Executioners (Johnnie To and Ching Siu-tung, 1993).
Now that’s a suit, I think, as Johnnie To walks into the offices of the Museum of Modern Art in New York—shades on, cuffs shot. I’m not there in person, but even through the low-resolution video-chat window, the Hong Kong maestro cuts a sharp silhouette. If you’re familiar with To’s films—most of which boast a lithe 90-odd-minute running time—then his expertly tailored aura makes perfect sense. Just like the man himself—who, five months shy of turning 70, appears to be in rude health—there isn’t an inch of fat on a Johnnie To picture.
To is best known in the West as an action director with an innate sense for space and place. He released his first film eleven months after Tsui Hark’s debut, The Butterfly Murders (1979), coming up a few years behind John Woo. But To’s approach to genre couldn’t be more different from that of his better-known contemporaries, eschewing Tsui’s ungovernable formal extravagance and Woo’s heightened romanticism for something more coiled, contained, and generically eccentric. His crime films—often made with only the barest bones of a script in place—combine virtuosic set pieces with multivalent psychological complexity, anatomizing the dynamics of group ecologies while playing fast and loose with genre expectations.
To was in Manhattan on the occasion of a 24-film retrospective, the largest ever mounted of his work in the United States. While hardly comprehensive—To boasts some 75 directorial credits across film and television, and as many again as producer—the MoMA program provided rich pickings from a filmography that has often proved elusive. Thanks to labels like Eureka in the UK and Chameleon Films in Australia, there has been a groundswell of To movies appearing on home video in the West over the last five years. With its release of Throw Down (2004) in 2021, and The Heroic Trio and Executioners (both 1993) earlier this year, even Criterion has taken notice. While each of the dozen or so titles available on home video may well be a certified banger, they don’t even begin to tell the full story of this consummate polymath’s extraordinary career.
As the MoMA program illustrates, there’s more to To than action. “To’s comedies allow for a more pure appreciation of his style,” wrote Daniel Kasman in these pages back in 2014, and it’s true that his romantic comedies—particularly those made with frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai—are invariably hotbeds of formal and generic experimentation. Kasman was reporting from that year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and a decade later, the festival circuit still represents your best chance of catching To working beyond the boundaries of the action-thriller in the West. And there’s plenty to see. From romantic comedies and wacky ghost stories to piercing indictments of social injustice, To’s filmography far exceeds the sum of its action headliners.
Happy Ghost III (1986)
Happy Ghost III (Johnnie To, 1986).
To got his first break in television at just 17 years old, when he was hired as a messenger boy for the Hong Kong-based broadcasting company TVB (Television Broadcasts Limited). Following a period of acting training at the firm, he was promoted to assistant director, completing his apprenticeship under the guidance of various filmmakers, most notably Wong Tin-lum. It was while working for Wong that To was given the opportunity to direct his first feature film.
NOTEBOOK: The earliest film in the MoMA retrospective is your Stephen Chow comedy Justice, My Foot!, from 1992, but I wanted to start by going back a little further. You directed your first feature, The Enigmatic Case, in 1980, but then immediately returned to television for six years. Why did you decide not to continue with feature filmmaking at that time?
JOHNNIE TO: Television is a relatively simple process. The scripts are already written, and you usually don’t have the option of adding your own input as a director. Often there is a time limit because of the tight schedule; you can’t overrun. I was very happy doing that work, and then in 1980, I made The Enigmatic Case. Having then had the experience of making a film, I thought to myself, Maybe I’m not ready yet. Maybe I don’t have enough skill and experience to really make films. So I went back to television. People did try to make me direct films again, but it took a while, and eventually I made Happy Ghost III [1986].
During those six years, I realized I had to be a member of the creative team. I had to have input in the script. If I want to move things around, I move them around. I couldn’t follow the standard rules of the game anymore. I wanted my ideas to be applied to the action sequences, too. So in that interim period, between 1980 and 1986, I was training and preparing myself to make films.
NOTEBOOK: There were a number of big personalities involved in Happy Ghost III. You had studio head Raymond Wong working as writer, star, and producer; Tsui Hark providing the visual effects; and Ringo Lam directing alongside you. How did that division of labor work in practice? The credits of the film list you as “acting director.”
TO: Ringo and Tsui Hark were very good friends of mine from our television days, and I was happy we were all working together, because this was me reentering the film business. But this film didn’t pose any challenges at all. I just had to prove to people that I could handle a film. Raymond Wong thought that the three of us would make for a good combination because we were friends. But on the creative side, I didn’t play any part. I couldn’t change the script. Making that film was a relatively easy task.
