Wong Kar Wai – Intermittent Mechanism

The Expiration of Time and Love: Analyzing Speed of Motion in Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express

April 23, 2020October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Meagan, Emily, Dylan, Joalda, and Haina
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2020

California Dreamin’-The Mama’s and the Papa’s (to supplement your reading)

The Chase

The context in which Wong Kar-Wai actually made Chungking Express is interesting to note as it relates to the techniques he uses to alter speed of motion in the film. According to Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-Wai was actually working on a different/epic movie, he had been editing for multiple years but had felt stalled in the process. Just as a writer needs to take breaks at times to look at their work with an objective lense, he felt he needed to step away for a bit, and decided to use the time to put out a quickly produced / quick hitting film, which would become Chungking Express. The context in which he made the film – moving from editing a film that was long, slower paced in time, to producing a film that was quick paced in time, and then returning back to the slower paced one – is in various ways actually reflected in his treatment of time in Chungking Express. As the remainder of this post will discuss in different ways, Wong Kar-Wai manipulates time through film techniques that alter the speed of motion. This manipulation of time is not meaningless however, the ways in which he does so is to reflect how time moves differently for different characters/situations, connecting us closer to their stories– instilling empathy in many respects. While Hong Kong films, at least at the time, were known for their fast paced approach, Wong Kar-Wai created a film in Chungking Express that is both fast and slow. And perhaps, his approach and reason to this was in-part to reflect how he perceives time as moving at different speeds within his own career.

Step-printing uses an optical printer to repeat frames, so that in the end, the scene kind of looks like a flip-book. The process, more simply, is basically the duplication of a film frame, creating an interesting type of motion that is hard to define without visuals, but easy to recognize when you see it. In the opening scene of Chungking Express, when Cop 223 is running after a suspect, he is in focus, but the background isn’t, which makes his background look like a blurry string of neon lights behind/around him. The visual effect places him clearly in the scene, but also removes him from it, as the background is blurry and almost seems as though he is not entirely in the same place as the background. The scene is not in slow-motion or fast-motion, but a kind of different motion that is slow and fast at the same time. The step-printing effect aids in both the film’s illusion of time and feeling of isolation. The constant stream of neon lights, the hussle and bussle of the market (never failing to unveil the seedy undergrounds of the city), and the crowd of people is a common sight in Hong Kong food markets, yet Cop 223 is facing two struggles. One, his affinity towards true love has backfired. His love has ended their relationship and the second part of the movie shows Cop 223’s fight to stop the expiration of love and time. In a dream-like performance, Cop 223 wonders the city hoping his ex-girlfriend will chalk their break up to a practical joke. When he realizes this is an impossible scenario, he searches through the city to find his next meaningful love, or at least to feel close to someone again: “ This was the closest we ever got. Just 0.01 of a centimeter between us.”

The Letter

In part two of the Chungking Express, Wong Kar-wai’s signature step-printing is back: fueled by the combination of slow motion, time-lapse, and motion blur in a single frame. Cop 663 is also faced with the betrayal of love, in this case from an airline stewardess. It is worth pointing out that part two of the film follows much slower, romantic sequencing in comparison to the first. Yet, the concentration of time that elapses when Faye presents the hand-written note to Cop 663 from his ex-girlfriend is just as listless as the feelings of romantic loss. Instead of seeing a physical change to Cop 663 in this time of mourning, the audience can reflect on how the cinematographers feel about both Faye and Cop 663. In this lapse, we can imagine Cop 663 reminiscing on the life he had with the airline stewardess for the last 5 years. Yet, we can also imagine Faye’s longing for the cop, along with the realization her newfound crush is still emotionally invested in his previous relationship. As twenty-two seconds of step-printing plays, only Faye and Cop 663 remain still, while the rest of the world turns. Although the specificities of the letter are never revealed to the audience, the moment of Cop 663’s acknowledgement of the letter allows for two scenarios: He won’t read it, thus the heartbreak will never be materialized OR he reads it and spirals into emotional pain. The movement between the characters, allowed by step-printing, creates noise in an otherwise silent scene. Time is both the killer of his relationship, while Faye sees time as the nourishment for her budding romance. The subtleties that underlie change is the ultimate heart of the film, and these scenes of step-printing appear to be a mockery of the situations we cannot control.

