But there is still something different about this film from the other members of its Triad genre.
For sure, it is the degree to which As Tears Go By conforms to the Triad film genre that accounts for much of its popularity with the youthful cinema-attending public. Wong Kar Wai’s As Tears Go By was produced in this setting. These included Woo’s own A Better Tomorrow II ( Ying Hung Boon Sik II, 1987), The Killer ( Dip Huet Seung Hung, 1989), Bullet in the Head ( Die Xue Jie Tou, 1990), and Hard-Boiled ( Lat Sau San Taam, 1992). The success of his A Better Tomorrow was enormous and led immediately to its own genre of copycat Hong Kong Triad films that followed. He added to the mix by injecting his own dynamic cinematography and the supercool actor Chow Yun-Fat (Zhōu Rùnfā). John Woo was prominent among those who updated the Chinese Wuxia narrative to the contemporary Hong Kong Triad gang scene. To a Western reader this obsession with honour, the drive for revenge, and the maintenance of “face” may go beyond the bounds of believability, but these stories have had a considerable hold on the Chinese-reading public, particularly the young. The hero of the Wuxia stories is always fantastically loyal to the “code” of his brotherhood and to his comrades and is capable of great acts of endurance in order to uphold his honour. The Wuxia literature had early precedents, but became explicitly popular in the early 20th century and experienced a big revival in the 1980s. It could be likened to the “Cowboy” stories of the American Old West, which also had specific features identifying its genre.
This is a stylized literary genre that concerned martial arts heroes engaged in heroic pursuits in ancient China. The background to all this was the Wuxia literature of Chinese culture. The community then experienced another quantum leap in popularity with the release of John Woo’s dazzling Triad gangster film, A Better Tomorrow ( Ying Hung Boon Sik) in 1986, which featured amazingly orchestrated hyperkinetic action shots, plenty of blood, and cold-blooded assassins. The Hong Kong filmmaking scene had boomed in the 1980s thanks to the Cinema-City-produced action/adventure films of Tsui Hark and Wong Jing. Reexamining this first film, then, offers an opportunity to take a look at what it is that distinguishes Wong’s peculiar aesthetics, which are so popular with his fanatic admirers and at the same time largely soporific or annoying to much of the general public.įirst consider the milieu in which As Tears Go By was produced. One could say that the two audiences, Wong’s followers and the general filmgoing public, view the film from two entirely different perspectives. In fact its considerable commercial success provided Wong with the financial backing and security to enable him to engage in his more adventurous stylistic efforts that were to follow. Yet for the general public, it has been by far his most successful offering and was nominated for ten Hong Kong Film Awards, including those for best picture, director, cinematographer, and leading actor and actress. As Tears Go By ( Wong Gok Ka Moon), the first outing of Hong Kong film director Wong Kar Wai (Wáng Jiāwèi), is ranked by his devoted followers as only moderately good – a cautious first production that does not display the full flower of his later achievements.
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