Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Queen's Road East, Hong Kong

Whilst being driven by Hank's chauffeur up to his house, we get to see the car being driven along the 1955 version of Queens Road East. It's identifiable by the small road on the right which is actually Wanchai Gap Road - a slim thoroughfare that hits a steep incline and takes you up to Bowen Road, Stubbs Road and beyond.

Here are the screencaps, the first two showing the entrance to Wanchai Gap Road, the last one showing the area of Queen's Road East a bit further along towards where Stone Nullah Lane and Kennedy St join on the right. Note the "Asahi" advert on the side wall.

Just out of frame on the top picture is one of only two or three buildings that remain from this time: the old Wanchai Post office. I've taken the liberty of taking a modern day shot from Streetview for comparison, but this one shows the Post Office today. It's no longer a post office of course but is used by the Govt Environmental Protection Dept (not doing their jobs properly if you ask me).

Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Des Voeux Road, Hong Kong

There's another great section of this film where Susan Hayward's stand-in (Dale Logue) rides a rickshaw around town in a vain search for her missing husband.

At one point we see her on a stretch of the Des Voeux Road which is almost as recognisable today even though all the buildings along it have changed - Hong Kong can be a bit weird like that. One feature that helps us place this shot is the building in the far background which is the old Wing On building. Wing On still occupies the same site today, albeit with a slightly more modern building.

The second recognisable part is the intersection of Des Voeux Road and Wing Lok Street which joins at a tangent to the left of the curved building in the background. The Streetview grab below shows pretty much the same angle as the film - the gold-windowed building (above the jaywalking pedestrian) being the modern day replacement of the curved one in the 1955 picture.

The bottom screen grab shows a closer view of the aforementioned Wing On building that can be seen in the background of the top picture. It is a good example of how film makers mess with geography because this second shot occurs almost immediately after the top shot even though Hayward's character can be seen moving away from it in the top shot.

Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - KCR Train Terminus, Kowloon

A shot from the opening credits of Soldier of Fortune. The angle indicates this shot was taken from the roof of either the YMCA  or the Peninsula Hotel. It was a sad day when the Colonial Administration took the decision to knockdown the train terminus building in 1978.

It's not just the clock tower that can still be seen today, but also the small white tower that once supported the time ball in the grounds of the Marine Police HQ.

Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Queen's Building, HK Island

Here is another shot from the intro taken from the harbour right in front of Queen's Building - once again showing the large COOK'S sign on the harbour-side of the building.

It's not just the old buildings that I find fascinating, but also the almost complete lack of development on the hillside at the back. It's difficult to see anything through the hundreds of high-rises these days. There are a few other things to spot though including the old HSBC building, the old Bank of China building, The Hong Kong Club (far left), what looks like the pitched roof of Blake Pier in the foreground and the former LegCo building (aka Supreme Court) behind it.

Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Connaught Road, HK Island

There are lots of scene-setting shots in Soldier of Fortune that reveal a great deal of what HK was like in 1955. The following is from an extended view along - a then harbourfront - Connaught Road including one of the old police platforms used by traffic constables for directing traffic.

Being on the waterfront, as it was, Connaught Road is unrecognisable today and I've included a streetview grab below so you can see what the same stretch of road looks like today. Look carefully on the film grabs and in the distance you will see what was Queen's Building on the corner of Statue Square (just to the right of the police platform). Of course this was replaced by the Mandarin Oriental about 10 years later. This view is impossible now.

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - The Chartered Bank, Hong Kong

The south side of Statue Square was - and still is - fronted by the various major banks. There is a point in the film when Lomax (Holden) realises he needs a bit of cash - strapped as he is as a freelance artist - so off he heads to try and get a loan. Where does he go? The Chartered Bank. Formerly known as The Chartered Bank of India Australia and China (it went on to become Standard Chartered circa 1970).

The first shot shows Holden standing on a very familiar spot (familiar to anyone in HK at least because the building in the background is the former Supreme Court building, subsequently the former Legislative Council Building and soon to reappear as a law court when the Final Court of Appeal moves there from the former French Mission building at the top of nearby Battery Path.

Both the Chartered Bank building and HSBC behind it have since been rebuilt but the Bank of China building at the far end of the row is still standing. The BOC created their new HQ on a different site (the site of the Murray Building that now - or at least a 70% new version of it - stands in Stanley).