NOTEBOOK: Did that lack of creative freedom make you keen to forge your own identity as a filmmaker, and did you have any idea in 1986 what that identity might look like?
TO: These early films were very commercial pictures produced by Cinema City. They didn’t contain many new ideas. But then The Eighth Happiness [1988] was a great box-office success. And All About Ah-Long [1989] was where I actually had some creative power, from script to filming. These films attested to my being qualified to be a film director.
NOTEBOOK: You worked with Tsui Hark again before that though, on The Big Heat [1988]. I understand that was a difficult production.
TO: It was bad. It was a difficult process. Tsui Hark kept changing his mind and his instructions weren’t clear. We followed his instructions, and then a few days later he’d look at it, and it was wrong. I withdrew from the project before it was finished. I couldn’t take it; I didn’t know what I was doing. Many, many directors participated in that film.
NOTEBOOK: You’ve produced films by a lot of young or first-time directors over the years, in some cases taking over directing duties. I’m curious how your early experiences with such demanding, hands-on producers affected the way you approached your own creative relationships with directors you’ve mentored.
TO: Working with directors as an executive producer is hard. You have to remember that I myself am a director, so there will always be things that I like or want in a film. It’s a difficult process, and you have to work very hard on creating rapport with the directors. Sometimes they will shoot something and you have to say, “No, re-do it.” And then they do it a second time and you have to say, “Nope, do it again.” You may say I’m a little bit selfish, and of course I respect the director, but I always want to have a little bit of myself in the finished film.
Loving You (1995)
Loving You (Johnnie To, 1995).
With sixteen features under his belt, the mid-1990s saw the emergence of To’s mature style. At once a crime thriller and a domestic melodrama, Loving You sees Lau Ching-wan’s antiheroic lead incapacitated after taking a bullet to the head while in pursuit of a suspect. A chance at redemption follows, culminating in an explosive set piece shot at To’s alma mater, TVB studios—long since abandoned—which To clearly takes some pleasure in blowing sky high.
NOTEBOOK: You’ve described Loving You as the first real Johnnie To picture. It was your second film with writer Yau Nai-hoi after The Bare-Footed Kid [1993], and your first with a starring role for the great Lau Ching-wan. Did this film feel different, like the beginning of something new, at the time?
TO: Around 1994, the films being made were mostly for the market. They were big films with big stars. But with these kinds of productions there are things that you can’t control. It’s almost as if the commercial conditions have controlled you. By that time, I was in my forties, and I thought if I wanted to continue with a career in film, I had to make a decision: do I want to be an engineer who just churns out films, or do I want to be a filmmaker who can establish his own style? This was when I realized that I wanted to forge my own path.
NOTEBOOK: Loving You was your first film with cinematographer Cheng Siu-keung. What do you remember about your earliest conversations with him, and how have those conversations evolved over the years?
TO: Cinematographer Cheng is someone who is very good at executing my instructions. I tell him what I want to do and he is able to deliver. He’s a very good partner. A lot of my films are made without a finished script, so the only way to make it is to follow my verbal instructions. Cheng is very, very good and I’ve worked with him all these years. I myself am a photographer, so I often have the concept of how something will look, I just need someone who can materialize it, and Cheng is very good at that.
NOTEBOOK: And has this process stayed the same throughout your 30-year working relationship?
TO: Yes!
NOTEBOOK: Loving You was released the year before you founded Milkyway Image. What were your ambitions in setting up your own production company?
TO: Loving You made me realize that this was what I wanted to do, so I set up Milkyway with my very good friend Wai Ka-fai. The founding principle was to create things that are original. Early films like The Odd One Dies [1997] and Expect the Unexpected [1998] were attacked by critics—they said that these guys didn’t know how to make films. A few years later, though, all those critics changed their minds and started praising them.
NOTEBOOK: A number of your contemporaries—like Tsui Hark, John Woo, and Ringo Lam—headed to the States in the 1990s. Were you ever tempted to do the same?
TO: The producer who contacted John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam also contacted me. I had a discussion with him. But these three film directors were more senior than me; they were more established and mature. Sure, some of them went to America and made films, but this was before Face/Off [1997]. They were basically C-movies. They were not highly regarded. For me, it wasn’t about wanting to go to Hollywood to make a Hollywood film, but about waiting for the right type of project. And it wasn’t there.
