HKHC Speaker’s Series, Dr. Jessica Siu-yin Yeung, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Remaking Lubitsch in Hong Kong Cinema: The Ninotchka Trope in Her Fatal Ways
Speaker: Dr. Jessica Siu-yin Yeung, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Date and Time: 22 November 2024, 3:30 – 5pm (UKT)
Venue: Research Space (1.H020), Arts Complex, University of Bristol
Language: English
In-person only event. To attend, please register on Ticketpass.
Hong Kong cinema has a history of remaking Ernst Lubitsch films. Sit Kok-sin and Cho Kei respectively remade Love Parade (1929) into Romance of Jade Hall (1934) and the trilogy of My Kingdom for a Husband (1957), The Prince’s Romantic Affairs (1958), and My Kingdom for a Honeymoon (1958). In the early 1990s, Hong Kong cinema enjoyed certain liberty while film censorship guidelines were relaxed. Alfred Cheung remade Ninotchka (1939) into Her Fatal Ways (1990) (表姐，你好嘢！). This crime comedy narrativises Hongkonger’s fearful response to the Tiananmen massacre (1989) towards the end of British colonial rule (1997). It is about a Chinese communist envoy’s uproarious encounter with a Royal Hong Kong Police superintendent. Due to colonial film censorship during the Cold War era, Hong Kong cinema was devoid of overt political representations to avoid upsetting the geopolitical ties with neighbouring countries. Her Fatal Ways’ political gags were fresh, rare, and popular, so the film got three sequels (1991—1994).
Despite being a staple in popular culture, Her Fatal Ways remains unexamined in film studies. This chapter studies Ninotchka as a trope in Her Fatal Ways by contextualising it in the Hong Kong screwball comedic tradition of the 1960s, which pokes fun at the northern/ southern cultural differences. Adopting the lens of cultural translation and remake, it argues that Lubitsch and Cheung’s political rom-coms aim not to undermine the political regimes in question, but emphasise the individual agency to make humane choices during political upheavals. By extension, it considers Lubitsch’s legacy in Hong Kong cinema in the National Security Law era (2020—) as allegories of compassion in extraordinary times. As Ninotchka realised in tipsiness, “Wars will wash over us, bombs will fall, all civilisation will crumble, but not yet, please. Wait, wait, what’s the hurry? Let us be happy. Give us our moment.”
Dr. Jessica Siu-yin Yeung is research assistant professor at the Centre for Film and Creative Industries of Lingnan University. Her research interests are Asia’s Cold War cinema and culture (especially comedies) and Chinese-dialect cinemas (especially Cantonese and Taiwanese language). Her essays have appeared in Cultural History, Archiv orientální, Journal of World Literature, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, and some anthologies. She is working on a few journal articles on early Hong Kong Cantonese cinema (1914–41), post-2019 Hong Kong cinema, Cantonese opera stardom, and Taiwan literature, and writing a book on allegorical films from Taiwan and Hong Kong (Edinburgh University Press). Her latest publication is a book chapter on Stephen Chow’s Bond spoofs in The Cinema of Stephen Chow (Bloomsbury), and another book chapter on Hong Kong-Taiwanese film circulation and mutual influences is forthcoming this November in Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered (Edinburgh University Press). She is coediting a special issue on Hidden Luminaries: Obscure Actresses and Women Filmmakers in Chinese Film History at the Journal of Chinese Cinemas and ReFocus: The Films of Chor Yuen (Edinburgh University Press).