This March, Spectacle Theater dives into the longstanding tradition of the Lunar New Year movie with a pair of Hong Kong holiday classics.
The Lunar New Year movie, or hesuipian (贺岁片), is a tradition dating back to the early years of the Hong Kong film industry, with the February 1937 release of Tan Xiaodan’s BLOOM AND PROSPER timed to coincide with the holiday. By the 1980s, the term took on a whole new meaning beyond just a film’s release date. Lunar New Year movies came to be seen as something of a genre all their own— widely-marketed, crowd-pleasing films, often blending elements of comedy, romance, action, and fantasy, and highlighting the festivities, teachings, and customs typically associated with the holiday.
Join us this month as we (belatedly) ring in the Year of the Dragon with these two timeless New Years classics, each a celebration of food, family, and good fortune in the year ahead.
IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD
(富貴逼人)
dir. Clifton Ko Chi-sum, 1987
Hong Kong. 100 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 9 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 PM
TV reporter, Bill (Bill Tung), struggles to make ends meet to support his wife, Lydia (Lydia Sum), and three daughters in a rapidly changing Hong Kong. When Lydia wins the lottery, Bill assumes all their family’s prayers will finally be answered. Yet after a series of compounding mishaps, misunderstandings, and misadventures, Bill begins to wonder if this stroke of good fortune may have ultimately changed the family’s luck for the worse.
Next to the Hui Brothers, who effectively revitalized the concept of the Lunar New Year movie in the early 1980s, Clifton Ko may be the name most closely associated with the tradition. Released on New Years Eve 1987, IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD became hugely popular on its initial run, spawning a string of successful sequels and helping shape the humor, style, and feel-good tone of New Years movies in the years to come.
THE CHINESE FEAST
(金玉滿堂)
dir. Tsui Hark, 1995
Hong Kong. 100 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.
TUESDAY, MARCH 5 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 15 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 30 – 5 PM
Chiu (Leslie Cheung) is a triad looking to start a new life as a chef in Canada, starting at the very bottom under the stewardship of overly critical restaurateur, Au (Law Kar-ying). Au, meanwhile, is fighting to save his restaurant against a takeover by the shady, faceless megacorporation, Super Group. When Au and Super Group’s leader agree to a cooking contest at the prestigious Qing Han Imperial Feast, Chiu seeks out the aid of Kit (Kenny Bee), a once renowned master chef whose life was left in shambles following a major personal and professional embarrassment.
Tsui Hark’s food-centric ensemble comedy re-united him with former Cinema City cohort, Raymond Wong, fresh off producing three consecutive, highly successful New Years releases, ALL’S WELL, ENDS WELL (1992), ALL’S WELL, ENDS WELL TOO (1993), and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1994), all directed by Clifton Ko. The film is a testament to Tsui’s versatility as a director, hitting all the right comedic and feel-good beats in keeping with its New Years stylings, while still maintaining the kineticism and grandeur of the wuxia and heroic bloodshed work he’d been best known for. But historical context aside, this is basically “food porn, but with martial arts choreography by Yuen Bun,” and there shouldn’t be much more we need to say to sell this one.