The California Restaurant

During one of the last scenes of part two of Chungking Express, we see Cop 663 in the California restaurant. After learning Faye’s secret, he decides to ask her out on a date and brings her to this restaurant that represents her dreams and aspirations. But time goes on, and Faye does not seem to be showing up. Wong Kar-wai’s use of step-printing is used to effectively communicate to viewers how Cop 663 is feeling. In this moment, it seems like he is separated from the world around him. As people go by him in the background, Cop 663 is slowly moving within the foreground. This can represent how time and the world around him is continuing even as he wallows in his sadness, waiting for his date to finally come and rescue him from it. The dialogue in these scenes also plays into his loneliness. He describes Faye’s lateness as a flight delay, and later says that the flight was cancelled, signaling that Faye would not be showing up. These descriptions tie into the fact that Cop 663 has yet to let go of his past where he is in love with a flight attendant, and can only seem to describe time and events through terms that can help remind him of the past. Even the music in the background, some sort of slow jazz, captures the slowness and dullness of the moment. The step-printing effect and the other crucial aspects of the film together create this somber tone that seems to continue to encompass Cop 663’s lonely life.

The Cup of Coffee

Faye offers Cop 663 her note after he tells the snack bar about his breakup; in a little over one minute, Wong uses the step-printing process twice to show the perspectives of both Faye and the heartbroken cop. For him, time slows down around him as he drinks his coffee; absorbed in his own residual feelings for his ex-girlfriend. He steps out of this trance as he leaves Faye and her letter behind, who returns to work diligently cleaning the counter at a normal pace. The scene then cuts to focus on a cup of coffee that Faye has brewed after her hours, and step-printing is used again to show her sipping the cup of coffee and grimacing at the flavor. Though there are no more people walking in and out of the frame, the intentional disjointedness of the step-printing process tells us that time is still passing outside, but moves slowly for Faye inside the shop as she tries to sort out her unrequited feelings. Unlike utilizing actual slow motion, step-printing allows for the manipulation of specific frames such that one can be drawn out for a different number of repetitions. Since it is also manually copied, viewers can tell when the placement or angle of the scene shifts slightly, such as in stop-motion films. Here, the shakiness of the transitions add to the cinematic effect in the ways the viewers can interpret and empathize with Faye’s feelings. Perhaps she is annoyed with herself for trying something she doesn’t like; perhaps she wishes to experience the same kind of feelings the cop is experiencing through solidarity; or perhaps she doesn’t understand what it is about coffee that he just enjoys so much. Most likely, she is feeling some combination of all of the above, and her disappointment at her predicament is clear. Placed directly after the other, the viewer experiences the emotional arrays of both characters who are isolated in their own worlds. As hard as Faye tries to empathize or place herself next to Cop 663, she struggles to step out of or make sense of her own emotions.

Lesson Plan: Basic Terms of Cinema Studies + Their Relevance for Avant-Garde Cinema

February 10, 2017September 14, 2017Ian Bryce Jones

prezi_screenshot-key_terms_header_image

Ian here—

I suspect that every cinema studies teacher has their own favorite examples to use when teaching key vocabulary terms, and I would not be so presumptuous as to prescribe my own favorites! Nevertheless, though, it’s an important part of the job, so I wanted to share my own approach here.

Over the past couple of years, I have gotten used to teaching these terms in a very specific context. At the School of the Art Institute, I teach first-year seminar courses. They are courses designed so that all students have some basis in college-level writing as they go through their time at SAIC. Instructors are given enormous freedom to teach whatever they like. This makes it a great venue for testing out new and interesting course ideas, but the flip side of that is that your courses never have prerequisites, and there’s no telling the level of expertise students who enroll will actually have.

What I do, then, is devote one day early on in the semester to a quick-and-dirty Intro to Film in a single lecture. I take a lot of the examples and explanations I first started using when I taught Intro to Film at U Chicago in 2015, but I condense them down into something that can fit into an hour or so. It’s potent stuff.

You can access my go-to presentation here. I’ve set the privacy and sharing settings to their most open, so if you’re a Prezi user you should feel free to copy it if you like it, subbing in your own preferred definitions and clips as you feel necessary! I’m here to share, and not here to impose.

Continue reading →

Assignment: Brendon Chung’s Thirty Flights of Loving and Cinematic Language

December 6, 2016March 27, 2017Ian Bryce Jones

Ian here—

Playing like a pint-sized mashup of Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels and Gaspar Noë’s Enter the Void, Bendon Chung’s Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games, 2012) packs more scintillating and beguiling details about its characters and their world into its hallucinatory, hyper-concentrated ten minutes of gameplay than most games manage in 30 hours. Bootleggers, an airport, a rooftop party, shootouts, memories, regrets, a violent end … or several? A love affair … a betrayal? All of this and much more (including a highly educational demonstration of Bernoulli’s principle) jostle together wildly in this tantalizing gem of a short.

