The Hong Kong Crime Film: Genre and Film Noir from the 1940s to the Present

The crime film has been one of the most important genres in Hong Kong cinema for the last thirty years. This dissertation examines the development of the crime film genre in Hong Kong from the late 1940s to the present. By taking a genre approach to Hong Kong's cinematic history, it supplements recent auteur- and studio-centered scholarship, and sheds light on the rarely explored pre-1980s history of the crime film. This historical approach in tum contributes to a better understanding of more recent films. Genre here has been understood not as a clearly delimited structure with fixed narrative and visual conventions, but as a loose framework with an inherent drive towards innovation and variation.;While this study gives a historical overview of the Hong Kong crime film, it pays particular attention to the presence of local films noirs. Arguing that noirish Hong Kong films were made since the late 1940s, recent claims that noir is a new phenomenon in Hong Kong are questioned. At the same time, it is suggested that a distinctly local noir sentiment has grown central to the crime film in the past fifteen years. The dissertation traces back this recent development to the origins of the "modern" Hong Kong crime film in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in particular to its roots in the martial arts genre. Director Johnnie To and his Milkyway Image company are considered to have spearheaded the current predominance of bleak sentiments in Hong Kong crime films, so their work serves as a case study in the final chapter.;The goal of this dissertation is threefold. First, it aims to complement the dominant, "identity" -driven research of Hong Kong cinema and demonstrate the advantages of a historical genre approach. Second, it strives to strengthen the film studies argument that film noir is neither a genre in the usual sense of the word, nor an exclusively American phenomenon. Finally, it sets out to explore the relationship between film and society, in order to qualify overly reflectionist readings of Hong Kong films.