The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - View from Peak

The film opens properly with a view down to the harbour and its surrounds from the Peak. The film is set in 1949 but I have now confirmed that the director, Ronald Neames (who later left the project because he was unhappy with it), did indeed send a Second Unit crew to capture some local footage. So I think the view we are looking at is indeed from c.1957. The reason I am confident is that you don't go to the expense of a second unit on location and then resort to library footage anyway. Further confirmation perhaps can be gleaned from the fact that I can see the HSBC and Bank of China buildings in Central (latter completed in 1951), but the Chartered Bank building is missing. This was completed in 1959.

The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - Aberdeen Harbour

The next location appears during the opening credits only and it's a view from Shek Pai Wan Road across the western entrance to Aberdeen Harbour towards Lamma Island in the distance. Before all the redevelopment and reclamation in the area changed everything, there used to be a layby on the Shek Pai Wan Road, just to the north of where the Dairy Farm cold storage facility is now located. The angle of view from this layby - how Magazine Island lines up with Lamma in the background - matches the view we can see below so I think whoever was responsible for the HK footage in this film just pulled over in a car and set up the camera at the side of the road. The layby has long gone thanks to the widening of the road. There's a similar view, but not quite from the exact same location, in Kill a Dragon. 

Once again the Google location marker is messing me around and refuses to be placed where I want it to be, so if you click on the location marker below you have to imagine the location as being on the main Shek Pai Wan Road, directly north of the west side of the cold storage facility.

The Seventh Sin - Eleanor Parker (1957) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon

The Seventh Sin is a 1957 remake of The Painted Veil written by W. Somerset Maugham. It was directed by Ronald Neame, who incidentally also directed two other films I have covered in the blog: Gambit and Meteor.

It stars Eleanor Parker as Carol, the unhappy wife of a doctor in post-war Hong Kong who is caught in her infidelity by her husband and given an ultimatum to accompany him into Mainland China to help him in his medical work in a remote village.

Initially I thought this would be another library-footage-film with some typical stock footage of Hong Kong, but it looks as though there was an actual second unit here in HK filming location shots, albeit without the real actors. I could be wrong and haven't delved enough yet but the Hong Kong footage here almost certainly was specially shot for this film. For scenes involving the characters, it's very much in the same method that Neame used for his Kowloon shots in Gambit, i.e. a stand-in who is always too far away, or facing away from the camera, to be properly identified.

The film opens with an expansive view across Kowloon towards the western harbour and although the opening credits obscure the view somewhat, it does crop up again later in a scene as the husband (played by Bill Travers) returns home in his car with the camera at the exact same location.

The switchback in the road, coupled with the general view and presence of Lion Rock on the right hand side of the screen, means that this was shot where Jat's Incline joins with Fei Ngo Shan Road on Kowloon Peak.

My Son A-Chang - Bruce Lee (1950) - Tai Wai Railway Bridge

My Son A-Chang (aka The Kid or 細路祥) was one of Bruce Lee's early childhood films, one of around 20 that he featured in during his childhood in Hong Kong.

It's been more than a decade since I last watched this, but I do remember these stills are from the very end of the film as A-Chang (Bruce) and his family head off into the sunset along the old KCR railtracks. I've got quite good at this stuff in the intervening years so I can now tell you with 100% confidence that I know exactly where the filming spot is/was. This was the rail bridge crossing in Tai Wai where the track crosses, what was, a small river but is now part of the much larger concreted nullah.

Surprisingly, the rail track hasn't moved much since the film was shot (at least not at this location) so the point where the rail bridge now crosses the waterway is basically the same place it crossed over in the images below. What has changed significantly of course is the surrounding area, that is basically unrecognisable. In most of the images below the low wall of the railway bridge can be seen next to the actors.
 

Walking towards the bridge. View looking NE towards Ma On Shan

SW end of the bridge looking back towards the gap between Beacon Hill and Lion Rock

Looking north, the flat area above now contains a small industrial estate

This image clearly shows the old river before redevelopment turned it into a nullah

The flat area behind is now the main area of Tai Wai

The final view looking NE from the bridge as they bid farewell

Once again the Google Maps marker gremlins don't seem to want to let me put a pin on the place where it needs to go, so in case it doesn't get rectified here is a nice view of the current version of the bridge, as viewed from the neighbouring road bridge.