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - Statue Square, Hong Kong

Actually, this area was and still is dissected by Chater Road and the part featured below is really the area next to the Cenotaph (though we don't see this on film), I've used Statue Square in the title because it's perhaps more familiar and we still get to some see the buildings that encircle(d) it anyway.

Well, immediately after crossing Connaught Road from Edinburgh Place, Holden (as Robert Lomax) walks to ask directions to the Nam Kok Hotel. Unfortunately the filmmakers at this point thought it would be more interesting to have a rickshaw blocking the foreground whilst the fantastic old Queen's and Prince's buildings get largely obscured in the background and as such we get only glimpses of how impressive these buildings were.

Queen's Building was of course replaced by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in 1963, not long after this film was made (the COOKS sign above can be spotted on almost any old photo of the place) and the Prince's Building still exists - albeit in name only.

Interestingly, on this last shot above we can see the former versions of both the Standard Chartered Bank Building (then just known as "The Chartered Bank") and part of the previous (and much more pleasing to me) HSBC building.

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.

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - Hop Yat Church, Hong Kong

Speaking of Hop Yat Church - as I just recently mentioned the Kowloon version here - here is a grab from The World of Suzie Wong which depicts William Holden as Lomax just arriving at the Nam Kok Hotel and going out on the roof to admire the (admittedly very impressive at a time before highrises obscured it all) vista.

The image below shows Holden in a studio set with a projected background view of the mid-levels (when they were still low-rise!), but it's worth showing because the filmmakers captured the Hop Yat Church (a.k.a Church of Christ in China) on Caine Road in their back-projected film.

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Princess Margaret Road, Kowloon

Here is one found inadvertently thanks to Dan Thomas managing to spot a difficult location from Police Story. I've never been to this part of Kowloon and was thrown for a while by the Chinese writing on the wall of the building in the right of the shot which (I think?) says "Mongkok" - or at least the proper Chinese equivalent.

I can't recreate the exact angle but here is a shot from street view where you can see that the church above is still around. The church is the Kowloon namesake of a perhaps more famous one on HK Island called Hop Yat Church. Here is the (Chinese) website: http://klnc.hopyatchurch.org.hk/klnc/web/index.php.

The next shot afterwards is a bit wobbly (I had de-interlace turned on and only later realised that for moving screenshots it wasn't so great) but you get to see the corner with the small low-rise Kowloon Hospital out clinic tucked into the bend. It's still there, by the way but the flyover has an additional flyover built over the top of it now running east to west along Argyle Street.

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Ferry Point Estate, Yau Ma Tei

There is a part of the film when our young couple take a trip on a boat - I'm assuming it's a ferry but the route it takes is perhaps not the most efficient way across the harbour because it ends up at the waterfront in Yau Ma Tei (I guess it could have been the old vehicular ferry). Well, it doesn't matter but one shot does show some buildings that can still be found.

The buildings at the back of this shot are the Ferry Point Estate along Man Cheong St - a street that, as you can see, was once right at the water's edge. The west Kowloon reclamation has put a stop to that and they are now marooned 300 metres inland.

These buildings make up the Ferry Point Estate. All eight of them are called Man...something and were built in stages throughout the 60's - the oldest ones were actually built circa 1964 and the last completed circa 1970. So they were fairly new when this film was made.

Judging from the angle of this shot the boat must have been somewhere off the eastern side of Tsim Sha Tsui - probably the area where the iconic Arch now stands (on solid ground!). The nearest is the Man King Building followed by Man Fai, Man Yiu and finally Man Cheong Buildings. These four are the ones that used to face the water and another four older ones on the right of these facing Ferry St.

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Deepwater Bay, Hong Kong Island

At the beginning of the film, after the boys follow the girls from the Castle Peak Hotel, they have a bit of a race along what looks like Castle Peak Road before coming to a stop in...Deepwater Bay - yes, all the way over on the south of HK Island without even using the vehicular ferry to cross the harbour. Ah! the wonders of film reality.

Of course they have just collided their cars and all jump out to see the damage and have a bit of a set to. First we see them driving into a roadside parking area. Actually believe it or not this parking area is still around and there are still trees growing out of the middle of it (can't confirm they are the same ones though).

