The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - Hung Shing Temple, Ap Lei Chau

Some more back projection for some scenes in the supposed rural location that Carol and Walter head to. In the background is a rather large temple building and this is the Hung Shing Temple on Ap Lei Chau. It's undergone a fair amount of remodelling recently, but you can see the general shape of the same side from this fleeting glimpse in The World of Suzie Wong, shot 3 years later.

Again, the various scenes involving the characters on-location were filmed with doubles (first image) and then footage of the same area was used for back projection for later scenes (next two images) involving the actors and dialogue. The final image below is another on-location shot filmed by the second unit.

Body doubles for the on-location filming

Back projection for the US-based actors

The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - Connaught Road, Central

It's a bit blurry, but there is a scene whereby Carol and Walter head to the docks in a car in order to catch the boat to their rural destination. The scene is a mix of on-location footage that doesn't show the actors faces, and then a face shot (of Eleanor Parker, as she turns to camera) using a back projection of the same footage. The location itself was next to the pier where the Alexander Grantham Fireboat was based. I believe this was at the Government pier on the waterfront where Wing Wo Street meets Connaught Road.

These first two images show the Govt pier and the fireboat moored there

The car stops just past the Govt pier and "Carol" walks to the waterfront.
Of course, this was a stand-in for Eleanor Parker, who wasn't in HK.

This next shot uses back projection as Eleanor Parker turns to camera.

Back to the stand-in as Carol walks to board the boat

Following the boarding of their transport, the next bit of footage shows the boat as it pulls away from the waterfront. This is still the area between the old Govt pier (behind camera) and the longer "Custodian Wharf" that can be seen in the background. This was once the Osaka Shosen Kaisha pier but, I believe, was taken into possession by the HK Govt following the defeat of Japan in WW2.    

We finish with a final shot of Carol (Eleanor Parker) on board the boat transport as she ponders her life. Again, Parker wasn't in Hong Kong and this was a back projected studio scene. The big building behind Parker's head was the Central Fire Station. 

The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - View from Peak

The film opens properly with a view down to the harbour and its surrounds from the Peak. The film is set in 1949 but I have now confirmed that the director, Ronald Neames (who later left the project because he was unhappy with it), did indeed send a Second Unit crew to capture some local footage. So I think the view we are looking at is indeed from c.1957. The reason I am confident is that you don't go to the expense of a second unit on location and then resort to library footage anyway. Further confirmation perhaps can be gleaned from the fact that I can see the HSBC and Bank of China buildings in Central (latter completed in 1951), but the Chartered Bank building is missing. This was completed in 1959.

The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - Aberdeen Harbour

The next location appears during the opening credits only and it's a view from Shek Pai Wan Road across the western entrance to Aberdeen Harbour towards Lamma Island in the distance. Before all the redevelopment and reclamation in the area changed everything, there used to be a layby on the Shek Pai Wan Road, just to the north of where the Dairy Farm cold storage facility is now located. The angle of view from this layby - how Magazine Island lines up with Lamma in the background - matches the view we can see below so I think whoever was responsible for the HK footage in this film just pulled over in a car and set up the camera at the side of the road. The layby has long gone thanks to the widening of the road. There's a similar view, but not quite from the exact same location, in Kill a Dragon. 

Once again the Google location marker is messing me around and refuses to be placed where I want it to be, so if you click on the location marker below you have to imagine the location as being on the main Shek Pai Wan Road, directly north of the west side of the cold storage facility.

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.