The myth of Chinese cinema : the post-loyalist complex in Hong Kong rightist Mandarin films in the 1950-60s = 「中國電影」的迷思 : 二十世紀五、六十年代香港右翼國語片的後遺民情結

Abstract

Since the 1950s, Hong Kong’s right-wing film companies had worked closely with the Taiwan government. This group of Chinese filmmakers made Hong Kong into the cradle of “Free China” cinema. Motion Picture & General Investment Co Ltd. and Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd. relied on the studio system to become the backbone of film cooperation between Hong Kong and Taiwan. With the support of the government of the Republic of China, the two companies promoted their Mandarin-language films globally in the name of “Chinese Cinema” (Zhongguo Dianying). This thesis redefines the concept of Post-loyalism as a perspective to explore the internal tensions of Chinese cinema dominated by the “free world” during the Cold War. It takes two cases, The Vengeance of The Vampire (1959) and Beauty Parade (1961), produced by MP&GI and Shaw Brothers, as well as two genres of films, namely, orphan films and anti-Japanese films, as research objects. By combining the investigation of geopolitical relations, the methodology of film measurement and archival research, and film analysis, this thesis examines how these companies, faced with the crisis of the immigrant community, Hong Kong-British censorship, and the shrinking of Chinese film market, adopted production strategies of “removing the Kuomintang disciplinary discourse”, “ambiguating the concept of the nation”, and “distorting nationalist narratives”, to make Hong Kong’s right-wing Mandarin films deviate from the KMT government’s political narrative, and to demonstrate the characteristics of local unconsciousness. This reconstruction of the process is beneficial for re-evaluating Mandarin-language films in the history of Hong Kong cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, and also helps to rethink the paradigm of Hong Kong film historiography that describes Hong Kong right-wing Mandarin films as diasporic stories.