You see the very steep hill in the background above? Well this is also known as Brick Hill and these days has the Ocean Park cable car going up the side of it.

In the background of the above shot we can see the golf course for the Hong Kong Golf Club - a venerable HK Institution that although only having 9 holes, gets an extra 'hole each day when Li Ka Shing goes and plays his morning round.

In the background of our last screen grab we can see Middle Island, the home of the south island venue of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. To round it all off here is a modern day grab courtesy of Streetview.

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Lung Cheung Road, Kowloon

This scene is the end of the section when he goes to meet his mother and they drive through various parts of Kowloon before pulling in to stop at a sandy quarried hilltop. I can confirm that this sandy little area was just off Lung Cheung Road, about 100 metres west of the famous Lung Cheung Lookout. I live nearby here and have had a jolly good look around and can tell you that although some large boulders remain, the sandy area has long been excavated to make way for various CityU associated dorms and buildings down the hill. However, look at the shot below and you can see the shaved hillside in the background which IS still around and forms the edge of the road immediately north of the aforementioned lookout.

The car almost immediately turns off the road onto the sandy area and this is where the rendezvous between Chin Pei and his onscreen mother takes place. The thing I hadn't realised before is that the famous Checkerboard Hill in the background (you can see a checkerboard at the top of the picture immediately below) actually had two checkerboards. It had one facing south which can still be seen from various parts of Kowloon despite the weather's best attempts (the the Govt's lack of willingness to preserve it) and it also had a west facing one that can be seen in the shots below as well as in this photo over on Gwulo.com. These days it is almost completely covered in tree growth and thus is out of site (but perhaps better preserved as a result?)

Lion Rock at the back

We can also make out various aspects of Kowloon Tong in the background including the barracks.

The west Checkerboard in the background

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Perth Street, Kowloon

One of the benefits of going back over stuff I did a few years ago is that I have the chance to reassess some of the locations I did then. I do sometimes get stuff wrong and unless I go back or someone points out a mistake they tend to get left up here. Here's a perfect example that I initially put as Ho Man Tin Hill. After reviewing the film in better definition something struck me about the background and it turns out that although I had the angle from the mountain fairly well, I had gone south too far by about 300 metres.

It turns out that the hill that Ching Li runs up after visiting Zhongkang's house used to sit just to the north of King George V school on a plot of land now occupied by the Shun Tak Fraternal Association Seaward Woo College at the end of Perth Street.

A good clue is seeing the south facing checkerboard in the background (above) which gives a general impression of which way we are facing, but the detail I noticed second time around was the presence of the various Chinese-styled buildings of Kowloon Hospital in the background. You can see the ridge of a roof in the centre left background of the picture below and between the actors heads in the second photo below is the distinct shape of what I believe is Block A of the Kowloon Hospital buildings. This means that the building that can be seen behind the actors in both captures below is the precursor to today's The Astrid development. The address now is 180 Argyle Street, but I have no idea if that was changed when the plot was redeveloped.

Further confirmation can be found below when the two turn back to run down the hill and a few buildings seen in the background including St George's Court on Kadoorie Hill (immediately above their heads). In fact you can see some of the houses that line Kadoorie Avenue below it. Also the tall buildings on the left hand side are a development called Mount Trio. Far right is Kowloon Hospital West Wing.

Film Pilgrimage by Gary Wong

For those with a HK film locations bent (which I assume you have if you are reading this blog) I can wholly recommend a new book out by Red-Publishing called: 電影朝聖 (English: Film Pilgrimage). It's been put together by Gary Wong who has been blogging about this kind of stuff for substantially longer than myself. You can find his similarly-named blog here: 

http://pc633hk2047.pixnet.net/blog

Red Publish website: http://www.red-publish.com/big5/book/1738

Okay, this is a Chinese book but if you don't read Chinese the book will still be helpful because the locations are identified in English at the top of the page and of course each film shot at the location is also listed with it's English name (incl. actors and director) in the text. There are some great photos and Gary has literally been all over HK (as well as Macau, Taiwan, China and even to Hungary) to compile this very impressive list. Obviously this is a HK released book, it costs HK$98.00 and I got my copy from The Commercial Press, but you should be able to buy it at any bookshop with Chinese titles (e.g Poplar etc).