The Magic Stone - Nancy Kwan (1966) - Lung Shuen Wan, High Island

Next up is one of the films I have been trying to track down for several years, ever since I first read about it in Peter Moss' excellent autobiography No Babylon: A Hong Kong Scrapbook. In that book he describes visiting the set in a helicopter and ruining it all as the chopper's downdraft blew all the carefully arranged straw all over the place. The book also details how Nancy Kwan came to be involved in this little production despite already being a major international star: T.C Wang, head of Salon Films, was the person responsible for introducing Nancy to the producer of The World of Suzie Wong, therefore helping launch her career. So her role in this short was very much the repayment of a pesonal debt. Chaplin Chang, credited as the AD on this, also filled in some details for me and told me that T.C Wang was a very good friend of Nancy's father, Kwan Wing Hong.

Foreign film fans may or may not be aware that Salon Films - set up by T.C Wang - was the local production house that had an exlcusive license for Panavision in Hong Kong. This meant that if you came to Hong Kong and used Panavision equipment, you would have to pay Salon Films a license fee - regardless of whether or not the equipment was hired from them. After T.C Wang's death, his son Charles took over. You may recall many years ago I had a post featuring Neil MacDonald, who worked with Salon on many of the films featured on the blog. You can see that post here. Salon were involved in many of the foreign movie productions that I have covered over the years. This film is hard to categorise: is it a foreign production or a local one? Strictly speaking it could be either, but I've added it to the list of foreign/overseas productions because it was aimed at an overseas market.

After looking high and low for this film, it has suddenly popped up on the Government Record Services webpage. This makes sense because it was a Government production aimed at stimulating some tourism. Anyway, you can watch it yourself by going to this page and scrolling down to the "Videos" icon. The film is the longest of four shorts to view. No doubt this link will break at some point in the future so catch it while you can.

The premise is simple and is just a retelling of the myth of A-Mah Rock (aka 望夫石 Mong Fu Shek - looking for husband rock). Nancy plays the wife and Ling Yuen plays the fisherman husband. It's basically a silent movie with some narration.

The main filming took place in and around Lung Shuen Wan, the main bay on the south side of High Island. It has changed surprisingly little since 1966, but this is true of many remote places in Hong Kong. I'll get into specific locations in the next couple of posts - sadly this film isn't going to provide much for the blog due to the limited number of identifiable places - so to start off here are some general views of the bay area.