Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Rua da Ribeira do Patane, Macau

Given that the last post identified Ponte No.27 as location used for the Macau-based shenanigans of Curt Jurgens, Orson Welles et al, it looks as though the funeral procession we see on film is walking down Rua da Ribeira do Patane towards the pier location.

I initially thought this road might have been Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro given the number of columned shops along the road, but it turns out that Rua da Ribeira do Patane also had them in abundance, although most have now gone.

 Anyway, there are still a few remnants that remain, including the previously blogged about building on Travessa de Guelra. A couple of them also appear to have their original balconies as well. I believe that the taller blocks further down are more recent additions, but the Macanese developers responsible figured it would be a good idea to retain the road side columns. Either that or the original buildings have just had a couple of extra floors added, I can't tell.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Ponte No.27, Macau

Here's is one from some time ago that I never even bothered to look at because I figured it had long gone. But after wandering around Macau not so long ago I realised there was still some remnants of the location despite the 60 year gap.

The pier scenes in Macau were filmed at a real pier, and the number is recognisable on film, although lack of HD means it is not as clear as it should be. Anyway, the pier number is 27 and although the pier building itself has long gone (although many of the original buildings remain for other piers, some dating back to the 1940s), there is a nearby building that does still exist, although the ravages of time have seen its exterior change somewhat.

Here's a reminder of the pier that once sat along the waterfront on Avenida de Demetrio Cinatti.

Its modern day replacement is much larger and taller, but still occupies the same place along the road. here is the current Streetview.

Opposite the Pier building is an old tenement where, it is implied, Orson Welles' crooked captain keeps a girlfriend. She wanders out onto the balcony to give him a coy little wave as he is about the board the ferry back to Hong Kong. Here she is, followed by a picture of Welles looking suitably coquettish. You can see the lower ground of that same building behind Welles.

The building was, and still is, on the corner of Avenida de Demetrio Cinatti and the small side road (Travessa da Guelra) that connects with the Rua do Visconde Paco de Arcos. Here it is today, although standing it is not in the best of shape.

Look closely and you will be able to see some of the exterior embellishments that have been plastered over. One example is the centre of the side wall above which looks like it once had large rectangular door frame and lintel. If you look at the picture below, taken from both ends of Travessa da Guelra, you can see what it used to look like - positioned in between the two lower balcony supports. Alas, the balconies have also gone - these things are often the first to go in old buildings to ensure they don't get to the point where they prove dangerous. Here's another picture, this time taken from the pier side of the road.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

The last part of the film sees our trusty but rusty ferry, the "Fa Tsan", finally succumb to its explosion, typhoon and pirate damage and sink beneath the waves of Hong Kong's famous harbour. Except, for the purpose of the film there was a little bit of 1950's camera trickery going on and it looks as though the footage of the sinking was actually superimposed onto a background of HK Island.

I guess you need to see it really, but the affect isn't too bad considering it was 1959, but the colours don't quite match between the foreground and background.

However, this did get me wondering because several months ago on a Facebook group page, someone who grew up in Hong Kong remembers seeing an old boat being towed into Kowloon Bay near Kai Tak Airport and being sunk for a film. Lots of suggestions were made, including The Sand Pebbles, but I'm not sure The Sand Pebbles filmed around that area (it was mainly in Port Shelter), so I wonder if this was the scene they were watching - the boat sinking in Kai Tak later being superimposed onto the footage from the harbour?

The ridge line in the background appears to be the western end of HK Island with Victoria Peak and High West in left and centre, but the angle suggests a location at the western end of the harbour (perhaps a camera sited on Stonecutter Island?) but there were obvious impracticalities to sinking a boat in the middle of the harbour.

Well, if anyone has any clues please feel free to share, in the meantime I'll update this post if I find out anything more.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - More adventures with Chaplin Chang

Chaplin Chang, assistant director on Enter the Dragon and general go-to man for many western production companies filming in Hong Kong, made an early appearance in his very diverse movie career as an extra when filming Ferry to Hong Kong. In fact, he tells me that this was the very first western produced film he was involved with and was introduced to the films producers by Roy Chiao with whom he had a long friendship.

