Commercializing Revolution and Patriotism: The Leftist Repackaging of the PRC Opera Film in 1950s–60s Hong Kong

From 1953 to 1966, 121 opera films, a huge number by any measure, were made in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), 48 of which were distributed to Hong Kong, the British Colony then. To attract moviegoers, a multitude of materials were created to promote opera film in both the PRC and Hong Kong between mid-1950s and mid-1960s. The contents and styles of them varied a lot in the two regions where the political and cultural environments varied fundamentally. This paper focuses on the written promotion materials prepared in the Socialist state and the British colony. By comparing those materials, the paper studies how Hong Kong left promoted the genre in the Colony and what messages they planned to deliver. Concretely, it shows how Hong Kong leftist film promoters re-packaged, translated or even disguised socialist and revolutionary messages coming along with opera film to make them effectively reached the heart and mind of the people in the capitalist-colonial city during the Cold War era. Whereas the promotional materials found in PRC film journals are mainly about aesthetics and technology of the genre, their counterparts in Hong Kong demonstrate that the leftist skillfully appropriated various advertising tactics commonly found in modern commercial society yet with strong local flavor to wrap up critical political ideas. These tactics, however, undermined the very ends of liberation and enlightenment that they pursued.