NOTEBOOK: You were actively investing in the Hong Kong film industry at the time through Milkyway. I appreciate that these guys were your friends, but was there any sense of disappointment that they didn’t stay behind and continue trying to do the same?
TO: Yes, I was disappointed that they didn’t stay in Hong Kong, because they would have had an effect on the next generation of filmmakers and the sustainability of the film industry. But I also acknowledge that everyone has the freedom to choose. They wanted to create change themselves, and I respect that too. I was born and bred in Hong Kong, and I really understand Hong Kong. Throw me in New York and I don’t know the people and their mindsets; I don’t know where anything is. It really is a matter of knowing my own culture. If they want a Hollywood Hong Kong movie, Hollywood needs to come and make films in Hong Kong.
The Mission (1999)
The Mission (Johnnie To, 1999).
A high point even among the run of masterpieces that To began churning out at an incredible rate in 1999, The Mission is a Triad picture that evinces the director’s propensity for genre subversion. It’s a hangout movie marked by its stillness, a marvel of action staging and rhythmic precision. When the violence does come, it erupts in sudden bursts. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film’s centerpiece gunfight in a shopping mall, a sequence that draws its tension from a breath-holding sense of anticipation.
NOTEBOOK: You often like to begin production without a completed script, but with The Mission you had no script at all, and completed production in just eighteen days.
TO: Between 1997 and 1999 there was an economic crisis, and there was no money. No one would invest in making films. Having just established Milkyway, we had no idea the world would change like that. I didn’t want to return to television: many people asked me to return, but even if I couldn’t make a film anymore, I’d still stay in the film world.
At Milkyway, we could barely pay rent when a Taiwanese friend very kindly invested 2.5 million Hong Kong dollars. I was so happy I said, “We’re going to start filming.” I knew if we filmed very fast, we wouldn’t waste much money. At that time, no one had any work. We called them and told them to help out with this film, even though the fees were small. Everyone was asking if we had a script and what we were going to film, and I just said, “Nope. In two or three days, we’re just going to start.” We’d film, we’d think about the next steps, and so on. Within a month we had shot eighteen days.
We only had 40,000 feet of film—so, not a lot—because film is expensive. I told all of the professional actors involved that we wouldn’t be doing second takes. We couldn’t afford to waste film because the scenes with guns used up a lot of footage, and we needed to conserve it for the action shots.
There was a sense of romance there, everyone just working as a team. We kept going until I realized we were running out of money, so I said, “That’s it. That restaurant scene is the final scene.”
NOTEBOOK: The shopping mall sequence is justly celebrated as one of your great set pieces. It’s an action sequence that relies on stillness rather than movement.
TO: It came from my own subconscious, what I could see in my head. We didn’t know that we’d be able to use that location—the shopping center—until that day. We then found out that we could only shoot from that night until the next morning. I had no script whatsoever. The stillness came from the fact that there was no one else in there except for the cleaner that turns up at the end. With the stairs and the columns in the space, I could already feel the scene as soon as I walked in. It really wasn’t planned, because we had neither the time nor the money. It was influenced by Japanese films in that way, that you had to pack in as much as you can with whatever resources you have. The circumstances create the style, and no matter how dire the straits, I always want to create a film that is me. Besides, there’s movement in the music, which, if you remember, is like a cha-cha.
Needing You… (2000)
Needing You... (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, 2000).
Given how difficult it has been to see To’s romantic comedies in the West, the inclusion of Needing You… in the MoMA retrospective was more than welcome. Topping the box office in its native Hong Kong, the film pairs superstar Andy Lau with pop singer Sammi Cheng—a casting coup that To would reprise again and again, to ever-more-exhilarating ends. It also marked To’s first shared directing credit with Wai Ka-fai, the screenwriter and director in the Milkyway stable whose singular fancies always appear to encourage a sense of freedom and whimsy in To’s stylistic experimentation.
NOTEBOOK: You’re best known in the West for your crime and action pictures, but your comedies are just as formally inventive. Beyond commercial imperatives, what do you enjoy about working in this popular genre?
TO: I like comedies because I get to entertain myself, but I don’t think I’m very good at them. The person who is really good at comedy is Wai Ka-fai. He writes really great comic screenplays. Comedies make money, so making a simple comic story that brings in good box office makes the boss happy.
NOTEBOOK: You say simple comic story, but the direction in Needing You… is anything but simple. Instead of simply cutting from one room to another, for example, you send the camera up through the ventilation ducts as a means of transitioning between spaces. How do you share directing duties with Wai Ka-fai?