There is a scene in Ferry to Hong Kong when a Chinese junk catches fire nearby and proceeds to explode because it has been packed with explosives. The explosion damages the ferry but the crew of the junk are saved just before it blows up.

Chaplin was given the job of rushing over to the side of the ship and shouting that the junk was on fire. Here he is in action.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Junk Island (Fat Tong Chau), Tseung Kwan O

Here is a real piece of forgotten history that took me a while to figure out. There is a sequence in the film when the ferry, after suffering a severe amount of damage in a typhoon, is struggling in to shore when a boat load of pirates - led by a very young Roy Chiao - come aboard to rob and pillage. As the boat is nearing the coastline we get a nice view of what looks to be an uninhabited island in the background.

Now, believe it or not but the strip of land in the background isn't actually an island at all, but is in fact the Lei Yue Mun headland, and the bumpy bit just behind the boats sail is Devil's Peak! Here is a modern day comparison of that ridgeline so you can see for yourself.

What you need to bear in mind here is that this area of Hong Kong has seen a vast amount of change with a huge amount of reclamation. I believe in the first shot we can see Junk Island (aka Fat Tong Chau) which has since been joined to the mainland (in this case with the Clearwater Bay peninsula) by reclamation, much in the same way that Stonecutter Island has been 'attached' to West Kowloon.

The shoreline we see above, in the fourth picture, was most likely part of the old coastline before reclamation took it away and replaced it with the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - St Paul's Church Facade, Macau

Macau's most famous landmark features in the next part of the funeral procession as they pass the facade of the fire-destroyed church of St Paul's.

If you have ever been to Macau then you will most probably have seen this close up. All I can say about it is that the steps in front tend to be chock-full of Mainland Tourists these days (Chow Tai Fook are really missing a trick here).

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Penha Church, Macau

Well, seeing as I have just been theorising about the use of the Penha Church roof as a possible location for a camera shot of the inner harbour, I think the view of the same church in a later scene may lend some credibility to my theory. (NB: this later scene was preceded by a single shot from the earlier sequence where we can see the cross again).

Anyway, here is a brief glimpse of the side of the church as a funeral procession makes its way down the hill from the church towards the ferry. So, first off we have a repeat of the same angle from earlier (probably Penha Church cross n the right).

The next shot sees our funeral procession walking down a hill. I will make an educated guess here and say that it was probably the path that runs down the side of the hill next to the Penha Church.

I make the previous assumption (despite me knowing how geography is often messed around with in films) because the same scene shows us looking up the hill with a piece of the Church visible in the background.

Anyway, there is still a small road that runs down the side of the hill and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it was the same one - albeit now with a rather more obscured view - or at least a path than ran just next to the current road (I say that because there is a retaining wall on the film grab that looks similar in design to the wall we see on the side of the road in the streetview picture below). The road runs up to the car park below the church which can be seen in the lower picture. 

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Macau Peninsula, Macau

One of my favourite shots from the various Macau portions of the film (remember, it may be called Ferry to Hong Kong, but the film revolves around a man stuck on a HK - Macau Ferry, so we also see some of the latter) is the following panning shot that takes in a view of the inner harbour.

This view shows the panorama of Macau that I really wish I had been around to see. So sleepy and low rise - vastly different to the place today with its monstrous tacky casinos.

Anyway, the vista looks as though it may possibly have been filmed from the back of Penha Church - the cross in the top picture looks very similar to one of those that sits at the rear (west facing) part of the church building. The ferry is steaming along towards the inner harbour area for its stop.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Round Island nr Repulse Bay, Hong Kong

In a linking shot that supposedly portrays the ferry (named the Fa Tsan in the film) as it paddles its way into Macau, we see a quick glimpse of Round Island (Chinese: 銀洲) that looks to have been taken from the Repulse Bay Road - from the angle I would estimate somewhere near to the where it gets joined by Belleview Drive. I'm not familiar with the 1959 version of the road so have no idea if there were lookout spots around there. I suspect there was though.

