Global music/local cinema: Two Wong Kar-wai pop compilations

Abstract

<p>Primarily as a result of his own statements in various interviews, much ink has been spilled over Wong Kar-wai's literary tastes and cinephilia. The names Murakami, Cortazar, Puig, Garcia Marquez and Liu Yichang on the one hand and Hitchcock, Suzuki, Scorsese, Bertolucci and Antonioni on the other appear with increasing frequency in the literature on his cinema. And yet the extent of the influence of these texts and authors on Wong's cinema remains unclear. This is not only because I am naturally skeptical of directors' statements about their own work, but also because tracing influences sheds only partial light on the finished product. The texts and materials that are said to have played a major role are often not so much models dutifully transposed or transformed but rather ways of getting started, little more than a springboard. They are for Wong but another element in a heady mix of influences, ranging from modernist novels to narrative, visual and aural motifs drawn from local films and popular culture. High and low, new and old, and local and global are all thrown onto a blank canvas, one that assumes shape, relief and perspective only during the notoriously crucial and, in Wong's case, often extremely laborious process of editing.</p>