Forbidden - Tony Curtis (1953) - Inner Harbour, Macau

A brief return to the 1950s for this next post. The film is Forbidden and stars a very young Tony Curtis as Eddie, a sort of low-level criminal who has been employed by a much bigger criminal to go to Macau to bring back the gangster's former romantic interest (Joanne Dru). The problem is, the romantic interest also happens to be one of Eddie's former romantic interests as well.

I won't spent too long on this - only a single post - other than to say that this is another studio-based film that has benefited from the real location footage captured a few years before for Macao. The very few scenes involving back-projected footage all use the Dick Davol-shot film. Given that Macao was released by RKO and this film is from Universal International means that the latter most probably bought or licensed the footage from the former (or perhaps directly from Davol?). Suffice to say there are no real on-location shots. 

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Macau Peninsula Panorama

After a brief return to Hong Kong as Wang Yu discovers the gang are in Macau and decides to head there by himself on a small speedboat, we return to the former Portuguese colony and are presented with a different view, this time of the inner harbour area with a panning shot and a rather cheeky caption (similar to one seen in this post as the story kept moving between Japan and Hong Kong). The location of the camera, its height along with the floating casino (Casino Macau Palace) right in front, suggests to me that this was taken from the famous/infamous Grande Hotel (photo of it at the bottom of this post).

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - View of the Inner Harbour, Macau

Once the story moves to Macau, we are given a nice view of the Inner Harbour area for the establishing shot, athough the scene is also aided by an onscreen title in case people didn't recognise where we were.

Spearhead in Hong Kong - Stafford Gordon (1981) - Casino Macau Palace, Macau

Sgt Bilinski's choice of casino was a bit more limited back in 1981. So, no surprise then that he chose the Casino Macau Palace - the wooden floating casino once moored in the Inner Harbour area. This was the go-to casino for most of the foreign film and TV productions that I have covered on this blog, so rather than repeat myself you can check out these older posts.

Jaguar Lives - Joe Lewis (1978) - Inner Harbour, Macau

Over to Macau now for a quick visit and some sights around the inner harbour area including the floating casino, the Kwong Hing Tai Firecracker company building (or at least the back of it facing the water) and a few more places worth mentioning.

In the above screencap we can see Joe surveying the shoreline. The low art deco style building in the centre screen is still around. I don't know anything about it but like its style and can see from Streetview that it is currently housing a company called "Tak Wah". Obviously we don't have "Waterview" yet, so I've had to settle for this land-side image from Streetview. It seems to be a working warehouse still. Incidentally, the building directly under Joe's chin is the former Grande Hotel. We looked at this place a few posts ago in Robert Mitchum's Macao.

The next shot is not a great one for scenery courtesy of the fact that ol' Joe is blocking most of it, but look on the right and you can see Penha Church up on the hill.

The next shot shows the back of the Kwong Hing Tai Firecracker building on the water. This is a great art deco style building and was once the feature of a post on my old blog. I shall resurrect it at some point but until then you can see the waterside rear of the building where firecrackers were loaded off onto boats for distribution. We also have a view of the stylish front courtesy of Streetview again.

Finally, here is the famous floating Casino looking less than splendid thanks to the fact that it was covered in bamboo scaffolding when they filmed this. It was called the Casino Macau Palace and has been seen here a couple of times in the past. It's gone now, but not sure when.

Macao - Robert Mitchum (1952) - Inner Harbour, Macau

Another black and white film noir, this time starring Robert Mitchum who was featured on this blog last year courtesy of his starring role in Robert Clouse's The Amsterdam Kill. Macao was one of the first western films to be set in the "Far East" and unlike Target Hong Kong (made on the cheap using stock footage from Hong Kong and Shanghai to set the scene), RKO (the production company) sent  cameraman, Dick Davol, to Macau and Hong Kong in order to capture various bits of footage to be interwoven into the story as well as used for back projection back at the studio.

An interesting feature of Davol's trip seems to be that he had to run up a rather significant expense account paying bribes to the local authorities so he could film notably this included the Police Forces of both HK and Macau as well as the various boat owners, immigration officers, customs officers and even the Communist patrol boat crews!

Anyway, we shall start off this particular film with a view from the inner harbour looking towards the southern end of the peninsula. The camera work is a bit blurry and being black and white adds a little to the lack of clarity but if you looks carefully you should be able to the see the back end of Penha Church up on the hill (top left) and directly under it, about halfway down the hill, looks to be the Moorish Barracks building - the latter caught at a time when it could still be seen from sea level.

I don't know what the curved building is on the waterfront but its position tallies with the modern day Capitania Dos Portos (i.e. Macau Port Authority). You can just see the low rise shop houses along the waterfront (Rua Do Almirante Sergio), there are a few examples left but are now mostly hidden from view by various developments that have cropped up along the old pier areas.