How ‘middle class’ Hong Kong movie studio D&B Films became one of the most respected

By the mid-1980s, Hong Kong’s once-powerful Shaw Brothers studio had stopped producing films, and the city’s film industry was dominated by Shaw’s former rival Golden Harvest and the newer, comedy-oriented studio Cinema City. Into this melee stepped an unexpected competitor: D&B Films, owned by Dickson Poon, a wealthy watch retailer with no experience of the film industry. With the help of martial arts star Sammo Hung Kam-bo and John Sham Kin-fun, a celebrity, radio personality and bit-part actor with some film production experience, D&B Films quickly established itself as a force to be reckoned with after launching in 1984. It made commercial hits such as Yes, Madam!, which launched the action-movie careers of both Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock, and also produced a line of more auteur-like films – referred to internally as “C pictures” – such as Leong Po-chih’s dramatic wartime tale Hong Kong 1941 and Derek Yee Tung-sing’s comic take on mental illness, The Lunatics. Quickly frustrated by the low number of cinema screens he could show his films on under an arrangement with Golden Harvest, which ran a chain of cinemas as well as a production company, Poon courageously assembled the Dickson cinema chain to screen the D&B productions. The gamble paid off, and the chain was a success. It was also a spur to production, as D&B now had to make around 24 films a year to fill all the screening slots at its cinemas. After a few years, D&B films began to reflect the attitudes and culture of the new middle class that had arisen in the then-British colony in the 1970s and early 1980s, and it was often called the “middle class” film company. “D&B productions are diverse,” wrote critic Sam Ho in the book The D&B Story. “In the early days, The Return of Pom Pom (1984) and The Owl vs Bumbo (1984) are typical mainstream comedies, a mishmash of action, slapstick comedy, and romance … [while] the Yes, Madam series is a female version of the seasoned police story.” “However, as a major film company, D&B’s unique and memorable works are a collection of non-mainstream titles, especially those made in the first few years when John Sham was calling the shots,” Ho wrote. D&B gave Stephen Chow Sing-chi his first big break with 1990’s Love Is Love, a story about a country boy in the big city that co-starred Sandra Ng Kwan-yue. Why did Poon, a foreign-educated scion of an extremely wealthy family, decide to step into the rough-and-tumble world of Hong Kong film production? No one knows. D&B films did feature placements of the luxury brands Poon sold in his stores in the opening credits, and the films themselves gradually changed to appeal to the upmarket tastes of the customers of his retail business. But he needed neither the publicity nor the money from his film operation. All that is known for certain is that Poon proved to be an exceptionally good film boss. He generally kept out of the creative side of filmmaking, leaving that to the directors and producers he hired. But he was devoted to D&B, ran the business side with skill, and always ensured that his creative people had the resources they needed. Sammo Hung, a film industry veteran even in the 1980s, liked and respected Poon, and praised his decisiveness and business acumen. Like most Hong Kong film bosses, Poon had to approve every film project himself. He did require that the films were commercial enough to make money, but he would sign off on smaller, more arty projects, like Stanley Kwan’s Love Unto Waste, usually at the behest of Sham. The creative side of D&B was left to Sham and Hung, who had become involved via his friendship with Sham even though Hung was running Golden Harvest’s production arm at the time – a job he continued to do. “We were all friends,” Hung said. “When John Sham proposed starting up D&B, I offered to help. That was it. Golden Harvest had no objections.” Hung was active in the company at the start, and was instrumental in setting its direction. Hung and his team worked uncredited with Cory Yuen Kwai on the action scenes of Yes, Madam!, and Hung appeared in front of the cameras in Where’s Officer Tuba? But Hung effectively left the company around the time D&B set up its own cinema chain, gravitating back to Golden Harvest. The artier films came from Sham, who not only supervised big commercial films like the expensive all-action Magnificent Warriors, but greenlit smaller, more personal films like Sylvia Chang Ai-chia’s middle-class romance Passion. Occasionally these films paid off at the box-office; Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting’s New York romance An Autumn’s Tale was a big hit. Sham fell out with Poon when the boss – who had married his star Michelle Yeoh – wanted Yeoh, who was recovering from injuries sustained doing film stunts, to appear in the comedy Easy Money. Sham felt that this would harm the action heroine persona they had carefully constructed for her. At this point Stephen Shin Kei-yin, who had directed films for the company, stepped into Sham’s shoes, whereupon D&B’s output generally became more low-key, consisting of light dramas such as Shin’s 1988 film Heart to Hearts, and the occasional action film such as Black Cat, which featured D&B starlet Jade Leung Ching. “Under Shin, the company produced lighthearted and modestly budgeted films that delivered positive, meaningful messages in which the audiences could find little pieces of themselves,” Ho wrote in The D&B Story. But fashions changed, D&B’s market share declined amid the new wave of martial arts films of the 1990s, and Poon closed the company down in 1992. Although its time was short, D&B left a well-respected and unique film library as its legacy. Shin summed up the reasons for its success in an interview with the Hong Kong Film Archive. “D&B had a strict code of practice. We did not produce [adult-only] Category III films, period films, or films with prostitution, drug use and gambling. “If that content turned up in the narrative of a film, it was not treated in a gratuitous manner. This fitted with the company’s affiliated brands. Our overall direction was to promote middle class values.” In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

How ‘middle class’ Hong Kong movie studio D&B Films became one of the most respected

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}D&B films, started by watch retailer Dickson Poon, launched Michelle Yeoh’s action-movie career and was known for its ‘middle class values’

D&B films, started by watch retailer Dickson Poon, launched Michelle Yeoh’s action-movie career and was known for its ‘middle class values’