Throughout the chapter, Leung Ping-kwan illustrates, with relevant examples, how some films portray the identity of Hong Kong, especially those from the 1950s to the 1990s. The films from that particular time period are worth exploring, since it, to an extent, gives an answer to the complexity embedded in Hong Kong’s cultural identity, about which the critics vary in their opinion — whether it is a unique culture or merely a part of Chinese regional culture. The films serve as one way to reflect on Hong Kong’s identity distinguishable from that of China. One aspect of this is the film’s representation of the city as “temptation, corruption, vice, and cunning manipulation” while the country as a place of “innocence, uprightness, and fraternity.” This is specifically introduced in Street Angel (Malu Tianshi, 1937). This demonstrates the films’ tendency to exhibit the unique urban cultural identity of Hong Kong during the time through portrayal of its city.
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City Vs. Country is an insightful breakthrough point to facilitate your analysis, which is also one of the core ideas of Leung’s writing. However, I would suggest clarifying your own opinions and reflections more specifically through this. There are some questions worth digging deeper into: 1) What are the city identities presented by Hong Kong cinema from the 1950s to the 1990s?; 2) Why and how cinema took the City Vs. Country as a metaphor to emphasize the relation between Hong Kong and mainland?; 3) Street Angel would be a great case for you to elaborate on the cultural and political hybridity of Hong Kong, I would like to hear more of this.