores with the Bruce Lee martial arts films of the `70s, though the movies have improved a great deal since then. Films such as Ann Hui`s ”The Romance of Book and Sword” and Tsui Hark`s comic ”Peking Opera Blues” combine dynamic narratives with stunning action set pieces, in which the technical prowess of the filmmakers combines with the athletic abilities of the stars to produce breathtaking flurries of color and movement.
Hong Kong movies are clearly the products of a highly developed industry; Philippine films, by contrast, seem modest and handcrafted, like the products of village artisans. It`s as if the oral tradition-of folk tales, jokes and gossip-had passed directly from individual speakers to the movie screen, unmediated by literary or theatrical influences.
One of the loveliest films in Toronto was ”Blessings on the Land,” a 1959 black-and-white feature directed by the D.W. Griffith of the Philippines, Manuel Silos; reflecting the close concentration on family themes that surfaces in virtually every Philippine film, it`s the story of a village woman (Rosa Rosal) who survives the rape of her daughter, the murder of her husband, abandonment by her son, and the burning of her crops to achieve a glowing final peace and contentment.
It is not, clearly, a sophisticated story, but such is the power and honesty of Silos`s invisible technique that it held an audience of 400 hardened festival-goers absolutely enthralled, eliciting gasps of astonished dismay at every cruel twist of fate that beset the heroine. The appeal of
”Blessings on the Land” has nothing to do with a sentimental condescension toward a supposed naivety: Its innocence is of a higher order, one that commands respect and awe.
The films of Hong Kong and the Philippines are the products of a genuinely popular cinema, made for wide audiences and fully supported by box- office receipts. Perhaps because the Taiwanese cinema depends on goverment grants for its financial support, its films are more self-consciously artful, centered on directorial visions more than generic models.
Edward Yang, for example, composes studies of urban alienation (”The Terrorizers,” ”Taipei Story”) that suggest Antonioni, Bergman and other European influences; though accomplished, his films lack the connection to popular tradition that gives the Asian cinema its particular vitality.
Yet Taiwan is also the home of the reigning genius of Asian film, Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose gentle, semi-autobiographical studies of youth and adolescence in the cities and villages of his country (”The Time to Live and the Time to Die,” ”Dust in the Wind”) have lately begun to penetrate the international festival circuit.
Hou is one of those unaccountable, instinctive artists who appear once in a generation, apparently born with a perfect understanding of his medium. His sense of expressive framing, of dramatic rhythm developed within long takes, of the flow of movement between foreground and background, and the evocation of emotion through gesture rather than speech immediately places him with the leading figures of the form.
To spend a week with the Asian cinema is to learn that the images haven`t been used up, that the stories haven`t been exhausted-and that movies can still function as immediate experience. On the other side of the world, the ghosts have been chased away.
