Hong Kong Crime Films : Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947-1986

Van den Troost, Kristof

Edinburgh University Press（2025/05発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 256 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781399521772
• DDC分類 791.43655095125

Full Description

Hong Kong Crime Films is the first book detailing the post-war history of the genre before the release of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986), the film that put Hong Kong action-crime on the global map. Focusing on what it calls the mode of 'criminal realism' in the crime film, the book shows how depictions of Hong Kong's social reality (including crime) were for decades anxiously policed by colonial censors, and how crime films tended (and still tend) to confound and transgress critical definitions of realism.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Hong Kong Crime Films covers several neglected topics in the study of Hong Kong cinema, such as the evolving generic landscape of the crime film prior to the 1980s, the influence of colonial film censorship on the genre, and the prominence and contestation of "realism" in the local history of the crime film.

Contents

List of Figures

Tables

Acknowledgements

Notes on Transliteration

Introduction: Criminal Realism

Part I: The Generic Landscape of the Post-War Hong Kong Crime Film, 1947-1969

Gangsters and Unofficial Justice Fighters: Realist Lunlipian versus Action-Adventure Films

Detectives and Suspense Thrillers: Remaking Hitchcock in Hong Kong

Intermezzo: Censorship of Cinematic Crime and Violence in Colonial Hong Kong

Part II: The Modern Hong Kong Crime Film, Criminal Realism and Hong Kong Identity, 1969-1986

A New Form of Criminal Realism

Crime Films and Hong Kong Identity

The New Wave, Critical Discourse and Deepening Localisation

Afterword: The Uncertain Present and Future of Criminal Realism in Hong Kong

Glossary

Filmography

Bibliography

Index