Okay, I’ll step out of “breathless, enraptured critic” mode. Thirty Flights of Loving is an interesting game for many reasons. One of these reasons is that it steals quite a lot cinematic language—including some very interesting and unusual applications of the forms of cinema, like first-person cutting. Quick example of what this actually looks like below the jump:

Continue reading →

Silhouettes, Shadows, & Smoke: Lighting in In the Mood for Love

June 10, 2015October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Sherlock
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2015

Wong Kar-wei’s In the Mood For Love depicts the story of a man (Chow) and a woman (Su) who, both suspecting that their spouses are involved in extramarital affairs, become close companions to each other in their loneliness. As the story progresses, however, their platonic friendship spills over and they begin to fall in love.

Their story unfolds in carefully controlled sequences that are almost dreamlike in nature as, together, they fabricate a fantasy world for themselves in which they pretend to be in love as their spouses are – and then continue, even when the façade of romantic affection becomes a reality. One of the most obvious visual cues in the mise-en-scène that indicate the portrayal of these moments is in the lighting. In all of these sequences, the lighting is more dramatic: it is low-key, sharp, and almost always artificial, as these scenes overwhelmingly take place under cover of night. This type of lighting is fundamental in setting the mood in these sequences; the subtle expression of emotion and the tension of physical bodies is highlighted, literally, by its use.

The first major sequence of this nature occurs before their relationship has strictly started but after they are both aware of each other. In this sequence, first Su and then Chow go out to get noodles. The entire scene appears in slow-motion, and the lighting is intensely more dramatic than perhaps any other scene in the film up to this point. It takes place at night, so the only light comes from street lamps; overwhelmingly the world is dominated by shadow. As both characters go up and down the stairs to the noodle stall, we see both their physical figures, in sharp silhouette, and their shadows, on the wall descending with them; this adds an air of intrigue and, it could be even said, mystery to the scene. In this world of shadows, without the light of day, everything is a little more uncertain; the shadows serve as a lingering presence of the characters even when they themselves are no longer visible in the frame, and that presence is tense, tangible, fleeting.

In the sequence we see first Su as she goes down and up the stairs –

and then later Chow –

And then, at the culmination of the sequence, we see them both on the stairs at once, meeting as Su ascends and Chow descends, and the tension of both of them at once in a space previously inhabited by just one of them is heightened still more by the lighting, and the fact that we can essentially only see the outline of their frames in silhouette – close, almost touching, like two shadows meshing together on the same expanse of wall. We become, in this fleeting moment, hyper-aware of the possibility of contact, of their silhouetted bodies touching. In the world of shadow, they are the only things moving – dark forms, graced by light.

A second sequence occurs a few minutes later, again with them going to the noodle stand. This scene is similarly lit in artificial, sharp lighting, and similarly serves to heighten dramatic tension.

Here are two still frames of first Chow and then Su from the same sequence:

The lighting on Su’s face is sharper and a little brighter, but the lighting on Chow is still sharp enough that his face, hand, cigarette, and collar pop most, and everything else recedes into shadow; similarly, Su’s profile is what pops most immediately in the second frame. It is also interesting to note that their profiles mirror one another.

The next sequence in their constructed reality is the most direct one thus far, by far – they dine together in a restaurant. In this scene, dominated by middle shots and close-ups, the lighting is again artificial and sharp, coming primarily from the point source of a single lamp hanging over their table at the restaurant. It beautifully highlights their faces, capturing subtle, subtle expressions of emotion, minute twitches of facial muscle, fluttering eyelashes, stuttered breath. It also works wonders for capturing Chow’s cigarette smoke.

This sequence, like most of the other sequences of their constructed reality in the film, feels almost noir with its air of dramatically-lit, subtle intrigue. Chow’s smoking adds to this; it feels suave, sexy, backlit and tinged with the dark, rich red of the seats around them – but if this scene were lit differently the effect would be entirely different. It is the sharp lighting that creates such a powerful atmosphere of mystery, tension, and drama.