TO: When I say simple, I just mean that once you’ve set a scene, and you’ve got the right cast, it’s really about the two or three actors in a room. I wouldn’t use really unusual camera angles because you make these films so that the audience can take pleasure in watching them. It’s Wai Ka-fai who writes such detailed screenplays, and I’d just have to follow and film it. We were always in a hurry. He worked on it scene by scene, day by day. I’d be shooting one scene, and Wai Ka-fai would be busy writing the next scene. If I had to communicate with him, we’d talk on the phone, and it was over the phone that we’d finalize details. Character development would happen day by day, usually in the evenings when Wai Ka-fai would get to see what I’d shot that day. The script, as well as the film, builds day by day.
NOTEBOOK: How would you describe the differences between a Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai film and a solo Johnnie To picture?
TO: There’s not a big difference, but there is a difference. The films without Wai Ka-fai are very, very Johnnie To, but at the same time, he’s been such a creative influence that many of his qualities have seeped into my own.
NOTEBOOK: So what do you think those creative influences are, specifically?
TO: Reverse thinking. When you reverse the reverse thinking, you end up in a different place. That’s how things evolve, and you don’t return to the same place. So you arrive at things that are unexpected.
NOTEBOOK: Perhaps even more than the crime films, the romantic comedy comes with certain genre expectations. Do you appreciate the framework genre provides? Is it something you feel you have to work against?
TO: For me, genre is broad, not narrow. Anything is possible. You can say that a film is one genre or another, but I just want to make films.
Sparrow (2008)
Sparrow (Johnnie To, 2008).
If you want to see a great filmmaker bringing the full spectrum of his talents to bear on a picture, look no further than Sparrow. Titled after the local slang term for pickpockets, this fleet-footed caper film is among To’s most sumptuous exercises in pure style. It’s also the filmmaker’s valentine to a disappearing city, a film enamored with the architecture of an old Hong Kong under the steady march of modernization. A masterclass in expressionist melancholy, Sparrow may not contain any musical numbers, but it’s a work wholly indebted to the bittersweet romanticism of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).
NOTEBOOK: It would be another seven years before you made your first musical, Office [2015], but Sparrow seems heavily informed by the genre. What was the inspiration behind this film, and what came first, the story or the film’s formal conceits?
TO: I treated this as a chance to play. I’d been making so many films that involved gunfire, but I wanted to avoid guns totally for this film. Even at Cannes, people look at me and all they can think of is guns. So I wanted to prove that I can make films without guns. I know French art films, I know how the French do it, so Sparrow also has that tinge.
NOTEBOOK: There’s a soulfulness to Sparrow, too. A sense of the Hong Kong you so lovingly capture as a vanishing place.
TO: There are a lot of emotions invested in this film with regard to Hong Kong. I was born and bred in Hong Kong, and when I walked in the Central district, for me it was a very big place. You see these amazingly beautiful buildings that are a true combination of East and West. But they were all being dismantled or allowed to become derelict. This was around the same time that the government took down Queen’s Pier for redevelopment. I was very angry. I couldn’t protest in the streets like the rest of them, but I could make a film. So with this film, I set out to capture the Hong Kong of the past 100 years. These days, young people have no sense of history, but you can never brainwash people who lived through that.
NOTEBOOK: The villain, Mr. Fu, seems to embody the rampant pace and greed of capitalism. It’s a theme that keeps coming up in your work, especially after the 2008 crash, in films like Life without Principle [2011] and Office.
TO: I absolutely believe in capitalism, but recently there’s also the problem of over-capitalism. As in, you don’t really “work” one morning, but you’ve somehow gained ten percent [in your fortune]. We have such booming technology stocks, and there’s also the concept of leveraging on leverage. Human relations are becoming distant. We need to ponder that. It’s eating into society. Life without Principle is the film that captures a lot of my own thinking about it. I do not subscribe to communism, but capitalism has become so overextended now.
NOTEBOOK: What’s your assessment of the state of Hong Kong cinema today? Are you confident about its future?
TO: I cannot say that I am not confident. I want to encourage the younger generation of filmmakers not to give up. If you think there will be no possibilities, then there will be no possibilities. You create your own opportunities, and if you are prepared, the opportunities will be there. I really want to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to look at Asia, not just Hong Kong. There are also so many more platforms to explore. Filmmakers are content makers. You can put together resources from different places. They might not add up to a lot, but at least you can make something.
Translation by Joanna Lee.