- English name：As Tears Go By
- Broadcast time：June 9, 1988
- Starring：刘德华（Andy Lau）、张曼玉（Maggie Cheung）、张学友（Jacky Cheung）、万梓良（
Alex Man） - director：王家卫（Wong Kar-wai）
Introduction
Today, I will introduce a Chinese film which called As Tears Go By (旺角卡门wàngjiǎo kǎ mén). So let us have a brief introduction.
As Tears Go By is a 1988 Hong Kong film that was the directorial debut of Wong Kar-wai (王家卫Wáng Jiāwèi). Critics have compared the film to Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, as the central plot revolves around a small time gangster trying to keep his smaller-time gangster friend out of trouble.
Wong Kar Wai’s debut feature As Tears Go By is a visceral, idiosyncratic gangster picture, a raw and stylish film that balances gritty realism with bold stylization, colorful imagery and rapid leaps into frenzied action sequences or hazy, drifting slow motion. Violence in this film erupts suddenly, its impact heightened by Wong’s accelerated cutting, which signals the abrupt transition from ordinary reality to the bloody, brutal hyper-reality of the fight scenes. A fight scene at a pool hall is preceded by a slow, tense buildup as the inept Triad thug Fly (Jacky Cheung 张学友Zhāng Xuéyǒu) taunts a rival, mocking him by moving balls around on the pool table, brazenly cheating and essentially daring the other man to start a fight. The tension slowly mounts, mingled with uneasy humor, but when the fight itself erupts, Wong introduces the violence with a sudden shot of a pool table, a racked triangle of balls broken by the cue ball, and then a quick cut into the rapid-fire violence as Fly and the other gangsters initiate a brawl that eventually spills out into a chase through the streets.
This is a very fabulous film.
Plot
Ah Hua and Ah You are two gangsters in Mong Kok. They are like brothers. Ah Hua got involved in the underworld earlier and is tired of the fighting and killing in the underworld. Ah You has always dreamed of sitting on the “boss” chair one day, but Ah Hua has always protected Ah You, leaving Ah You with no chance to show off. One day, Ah Hua’s cousin Ah Yu came here from Lantau Island for medical treatment and stayed at Ah Hua’s house temporarily. The two of them fell in love secretly. At this time, Ah Hua was busy taking care of Ah You who was injured in bed, so he had no time to be affectionate with Ah Yu.
Two days later, Ah Yu returned to Lantau Island, and Ah Hua was very upset. Later, regardless of his gangster identity, he rushed to Lantau Island to confess his love to Ah Yu. Unexpectedly, at this time, Ah You accepted the “killer order” to die alone in order to show off his strength and fame. Ah Hua, who got the news, hurriedly said goodbye to Ah Yu and rushed to the scene. Ayou shot the target person of the “killer order” at the door of the police station, but he hit the target person with only one shot and was besieged and died by the police. When Ahua arrived, he saw Ayou lying on the ground, and took out his gun without hesitation, killed the target person again, and was shot dead by the police on the spot.
Professional evaluation
1、The gangster film “As Tears Go By” does not have a lone hero who fights ten people alone, nor does it have a terrifying group fight. It only shows two helpless young men who are bleeding and desperate in reality. The connotation that the film hopes to express is no longer the traditional sense of brotherhood. The film’s creative concept is different from the mainstream trend, showing Wong Kar-wai’s distinctive personality that does not fall into the rut. The director did not shape the characters in the film into black and white people according to the general gangster film model, but as people with flesh and blood and flaws. Wong Kar-wai combines his unique image style with traditional Hong Kong gangster action films, and uses MTV-style abstract vision to bring a poetic and romantic feeling into this film, thus showing an alternative style different from other action films.
2、As Tears Go By is the director Wong Kar-wai’s debut film, the first collaboration between Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung, and the source of Jacky Cheung’s emoticons. The sharp contrast between Andy’s handsome and heroic image and the tragic ending, as well as Wang Jie’s classic song “Forget You, Forget Me”, left a very deep impression on the audience.
3、This film is a blockbuster work by Wong Kar-wai that breaks the trend. The image of Andy Lau in the film has begun to show traces of Wong Kar-wai’s character. Although he is very loyal, he exudes a sense of wandering and loneliness without knowing tomorrow. Wong Kar-wai boldly used MTV techniques to shoot, which caused a lot of repercussions and established his unique style. Andy Lau slammed the door and left for Wufei. Although the slow motion was less than 10 seconds, it was brilliant and almost a masterpiece. Maggie Cheung’s acting skills became a watershed in this film. After filming “Chungking Express”, her acting skills continued to improve until she won the Berlin Film Festival with “Ruan Lingyu”. Jacky Cheung’s role as a gangster henchman was very outstanding, which was his best performance since he started acting.
4、Although As Tears Go By is Wong Kar-wai’s first film, few people mention it anymore. It is in an awkward position in Wong Kar-wai’s films and even in the entire Hong Kong film industry. A careful analysis of “hero films” and As Tears Go By shows that the former is full of justice and moral ideals, and is a well-ordered world with clear distinctions between good and evil. The plot of As Tears Go By also originally went in this direction, but at the end of the film, the deaths of the two male protagonists were handled very coldly and humbly, completely subverting the “identity of the hero”. The audience was originally immersed in the fog brought by the hero, but was instantly pulled back to reality.