In fact, that may possibly be part of the road we can see on the right hand side. Either that or a pathway or terraced garden. Either way, we can see Round Island on the left behind the tree (look closely and you can also just see the tip of Tau Chau sticking into the edge of the screen), the headland that disappears into the distance is in fact the south eastern coast of Lamma Island and the closer, green hillside behind the road (or whatever it is) is in fact the side of Middle Island.

Unfortunately for me there are no great comparisons to be found using GoogleEarth because much of the roadside is now covered in trees (which is a good thing) obscuring the view out to sea. But below I have included a Streetview picture taken from the much lower Seaview Promenade. You don't get quite the same awesome angle, but at least to get to see the bit I am writing about.

And, of course, clear days like the one we see on the film only really happen in the summertime, so I guess the Streetview was a wintertime affair.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter, Kowloon

The ferry pier seen in the film was actually one of the public piers in Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter and we get a good look around the area. There are some buildings that can be seen which have helped pinpoint the exact location of the filming and they can be seen in the following screencap.

The buildings to the left of the ferry are the blocks of what was formerly known as the "Six Street Slum" - a block of land that was once known as Marine Lot 39 but was recently (relatively speaking) demolished to make way for what is now a Govt housing estate called Prosperous Garden. These tenements and several of the streets (including Lee Tat Street) that made up the older neighbourhood were completely eradicated.  The white building on the right, believe it or not, is the rear wall of the Yau Ma Tei Police Station. It is the sole survivor and is still going strong.

That means the ferry is actually hiding the public pier and the end of Public Square Street that terminated at the water. The Govt archive has a direct comparison (albeit the following picture is from 1976 - 17 years later - but you can still see the white building on the right). If you look below you can see the same three blocks and the white Police Station building at the top right of the coastline.

Trying to compare the locale with modern day Streetview pictures is an exercise in the futile because it has changed so much. The typhoon shelter is all but gone now - filled in to create the West Kowloon Reclamation. Ferry Street is about the closest we can get to the old coastline (I suppose you can guess where it got its name from) and you can see another brief glimpse of this same area in The World of Suzie Wong (filmed a year later). However, here are some screencaps that show you what it used to be like with some modern comparison to look at.

The space we see behind Noel Purcell (top picture - he played the ship's engineer) was filled up by the Ferry Point Estate (building commenced in the early 60's).

As you can see the old public pier used in the film to stand in for the HK & Macau ferry pier, has gone the way of the rest of the typhoon shelter. Believe it or not, the coastline here - already moved west by reclamation by 1959 - is no longer within sight (it's actually about 800 metres further out). The view looking back the other way has also changed a fair amount too. The old blocks replaced by the previously mentioned Prosperous Garden estate. The YMT Police Station being pretty much the only surviving relic from the period.

The old spot occupied by the ferry on film now sits under the West Kowloon Corridor (that's the flyover you can see above). I know this is all about progress but it's comparisons like these that make me wish Hong Kong had a little less concrete and a little more open space.

I'll leave you with the best illustration of how development has affected this area. Pictures say a thousand words after all.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

Like many foreign films made over here, the harbour usually features in one way or another because, I guess, it's a defining image of what Hong Kong is.

The opening titles of Ferry to Hong Kong give us a 1959 view from the western end of the harbour looking at the Central, Wanchai and beyond.  These aren't hi-res screen caps but look closely enough and you may see some famous landmarks such as Government House (low centre right, top picture) and HSBC and BOC buildings. Unfortunately the view is rather spoilt by the opening credits splashed across the screen.

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Former Kowloon Docks, Tsim Sha Tsui

We go back to the late 50's now for a story based on a real life incident involving a post civil-war refugee (a chap named Michael P. O'Brien) who had to spend several months to-ing and fro-ing between Hong Kong and Macau. Taking his twice daily trip between HK and Macau as the basis for the story, Curt Jurgens plays a down and out who is marked as an undesirable by both the Macau and HK authorities, meaning he isn't allowed to step foot in either.

As you can imagine we get to see a fair bit of coastline and waterside facilities in this film and the opening scene gives us a very similar one to that seen a year later in The World of Suzie Wong when William Holden disembarks from his ship into TST.

It's a brief glimpse, but we see a large ship tied up at what is now Ocean Terminal. You can see the distant shape of western Hong Kong Island in the background.