Smuggler's Island - Jeff Chandler (1951) - Aberdeen Harbour

I got quite excited when I found out that there may have been a Macau location film that preceded Robert Mitchum's Macao, however, a quick search turned up a copy of this 1951 pot boiler (Youtube) and it soon became quite clear that this is another 50's era movie that used stock footage for its establishing shots and most of the action was shot off the California coast with some matte painted plates positioned in front of the camera for some of the wider angle shots of "Macau". Nevertheless, I still like to include these movies if only to dispel any belief that they feature any real on-location scenes.

The story follows Steve Kent (Jeff Chandler) who works as a diver in Macau and is contracted by Vivian (Evelyn Keyes) to retrieve a suitcase full of anti-biotics from a plane crash site off the coast of Macau. The "medicine" turns out to be gold bullion and the rest of the film deals with all the skullduggery and double-crossing one would expect as the pair try and get it to Hong Kong to sell on the black market.

The interesting footage only occurs at the beginning as the establishing shots of  "Macau" are shown. In fact, all these shots appear to be library footage of Aberdeen harbour. This isn't the first time film makers have tried to pass Aberdeen off as Macau (see That Man Bolt) or some other place entirely (see Lord Jim).

Away with Words - Tadanobu Asano (1999) - Peak Police Station, Peak Road

The only other major location I can get from this film is the Peak Police Station, and even then it is revealed as an on-screen title so it didn't need any specific powers of identification other than the ability to pay attention and read. There's actually quite a few shots filmed up here including one of the "Peak" scale model (built July 1953) that sits in the station grounds and in which a drunk Kevin decides to go for a dip (bottom image).

Away with Words - Tadanobu Asano (1999) - Victoria Harbour

Sadly, this next film, Away with Words, has few locations that I can realistically identify due to the rather generic nature of many of Hong Kong's myriad alleyways, but I feel it's worthy of inclusion because it was directed by renowned Cinematographer and long time HK resident, Christopher Doyle.

It's a story about a Japanese man, Takashi, (Tadanobu Asano - last seen on this blog in the later Invisible Waves), affected by synesthesia (yeah, I had to look it up as well) who comes to Hong Kong and ends up in a dingey nightclub run by Kevin (a very entertaining, Kevin Sherlock). Some accommodating person has loaded the full film onto Youtube so please go and watch.

The first sight we have of Hong Kong is a rather rainy one of the harbour as Takashi arrives on a boat. Quite apt because it is absolutely chucking it down as I type (welcome to HK summertime).

Four Assassins - Will Yun Lee (2011) - Shamrock Hotel, Nathan Road

Despite an illustrious history and career in local 50s and 60s Cantonese movies (so I've been told), this is the first time I've seen the Shamrock Hotel on a modern foreign production. Opened in 1952, the Shamrock Hotel was once the tallest building in Kowloon which is quite hard to imagine given by how relatively small it is these days. There was a demolition scare a few years ago when the owner put it up for sale, but it seems that either the owner had a change of heart, or the new owner has, and has turned it into what I believe might be serviced apartments. Its name has been changed to Synloc Tower.

In the film this is, supposedly, the main setting for much of the story as the hotel where the four killers meet up, and as such we are given several establishing shots of the hotel disguised as the "Shum Shui Hotel".

Despite being set in the "Shum Shui Hotel", the interiors were shot in a specially constructed set in one of the buildings in the old Perowne Camp in Tuen Mun. Don't take my word for it, you can see some of the production photos over at the film's old website (https://www.fourassassins-movie.com/the-location-2/). I don't recognise the main building in the top photo but I suspect all of the interiors were shot in one or more of the old buildings at the former camp. Once occupied by Ghurkas, part of the camp has been redeveloped into a residential condominim complex called "The Royale"- although I believe the old temple has been preserved - the rest of the camp is currently used by the Crossroads Foundation.

Four Assassins - Will Yun Lee (2011) - Kansu Street, Yau Ma Tei

At the north end of Woosung Street was Tak Hing restaurant (德興海味). The neon signage in the image below though was located along Kansu Street-side of the building where the restaurant was located. I'm not sure when the restaurant closed but the signage most likely came down when the building was externally renovated in 2019.

Four Assassins - Will Yun Lee (2011) - Arran Street, Mongkok

Here is some more neon that has sadly been removed. It is the large sign for the Four Seasons Hotpot restaurant (春夏秋冬火鍋) that used to be located at 2-4 Arran Street in Mongkok.