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Richard James Havis

Directed by Leong Po-chih (or Leung Po-chi) in 1984, Hong Kong 1941 is an unflinching look at the horrors of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.
In the film, Chow Yun-fat, Cecilia Yip Tung and Alex Man Chi-leung play a trio of friends who try to survive the privations and degradations of the invasion while plotting their escape.
Here we discuss it with film historian Frank Djeng, who provided the commentary for the film’s Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray release.
Hong Kong 1941 really gets to grips with what happened to ordinary people during the Japanese invasion, doesn’t it?
Yes. Very few Hong Kong films have dealt with war seriously, and only a few, like Love in a Fallen City, have been made involving the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong 1941 is very character driven – there’s a love triangle, which has two guys loving the same girl, in the first third. Then the Japanese invasion erupts into the story, with all the atrocities that it brings.


But even though it’s about the Japanese invasion and all the terrible things the Japanese did, Leong manages to keep the characters’ story in the foreground – how are they going to escape? It really emphasises the friendship that grows between them.
Chow Yun-fat’s character pretends to collaborate with the Japanese just to help his friends get through everything, and he keeps on helping them right up to the very end, when he makes the ultimate sacrifice for them.
Leong doesn’t shy away from depicting the brutality of the Japanese.
Yes. There is even a shot from a real newsreel of Japanese soldiers impaling a Chinese baby on a bayonet. That really happened, it was an actual picture from China.

In 1984 Hong Kong people did know what happened during the Japanese invasion of China – back in 1980 there was a documentary called Rising Sun about the Japanese invasion, which had played in cinemas.
That went to number one when it was released; it even beat Jackie Chan’s The Young Master. I saw it when I was growing up, in junior school – in fact, I went to see it twice. They didn’t teach Chinese history until you were in secondary school, so I learned a lot from that film.
There are scenes of Hongkongers who were working with the Japanese military and profiting from the invasion. Did Hongkongers in 1984 know about that?
People all knew about what the Japanese did, the atrocities, but not much had been said about the collaborators. We were familiar with people in mainland China working with the Japanese invaders – that had been shown in other films – but nobody really knew about collaborators in Hong Kong.

That was quite controversial, and people who saw Hong Kong 1941 were asking: were we really that bad, how could we have done that?
Some people criticised the film for showing the evil police chief and the gangsters who worked for the Japanese. But it was real. Some people did take advantage of the chaos to make money.
Leong grew up in England and studied filmmaking in London. Is that reflected in Hong Kong 1941?
Yes. Leong’s style of storytelling is low-key in the British style. It’s a bit like a Hong Kong version of John Boorman’s Hope and Glory, which was about the Blitz in London. But Leong’s film is not about kids, it’s about adults.

It was quite a low-budget film, so not much of the actual invasion is shown on screen. But that’s not something you notice, as it’s very well made.
All Leung needed to do was show glass breaking in the windows, and a man looking up, and we know what’s going on. He didn’t have the money to show soldiers and planes attacking, so he carefully selected images to infer that, to give you the idea of how terrible the invasion was.
The idea of having three equal protagonists is very Chinese.
Two protagonists is American-style, but there are often three protagonists in Hong Kong films. Because of local film history – the “bromance” films of Chang Cheh and then John Woo – the audience has become very used to a trio.
Also, I think Leong and his screenwriter John Chan Koon-chung realised that having two guys in love with one girl gave them the means to do something more interesting with the storyline. It added the extra interest of which one would finally end up with her.

Leong is a Hong Kong New Wave director, but his works are quite hard to categorise.
He makes interesting films, and he’s very hard to pigeonhole. He’s considered an art-house director even though his first two films, Jumping Ash – which he co-directed with Josephine Siao Fong-fong – and the ambitious Foxbat are more commercial.
He worked for the BBC in the UK doing editing on the current affairs show Panorama, and then he went to Hong Kong broadcaster TVB. He also made the comedy film Itchy Fingers, which I loved as a kid.
His films became more art-house when he joined the D&B [Films] studio, which produced Hong Kong 1941.
Cecilia Yip puts in a very natural performance. It’s quite early in her career – was she still up and coming?
She was up and coming, but her acting in Patrick Tam Ka-ming’s Nomad had already made her notable – she was regarded as a good actress from the get-go. She is nuanced and there are a lot of layers to her performances.

Patrick Tam was a kind of mentor to her, and I think that she was so impressive in Nomad that Leong invited her to make this film.
How about Alex Man? He was mainly a TV actor, wasn’t he?
Yes, and his performances were always over-the-top melodramatic on TV. This is one of his best ever performances as he keeps his emotions in check. After Hong Kong 1941, he went back to his over-the-top style, though.
Chow Yun-fat is charming here. Was he still in his “box-office poison” phase?
Things were changing for Chow in 1984, he was moving away from that reputation; you can see that he is a star in the making here.

As with Love in A Fallen City, which also came out in 1984, you can see him gaining more confidence. He is less wooden, he shows his emotions more, and his mischievous smile comes to the fore.
His performances deepened with Love Unto Waste, then everything changed with A Better Tomorrow.
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.
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Alex Man and Cecilia Yip Tung in a still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

(From left) Chow Yun-fat, Cecilia Yip Tung and Alex Man Chi-leung in a still from Hong Kong 1941, set during the Japanese military occupation of Hong Kong. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

Chow Yun-fat (centre, with cigarette) in a still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

Chow Yun-fat (left) and Alex Man in a still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

Cecilia Yip and Chow Yun-fat in a still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

A still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

Alex Man and Cecilia Yip in a still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

Chow Yun-fat in a still from Hong Kong 1941. Photo: Eureka Entertainment

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1984 Leong Po-chih film with Chow Yun-fat as one of a trio of friends stays character driven while showing Japanese atrocities, expert says


1984 Leong Po-chih film with Chow Yun-fat as one of a trio of friends stays character driven while showing Japanese atrocities, expert says.
