Isabella - Isabella Leong (2006) - A Lorcha Restaurant, Macau

One of Macau's most popular eateries, especially for visitors from Hong Kong, is the A Lorcha restaurant along the old waterfront on Rua do Almirante Sergio. There is a brief scene inside as Ma (Chapman To) contemplates his new found predicament. The restaurant website is here: https://alorcha.com/en/menu/

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.

Kung Fu Killers - Grant Page (1974) - Rua do Almirante Sergio, Macau

Some more inner harbour and a great example of how Macau has also had its own fair share of redevelopment and reclamation. The following series of screen shots shows us the inner harbour at the far end near to where the A Ma temple is situated. You can see how the road here was right on the waterfront.

Autostitch has done a fairly good job at creating a panorama out of these five pictures, so here it is below.

You can see the water right there, so it's interesting to be able to track down the same stretch of road now to compare. Luckily there are a couple of building stills standing. Here is the comparison courtesy of Streetview.

The green pastel building in the film grab is still around and it's the low building centre left behind the parked white car. Of the two buildings to its immediate left, although one retains the original arch, the building behind it has been redeveloped. The waterfront in front of this row has also gone and been replaced by a large residential building encompassed by Rua da Escola Nautica.

Interestingly, further up the road the arches have been kept fairly intact along the road side, but almost all of the buildings behind them have been knocked down and replaced by high rises. I wonder if it was a general decision made by the authorities to keep the arches or the developers just did it off their own backs?