The Guiding Light - Bruce Lee (1953) - View across Kwun Chung

Continuing the early childhood movies of Bruce Lee,next up we have The Guiding Light (aka A Son is Born or 苦海明燈 in Chinese). Lee was 12 years old when he made this one and features prominently playing the central character of Tin-sang for much of the middle part of the story. It centres on an illegitimate boy born to a maid and her obnoxiously rich, married employer, who is then passed around like an unwanted gift as various people struggle with, or completely disregard, their responsibilities. He eventually finds refuge with a charitable family who run an eye clinic/women's finishing school and goes on to be a famed opthalmologist who manages to cure his friend's blindness.

Like other movies of the era, there are some outdoor location shots but they tend to be a bit fleeting. However, there is enough in the film to warrant coverage here so we'll start with one of the opening scenes of a view across Kwun Chung (the area people tend to mistakenly refer to these days as "Jordan" thanks to the name of the nearby MTR station). This image shows the cluster of tenements that were crammed into the blocks between Austin Road (on the left) and Jordan Road (off camera to the right). The large building at the far left was the northernmost block of the Canton Road Police Married Quarters. These were only just opened in February 1953 which means they would have been brand new when this film was made. They were demolished circa 1997 and replaced by "The Victoria Towers" residential development.