User Reviews

TravelTalks is in pre-WWII Hong Kong. It does start with an awkward narration which sidesteps the name of the war, The First Opium War (1839-1842). It's extremely awkward unless you're clueless to history. The narration is all "junk" (sorry for the pun). This is very much a time capsule concentrating first on the boat people who live on the waters. The city is pure colonial Hong Kong. All of it only exists in old films and photographs. It does waste a lot of time around the hotel looking at girls. It must be where the crew is staying during filming because they do that all the time.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras under the supervision of Winston Hoch to shoot pictures of junks and sampans, and babble in his invariably overblown manner about pirates and drowning girls.

Although Fitzpatrick shows the modern sections of the city, and the undeveloped view of Repulse Bay, I was fascinated by the less wealthy, downtown shots of the city. They looked familiar to me, because they look almost exactly like New York City's Chinatown in my younger days!

James FitzPatrick must have been on a whirlwind tour of India, Siam, and Hong Kong during the mid 1930s... we see quite a few films made in those places during this time. A fun, quick look at Hong Kong, and the explanation of why it was ruled by Great Britain for all those years. It's even more poignant, since it was just returned to chiner in 1997. A fun, early look at the bazaar, the people, the British, the workers, and of course, the fancy tourist hotel for those with lots of money. Quick stories on how boys and girls are treated differently, as well as why Repulse Bay is so named. Pretty interesting. I always enjoy seeing what cities looked like Waaaaay back when, before the population grew like crazy. Shown on TCM between films.

Hong Kong: The Hub of the Orient (1937)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

James A. FitzPatrick's TravelTalks series through MGM continues in this trip to Hong Kong where we learn about their people, customs and their land. The most entertaining aspect of this film is its look at the local fishing communities, which contain some pretty strange "rules" about the women and some neat looks at the things they come up with by using the fish. We see many small shops where the people of Hong Kong try making money and we also learn about how other counties are trying to make a mark there. Whereas a lot of Hong Kong is still old fashioned, new customs are trying to work in to where people can make good for themselves. As is the usual case, the narration is top-notch and we get some beautiful places to look out in all their Technicolor glory.

I've been writing about a lot of long movies lately that take a while to explain the gist of, so I think it's about time I described another one of James Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks. These are short films that were produced from the 1930s to the early 50s by MGM that tell audiences about different parts of the world in an engaging way, and they're all made in wonderful technicolor. This particular one focuses on Hong Kong, a port city on China's southern coast that (at the time) was under British control. Hong Kong's strategic position makes it an incredibly important region, as it basically serves as the gateway to and from Asia. Even though I like these shorts, the narration is never really their strong suit. The narrator explains how Hong Kong has been a part of Britain since a war in the 1840s between the UK and Qing Era China, but doesn't actually name the conflict (First Opium War). We also get to see Hong Kong's very busy fishing industry, which has chinese sailboats and sampans that contribute substantially to the region's food supply. At the time, a market area of Hong Kong was actually the most densely populated place on earth, basically making it the asian equivalent to New York. Today, Hong Kong has the highest number of skyscrapers in the world so it's a fitting comparison. Lastly, we see a hotel in Hong Kong frequented by women who still prefer to wear traditional chinese garbs and dresses instead of the more british inspired clothes their colonial rulers have brought to them. There's not that much to say about Traveltalks shorts, but each one is interesting because they offer insight into a world that is gone forever.