8 THE POLITICS ARE PERSONAL
In the Mood for Love Wong Kar-Wei (2000) China
Wong, Kar-Wai. In the Mood for Love. The Criterion Collection. 2000.
There are three Chinas: Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Mainland China was closed off from much of the world under Chairman Mao Zedong who controlled China from October 1st, 1949 to his death in 1976.
Hong Kong was an independent city under British control until 1997 when it reverted to China.
When the Chinese Government was exiled after the social revolution in 1949, they went to Taiwan, the island formerly known as Formosa. The United States had diplomatic relations with the Nationalist Government and did not recognize Mainland China, but instead maintained relations with the former government in Taiwan. This island nation is officially known as The Republic of China.
Martial Arts movies have been central to film production since the first Chinese filmmakers. Chinese Martial Arts, known as Kung Fu or Wuxia films are similar in some ways to Samurai movies, they are set in the classical period. But unlike the aristocratic Samurai who serves a lord or shogun, the Wuxia fighter is independent, often a peasant, and sometimes a woman.
The first Chinese film center was in Shanghai on the mainland. Zhang Shichuan co-founded Mingxing Film Company (Star Films) with Zheng Zhenqiu in 1922. He directed 150 movies. The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, adapted from the novel The Tale of the Extraordinary Swordsmen, was China’s first Martial Arts movie. It was 27 hours long, filmed and released in sixteen parts between 1928 and 1931, kind of like the Star Wars movies.
In 1931, Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Government banned Martial Arts Movies. Mingxing Studios was destroyed by Japanese bombs in the Battle of Shanghai. Nearly all of Zhang’s Martial Arts movies were destroyed by the Japanese or the Chinese Nationalist government.
The Shaw Brothers, Run Run, Runje, and Runme, moved their production studio from Shanghai to Hong Kong before the Japanese invasion. By 1961, Shaw Productions was the largest privately owned production company in the world.[1]
The Shaw Brothers produced King Hu’s debut Wuxia film from Taiwan, Come Drink With Me. The film features a young female martial artist who fights the oppressors and avenges the innocent.[2]
Bruce Lee, the Chinese Martial Arts master who brought Kung Fu Movies to the World was born in the United States in 1940, grew up in Kowloon, Hong Kong, attended college at the University of Washington, then began making movies in Hong Kong with the Shaw Brothers’ production company, Movietown.[3]
Wong Kar-Wai was born in 1958 in Shanghai. Chungking Express was the first in his Hong Kong Trilogy. The other two films are Fallen Angels and Happy Together, which won Best Director at Cannes.
In the Mood for Love is about two people exiled from Shanghai in British Hong Kong. They move into an apartment building on the same day and gradually realize that their respective spouses are cheating on them with each other.
Initially they play the parts of their spouses: eating what the husband or wife eats for dinner, imagining what the other couple are saying to each other. As they play these parts with each other, they become friends and collaborators. Mr. Chow is a writer. He lends his martial arts books to Mrs. Chan. Then he suggests they try to collaborate to write a martial arts series together. Through this creative process, they fall in love, but unlike their spouses they refuse to cheat and they go to great lengths to avoid being caught in their chaste collaboration.
Mr. Chow takes a job in Singapore. Mrs. Chan goes to see him, she goes to his apartment, calls his office, but doesn’t say anything. He sees her cigarette and knows she was there. Three years later, she returns to Hong Kong, and moves back into the apartment building with her child.
In 1966, the Cultural Revolution was beginning in Mainland China and some Chinese left for the open economy of Hong Kong. When Mao Zedong rose to power, Red China closed to the west. If these characters seem lonely, isolated, and cut off from friends and family, it’s due to this historical moment when they left their country and home for fear and for opportunity.
Wong collaborated with Cinematographer Christopher Doyle on many of his early films. This collaboration helped to raise awareness of his work as a director in the US and the UK.
Mise-en-Scene is a French term that means what’s in the picture frame in film. In many scenes, In the Mood for Love presents characters in a closed form. They are surrounded by high walls and confining alleys. When they enter their apartment buildings they often need to pass by the neighbors in cramped hallways. In one scene Mrs. Chan is trapped in Mr. Chow’s apartment when a neighbor comes home earlier than they expected. These two characters are constrained by society and are often presented trapped against a wall or stuck in the rain. This is not a story of liberation, it’s a story of constraint.
The title of the film was originally A Story of Food. It was filmed in Hong Kong and in the Cambodian Holy City of Angkor Wat. Wong was editing the film to submit it to the Cannes Film Festival, when the director of the festival suggested he change the title.
He chose In the Mood for Love.
- Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford, New York, 1996, pp. 707-708 ↵
- George Chun Han Wang (2010) King Hu and Run Run Shaw: the clash of two cinema legends, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 4:2, pp. 127-142, DOI: 10.1386/jcc.4.2.127_1 ↵
- Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford, New York, 1996, p. 708 ↵