HAIL TO THE QUEEN: The closing of Hong Kong’s premiere movie theatre marks the end of an era.
This month, after a final screening of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, the legendary Queen’s Theatre closed its doors. It will leave a big gap, standing at it does on the junction of Queen’s Road and Theatre Lane in Hong Kong’s Central district. Knowing its days must be numbered, over the last couple of years, I’ve taken my three kids and assorted girlfriends and watched as many films as possible in this classic venue.
The Queen’s has an undeniable place in Hong Kong cinema history. It was here that the Bruce Lee films each had their premiere, and that every new Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest production first played to a midnight show audience. For filmgoers in the 60s and 70s, life in the British colony was a hard scrabble. Most locals lived in shoebox apartments, and lived drab, monochrome lives. Theatres like Queen’s offered them an escape, a window into a bright, Technicolor wide screen world. No wonder Hong Kongers proved to be some of the most loyal theatergoers on the planet, often going to the movies several times a week.
The 83-year-old Queen’s Theatre had undergone various changes over recent decades. The original marquee is long gone, but the distinctive vertical sign survived until the end. Of its original two tiers, only the balcony section remained, but it was here that Bruce Lee was photographed, arms raised in triumph, as his Big Boss received rapturous applause from its opening night crowd. (You can see the moment reenacted in the film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story). It was here that the partisan Hong Kong audience rose to its feet when Lee’s Chen Jun issued the immortal line ‘Chung gok yan my dung nga beng fu / The Chinese are not the sick men of Asia!’ in Fist Of Fury. Until this week, you could actually sit where Bruce Lee had watched his lifelong dreams made real.
Besides its position as a premiere venue for local productions, the Queens was also one of the first theatres in Hong Kong to show Hollywood films. One of its biggest money spinners was The Sound Of Music, its record only finally shattered by the success of Bruce Lee’s directorial debut, The Way Of The Dragon. Later, it provided a venue for the new wave of local action cinema, the red-blooded swordplay epics of Shaw Brothers, the kung fu comedies of Jackie Chan and his confreres, and later the ballistic ballets of John Woo.
In recent years, as the multiplex virus invaded Hong Kong’s theatrical circuits, the Queen’s remained a charming anachronism. The box office was approached through the faded lobby of a shopping mall, with the products in the store windows seemingly perilously close to their sell-by dates. A fierce dragon lady sat scowling inside a glass booth, as though daring customers to buy a ticket. Where the larger theatre chains had a computerized seating system, this lady had a printed seating chart, and would tick off your preferred location with a thick green crayon. (It seemed possible she used the same implement to bring a unique style and thickness to her eyebrows.) The actual tickets were printed in red ink on impossibly thin paper. There was no concession stand, and none of the staff blinked at their customer’s snack choices. I once saw a man carrying in a whole chicken (already dead and cooked, thankfully). The ushers wore monogrammed red uniforms as they showed patrons to their seats, and what seats they were... The unique sliding leather theatre chairs were the most comfortable in town, set within the curious wood-lined walls of an interior that remained exactly as it had in the 70s. Yes, it was a grind house, but a grind house with class.
The last contemporary film the Logan clan screened at this venue was the Jet Li / Jason Statham vehicle Rogue Assassin AKA War. The lobby bore posters of Li’s forthcoming period epic Warlords, a movie the cinema would not live to show. Instead, the management has chosen to mark its passing by screening a series of classic local films. I’ll certainly try and screen as many as possible, given that this will be the last chance to see these movies in this environment.
Like most of the classic buildings that once made the Central district so special, the Queens will be demolished to be replaced with another soulless glass and chrome office block. Though the theatre itself will be gone, its place in the history of the industry will remain.
One time, my eldest son managed to pull off the wooden armrest from one of the seats. I’d like to be able to say that I handed it to one of the ushers, and that it doesn’t sit in my study, a souvenir of the brighter, better days of Hong Kong cinema…
Comments
- Jason, US | 2007-12-14 12:07:35
- Mark C, Teesside, England | 2007-12-31 10:00:35
- Philip Kenny, Hong Kong | 2007-12-11 06:25:00