Yellow Emanuelle - Chai Lee (1977) - Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong

In the film, and possibly in real life, the J.A.L offices are in the old P&O Building - located at 13-14 Connaught Road Central. We get some good views of the general area including the old G.P.O next door and its postal bridge that spanned the road to the harbour front. Both the GPO and P&O Building have been redeveloped, but next door where it says "New Life Temple". This is the "Grand Building" and is currently still around - although the "New Life Temple" sign has been replaced by one for a Catholic Centre.

The second visit to the office was shot from a different angle showing the aforementioned postal conveyor spanning Connaught Road.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong

Next up is another eurospy adventure film, this time a Spanish-Italian-French co-production called Desperate Mission, released in 1965 and starring Germán Cobos as "Agent Z-55" (also the name of the film when it was released in other territories), a sort of low-budget James Bond. As far as I am aware this has never been released on home video format, but thanks to Youtube you can watch it too (English dialogue as well).

The film plot is a bit convoluted but revolves around Z-55 being pulled back into service for an American Secret Service agency to pick up where a previous agent left off after being killed.

Following the opening credits we get some driving scenes filmed along Connaught Road Central. The first image below shows the old General Post Office on the left and the mail bridge that crossed the road to supply the mail boats. The camera pans right as the car goes by and we can see Edinburgh Place and City Hall in the background.

Whicker's Orient - Alan Whicker (1972) - Des Voeux Road Central

Some more Whicker narration as the program gives us afew vignettes from around the territory including this footage below as a deliveryman crosses Des Voeux Road Central with his cargo. It's a common sight even today. We're looking west, so in the background, the building with the columns on the left was the old Gloucester Hotel building (now Gloucester Tower) and on the right can be seen the old General Post Office (now Worldwide House).

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - Des Voeux Road Central

One of the rendezvous points, where Kitahara has planned to meet Chang, is at the junction of Chater Road, Pedder Street and Des Voeux Road Central (DVRC). We can see the DVRC entrance of the General post Office in the background of several shots. I hadn't realised there was more than one entrance to the old GPO so that was a nice surprise. Other buildings include the former Jardine House on the south west corner of Pedder Street and DVRC.

GPO on the right, (old) Jardine House on the left. View is looking west

Looking east with the corner of (old) Alexandra House on the left

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Connaught Road, Central

A rather nice colourful shot from Connaught Road giving us views of the old Standard Chartered Bank (formerly Chartered Bank) building, Princes Building, Mandarin Oriental as well as a distant view of the old GPO building at the corner of Pedder St, here's a close up I posted previously.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - General Post Office, Central

One of the true architectural gems of Central that really should've been kept, especially when you consider the ugly building that replaced it is. The General Post Office was demolished in 1977 and the only remaining pieces of it appear to be these four front entrance columns that were moved over to Kadoorie Farm in Lam Tsuen, Tai Po District.

Jason King (TV Series) - Peter Wyngarde (1972) - Connaught Road, Central

There are quite a few shots thrown into this episode that are a bit obscure and don't really show enough detail for me to be able to recognise the location. However, this one shows something that I immediately recognised: the GPO bridge that connected the old GPO (in my opinion, one of the most elegant buildings from the Colonial years that was torn down in the late 1970's to make way for the utterly drab Worldwide House). You can see the green-painted metal support of the bridge in the grab below.

If you're curious to know what it looked like then gwulo.com has a good wide-angle image of it (and the police post) here. The bridge was constructed to provide an unfettered route (I understand it was a conveyor belt) for mail to and from a post office launch that was berthed at the waterfront.

Shatter - Stuart Whitman (1974) - Around Connaught Road Central

A few shots that I figured were worth combining because they are all really closely clustered around the small area where Edinburgh Place meets Connaught Road.

First we see (albeit a bit blurry in the background) the old Edinburgh Place carpark. It's still going strong as I write but who knows how long that will last. I've stuck a rough comparison after each one courtesy of Streetview.

The next one shows somewhere that has changed. A little further around Edinburgh Place (it's a small loop road that runs around the carpark) is the view of the old Star Ferry Pier which was still there until 2006.

As you can see the view these days is slightly less inspiring and I think most people will agree that HK is worse off now this area has changed.

Next we pop over a few metres to Connaught Road with a view down towards the old G.P.O. We can still see part of the old roof of the subway on the right. The subway is still there of course (though now there is less reason to use it) but the roof has been put back significantly and replaced with a new structure. Also we can see the Mandarin Oriental on the left and St George's Building behind it. Both buildings are still here but the one behind those - Chater House - is a more recent build. The grand old G.P.O was replaced by Worldwide House and this has to be one of the biggest travesties of HK redevelopment because the old building was quite spectacular. There are still some other relics left over at the back but I did a better post on this here.

Finally, the camera turns and we get to see to the east from this point (the last shot is looking west). Another travesty of a heritage preservation as this grand old building, the Hong Kong Club, was removed to make way for the current version. City Hall can be seen on the left along with the Connaught Road end of the car park and the Cenotaph on the right hand side.

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - Old Star ferry Pier, Hong Kong

This place has only just recently moved into the history books because it was still around until the Wanchai->Central reclamation started in 2006 when it was - after huge demonstrations by the public - finally closed and then demolished to make way for...a road *sigh*.

Anyway, immediately after alighting from the previous mentioned Star Ferry, we see Lomax (Holden) making his way towards Statue Square via the Edinburgh Place ferry pier. More on Statue Square later but here are some grabs of how the pier used to look.

There are still a few remnants of the old ferry area still being used such as the Edinburgh Place car parks but everything else has been ripped out and gone. Here is Holden crossing Connaught Road Central - not something I would recommend anyone attempt today.

See all the buildings in the background? A couple are still around and I talked about them here not so long ago. The one right next to Holden's head is the impressive and still standing Chinese Chamber of Commerce building. The most striking building for me is the old GPO - the smaller building on the left behind the lamp post - with its colonial style columns and you can see the mail tower to the left of Holden where mail was loaded on and off boats at the harbour front via a conveyor belt mechanism.