Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - 10 Po Shan Road, Midlevels

I (and many others) have been wondering where this particular building was located for several years. Ever since we first started looking at the movie locations on Gwulo back in 2009 this has been a location I have been itching to pinpoint but simply lacked the resources at the time. For those of you wondering which place in the film I am referring to, it is the building exterior used as the establishing shot for the dinner party that Suyin gets invited to and where she first meets Mark Elliot. Here is the reminder.

So you can see from the screen caps that the property appears to be built on a podium and the garden balustrade extends into the distance to the hill in the background. The driveway obviously reaches the podium via a slope but it's not clear how steep or curved it may be. The house itself has this very large and ornate stucco portico with columns and you can see behind the property part of a retaining wall where the hillside has been cut out to accommodate the building. The balustrade closest to the camera on the left is also angled away from the top of the drive.

I initially thought this might be one of the large mansions on Conduit Road close to the Fairview, but no matter how much I looked there was really nothing that quite fitted. Anyway, after a few weeks of sifting through image after image I finally found a photo on Gwulo that had a property on it that looked like a possible match. It didn't take long to find some aerial photos that confirmed the shape of the podium (the extended garden area, sloped driveway and angled balustrade etc) and 10 Po Shan Road was finally identified.

I have no idea whether or not this building's address was indeed #10 but seeing as #8 is next door and block 1 of the current building Po Shan Mansions includes #10 and #12 then I don't see it as too flimsy an assumption.

So what happened to the building? The truth is I won't know until I get my hands on the land deeds but from the aerial images the building was still around in 1959 but by 1963 had been removed, leaving only the podium. This makes sense because po Shan Mansions was completed in 1965 and the current building stands on the old podium with a few changes.

The building itself was replaced by Block B of Po Shan Mansions whereas Block A was built on what used to be the garden section. The old front driveway was filled with concrete and a new driveway constructed that led around the eastern end of the podium to the rear of the property. However, if you go and visit Po Shan Road you can see from the roadside that the old bricks that formed the slope of the original driveway are still visible...to the extent that you can see how they filled up the old driveway space with concrete. (if you have Google Chrome then you can view it here). Other than that the podium retains much of its old shape and you can even see the angle at the front that I mentioned above, where the driveway met the podium level.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this stitch of the screen caps to give you a better idea of how the place once looked.

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - #30 Po Shan Road, Midlevels

The last post for this film, Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade, is a nice one for me because it involves one of my favourite Hong Kong buildings, long since sadly demolished. The house may be gone but it's memory is etched into the rather bloody finale of the film as Carrie takes on all comers with her removable killing finger nails.

Those who follow this blog, and perhaps Asian films in general, will remember this location as the house where Tang Wei and her dissident cohorts hole up in an effort to get close to Tony Leung's Japanese collaborating official in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. It is the old art deco mansion at 30 Po Shan Road. In Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade though we get to see significantly more of the property as the end sequence is shot throughout the building and includes a few scenes on the rooftop. Suffice to say this post is a bit more heavy on the screencaps than I would usually allow.

The final scene of the film shows Carrie walking off into the woods as the police turn up to clean up her mess. I believe this public pathway is the one that sneaky movie fans can go down to catch a glimpse of the old hillside terracing behind Realty Gardens that used to be part of the old Mok Villa and were featured in Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.

Double Impact - Jean Claude Van Damme (1991) - Opening sequence, Various locations

The opening title sequence gives us a different view point though and takes us from west to east. First off we get to see the backside of High West (Lung Fu Shan) as the camera sweeps across and reveals Mount Davis and Kennedy town. Look carefully and you may be able to see the twin chimney stacks of what I believe was the Kennedy Town Abattoir, as well as Green Island and just to the distant hazy left is Kau Yi Chau (aka Han's Island from the B&W composite photo in Enter the Dragon).

Next we move over a little more to the east to just behind HK University and can see various buildings that are still around - not surprising seeing as this film is only a little over 20 years old. For example in the shot below the three buildings at the front bottom are on Po Shan Road and are called Piccadilly Mansion, Hamilton Court and (one block of) Po Shan Mansions, respectively. The tall building top left is Hong Kong Plaza and the three identical blocks on the right are the three blocks of a development called Connaught Garden.

Next as we move along we now look over the harbour. I like this shot because I can actually see where I live (although it's a wee bit blurry) in the far distance. But you can make out the transceiver on top of Beacon Hill (that tiny white splodge on the hill in the back centre and if you know your HK geography you should be able to guess that the next major bump in the ridgeline (to the right) is actually that of Lion Rock.

The camera keeps speeding east (to the right) and this time on the far right we can just make out the Ferry Point Estate a.k.a Man Buildings - they've been around since the early sixties and are fairly recognisable, however, this is a view that can no longer be found because the West Kowloon reclamation has blocked it all off and instead these days you will just be able to see the skyscraper development which has the new ICC as its centrepiece.

I was expecting the skyline to be a bit clearer on this DVD - but it seems as though even back in 1991 (well, actually I think the filming took place in 1990) there was a fair amount of haze over Kowloon. Not as much as today but more than I expected...

Lust, Caution - Tang Wei (2007) - #30 Po Shan Road, Midlevels

The main house where the wannabe agents stay as their cover was a rather glorious looking art deco mansion block that used to stand on Po Shan Road. The picture below is from an excellent website called Urban Ghosts Media (sadly, no longer live) because by the time I had starting looking into the locations on this film, the building had already been demolished. Such a travesty in my opinion, but there you go.

I have no idea whether or not the plot has been redeveloped yet, but Streetview and Google seem to say otherwise. This means the land has been sitting empty for at least 5 years and I suspect the rush to demolish was motivated by the need to remove the building before anybody got the idea into their heads that it needed some sort of protection. Welcome to Hong Kong!

Po Shan Road