Hafen der Düfte - Veronica Ferres 2013 - Stonecutters Bridge

As Victoria makes her way from the airport into town we are treated to a view of the Stonecutters Bridge connecting West Kowloon with Tsing Yi Island. It's a view we come back to later in the film as well. The dark edge at the bottom of image 3 indicates that the cameraman was most likely positioned looking out from a floor of the Goodman Interlink building, next to the bridge.

Hafen der Düfte - Veronica Ferres 2013 - View from the Peak

The next film for the location dive is a German TV movie called Hafen der Düfte or The Hong Kong Affair. I found this one completely by accident as I was doing my usual periodic scan of the internet for a much sought-after film, Hong Kong Affair, made entirely in Hong Kong in 1958 at the old Cathay Studios (which later became Golden Harvest Studios).

The German film stars Veronica Ferres as Victoria Philips, an antique art expert who is brought to Hong Kong to front an antiques exhiition, only to have the antiques stolen from their mainland temple a few days before they are due to be shipped. Russell Wong pops up as a roguish antique dealer/criminal who takes a fancy to her.

In terms of locations, many of the proper, actor-on-location shots were actually filmed in Malaysia, and I tracked down at least three places supposedly in Hong Kong that are actually in Kuala Lumpur or Putrajaya. The most amusing was the local police station that is in reality a high school in KL, and quite clearly has its school name across the front entrance in Chinese. Not a single attempt to cover it up. It reminded me of the old movies I've covered that used stock images, ignorantly or otherwise, of other parts of China (usually Shanghai) to portray Hong Kong hoping no one will notice. It's a bit insulting to be honest. 

Anyway, other than that small gripe, the film has some nice travelogue style images of Hong Kong used for establishing and transitional shots and footage. Certainly enough to warrant a few posts. You can watch the movie yourself courtesy of the HD version uploaded to Youtube (kannst du deutsch sprechen?). In the meantime, here is the initial Hong Kong opening image of the harbour.

Flight Crew - Danila Koslovsky (2016) - Brief Glimpse of Central

As I continue to scrape the barrel for HK-related foreign movies to include, I figured it would be a good time to start featuring films that have only very brief glimpses of Hong Kong. I guess I already started this with The Gray Man (and its single composite view from The Peak overlayed with a house in Los Angeles) but there are actually quite a lot of movies out there that although aren't set here they do quickly show some local scene as part of the storyline.

In this instance, its a film called Flight Crew (or simply The Crew, or even Экипаж in its native Russian). It stars Danila Koslovksy as Alexey, an ex-military pilot who switches to commercial flying under the watchful eye of a mentor, Leonid (Vladimir Mashkov). Alexey consistently crashes in the simulator but Leonid gives him a chance and is left humbled when Alexey performs and evasive manoeuvre during a landing to avoid another plane that Leonid had failed to notice.

Anyway, the pair end up landing in a volcanic disaster zone to help evacuate stranded people, against strict orders, and end up being punished despite saving lives. The movie is a bit hard to track down but someone has uploaded a partially (and, in parts, hilariously) dubbed version to Youtube. 

It's included here because of a "Brief Glimpse" of Central as part of a montage of all the places that the two pilots are supposedly flying to during their day-to-day duties. The single screen shot is included below.

Just Heroes - David Chiang (1989) - 40 Island Road, Deepwater Bay

The main gangster house where they all meet for the will reading, and of course where the explosive finale is set, was filmed at what was #40 Island Road.

Past form on this blog has shown that when a film (specifically John Woo ones) uses a property for explosive shootouts (see Hard Boiled, The Killer), it was because the place was about to be demolished so no one cared what happened to it. It seems that this was also the case for this property as well until someone offered to buy it and extended a lifeline, at least for a few years, by former model, Sally Mount and her investor husband, Duncan.

I have a book in my hand that claims the property was built in 1940 for Sir Run Run Shaw, but the timeline feels off for me as I don't believe Sir Run Run was in Hong Kong at that time, but I could be wrong. However, it does confirm some rumours I heard previously that Shaw owned a property in Deepwater Bay. This also ties in with the fact that this film was made to raise money for Chang Cheh, one of Shaw's most prolific directors. Someone mentioned on Gwulo that Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore, used to stay here when he visited Hong Kong. Knowing Shaw's ties with Singapore this doesn't surprise me.

Sadly, the lifeline was only for a few more years as the Mounts sold up in 1996, following five or six years of renovations, and set a territory sales record for the property at HK$163million. Looking at aerial images, it looks like the property remained until circa 2000 before finally getting demolished and redeveloped into a row of much more valuable but aesthetically underwhelming luxury townhouses.