The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon

The Seventh Sin is a 1957 remake of The Painted Veil written by W. Somerset Maugham. It was directed by Ronald Neame, who incidentally also directed two other films I have covered in the blog: Gambit and Meteor.

It stars Eleanor Parker as Carol, the unhappy wife of a doctor in post-war Hong Kong who is caught in her infidelity by her husband and given an ultimatum to accompany him into Mainland China to help him in his medical work in a remote village.

Initially I thought this would be another library-footage-film with some typical stock footage of Hong Kong, but it looks as though there was an actual second unit here in HK filming location shots, albeit without the real actors. I could be wrong and haven't delved enough yet but the Hong Kong footage here almost certainly was specially shot for this film. For scenes involving the characters, it's very much in the same method that Neame used for his Kowloon shots in Gambit, i.e. a stand-in who is always too far away, or facing away from the camera, to be properly identified.

The film opens with an expansive view across Kowloon towards the western harbour and although the opening credits obscure the view somewhat, it does crop up again later in a scene as the husband (played by Bill Travers) returns home in his car with the camera at the exact same location.

The switchback in the road, coupled with the general view and presence of Lion Rock on the right hand side of the screen, means that this was shot where Jat's Incline joins with Fei Ngo Shan Road on Kowloon Peak.