Director: Jürgen Roland
Year: 1962
Country: Germany
Rating: 7.0
Aka Heisser Hafen Hong Kong
Aka The Hot Port of Hong Kong
This film is pure sensual nostalgic pleasure
for those with an affection for the city of Hong Kong. Or at least for what
it once was. Not so much for the film itself which often verges on nonsense,
but just for your immersion in the streets and harbour of the city which
was once nicknamed Fragrant Harbour or Pearl of the Orient. Now called Hong
Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR).
The poetry is gone, but when this film was made in 1962, the mystique, the
mystery was still there and this German production directed by Jürgen
Roland (The Green Archer, The Black Panther of Ratana) does its best to capture
the wonder of the city in gorgeous color. The location shooting here is some
of the best I have ever seen including films from Hong Kong studios. Shaw
and Cathay preferred filming on sets and at least the Cantonese films I have
seen are too low budget to be very ambitious.
It starts right at the old Hong Kong airport,
Kai Tak, situated in the middle of Kowloon with a shot from the ground looking
up as the plane inches over buildings (the scariest minute of my travels)
to land. Then a van shouting out the names of hotels it will stop at; the
Mandarin, the Peninsula and the Astor - all still there though greatly changed.
Lots of scenes driving through the crowded streets, the markets, the vendors,
laundry hanging out of windows, rickshaws, overlooking the harbour replete
with boats and sampans, trips out in the harbour, a scene at the dazzling
multi-colored, wonderful statued park of demons and Gods at The Tiger Balm
Garden (now gone). I couldn't recognize any of it. Some tall buildings, but
nothing like the skyscrapers of today. It looked livable and not to forget
the women in cheongsams.
Ok, there is a film here. Fairly standard
Euro-spy film that makes little sense. In Tokyo a man is killed and the gang
say to one fellow, we fooled them. Now go to Hong Kong. Well, they fooled
no one and in Hong Kong Marek (Horst Frank) is waiting for him and the information
he brought with him to pass on to another man. The information is of no interest
to the watcher. Horst kills both of them but finds no information on them.
That is because it was passed on to a stranger on the elevator. Coincidentally,
a reporter (Klausjürgen Wussow) who decides he has a story and teams
up with Joan Kent (Marianne Koch, A Fistful of Dollars).
They are both idiots who only through the
magic of bad script writing manage to stay alive and fall in love in a day.
At one point, the reporter decides to go out for a drink and of all the hundreds
of bars to have a drink in, he walks into the one run by Marik and his stunningly
hot partner (Dominique Boschero) in her sleek green cheongsam with a slit
higher than a fly ball. Her dance of the twist is worth the price of admission.
I have to look her up in other films. She of course drugs him and leaves
him on the street and he remembers nothing. Not even her. Brad Harris is
the Hong Kong cop who gets to show his stuff at the end. Don't watch this
for the plot. But if you like old Hong Kong and cheongsams, it is worth your
90-minutes.