The next sequence of this kind begins with this frame:

Everything about this shot is utterly stunning. The light on Su’s face is perhaps the most dramatic in the entire film: bright, sharp, highlighting the shadows under her cheekbones and her winged eyeliner, and also very artificially coloured, almost golden, making her lipstick look brighter and her features more defined. Chow is behind her, in a different depth of field; still, we can tell that his gaze is on her, and the resultant tension is incredible. (If there was a visual climax of the film, I would say it’s right here: this moment, more than any, captures the drama, the tension, the subtle intrigue, the possibility of hidden feeling, the hint of passion – and visually, it is incredibly beautiful.)

Later, a scene between them betrays a slightly different feeling, but still heightened by the effects of lighting. In this scene they are in the rain, having a conversation about the beginnings of their relationship. This sequence is less cinematically dramatic; singularly, there is no music playing, and they are holding a regular conversation instead of moving in slow-motion like two shadows on the verge of touching. It begins with Chow running towards Su in the rain, in an echo of an earlier scene:

The two proceed to have perhaps the most honest conversation that takes place over the course of the entire duration of the film. Here we see their fantasy reality of romance being acknowledged directly – a break from tradition – but lighting still serves to heighten the sense of tension and emotion in the scene.

The light is a dull colour, a soft blue or grey, and more diffuse than it has been previously. In many ways it’s a visual cue that this scene, that the events transpiring between them now, are different than they have been in the past. It is still dark enough that it could be night and there is still sharp lighting on their faces from a streetlight somewhere – but the shadows are no longer as deep, as the barriers between their pretended reality and actual reality break down.

A final scene between them shows them saying good-bye to one another for a final time – or, as we later realise, rehearsing saying good-bye.

Here the light is once again very dramatic in its sharpness and the dramatic and physical tension it provides. The above frame is particularly poignant because of the shadows present. The single thrown by Chow is lonely and stark against the wall, and also carries narrative significance because it is alone, not accompanied by Su’s shadow – as they are parting. But what is perhaps even more poignant is the shadows of bars that are cast over the characters, because they can be read to have a metaphorical significance: bound by societal convention and scrutiny of neighbours – imprisoned by convention and expectation – Su and Chow must always be secretive and must now even say good-bye (or prepare to) in secrecy.

The illusion dissolves in the next moments of the scene as we realise that this good-bye was only a rehearsal – but the lighting remains the same. In this part of the scene it serves to heighten the emotional distress of the characters, as Su weeps in Chow’s arms. They are in a closer embrace than we have ever seen them in before, so much of the physical tension is (finally!) abated, but the emotional intensity remains. Su finally dissolves, in the first time we have seen her lose composure so openly, and Chow, in contrast, visibly struggles to remain stoic.

In conclusion, the lighting in the sequences that catalogue the progression of Su and Chow’s relationship is cleverly used to heighten dramatic, narrative, and physical tension; it highlights undercurrents of uncertainty, hesitation, and occasionally sensuality that emotionally charge their interactions, and it allows us as viewers to better see the subtle expressivity of their faces. With this lighting, the tangibility of their interactions becomes at once more fleeting and more real; more satisfying and more infuriating: in these moments of touching or almost touching, the light throws everything into sharp contrast, into a dreamlike world of sharp light and slow, lurking shadow – a murky world in which one can easily fall in love in the shadows and under streetlamps – but also a world in which even silhouettes cast shadows, and the consequences of such actions cannot remain hidden forever.

Dressing up for Noodles: Costume Design in In the Mood for Love

June 3, 2015October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Wei Yi
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2015

In the Mood for Love (2000) is a beautiful study in restraint. Set in 1960s Hong Kong, the film details the intimate relationship that develops between two lonely neighbours, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung). Neglected and later betrayed by their spouses, they foster a special kinship which social mores dictate must be concealed. This is a society that operates not by brute force but by much more subtle ways; through its institutions, through the eyes and ears of one’s neighbors, through the personal values individuals feel compelled to uphold, and the dark desires they actively repress.

The restraint demonstrated by the characters, who are far too disciplined and respectful to enact any sort of revenge or vent their passions, is echoed by the understated nature of storytelling. Wong Kar Wai capitalizes on the cramped living spaces in Hong Kong, which erode the boundaries between social and private life, to create tension that drives the narrative – it is much harder to keep secrets when your neighbors live so close to you. This in turn shapes the way the narrative is told: since most of the dialogue is either vague or dishonest, the truth must be told another way. I wish to analyze how costume design contributes to the film’s overarching narrative and themes, often filling audiences in on what is left unspoken. The costumes are an outward manifestation of characters’ internalization of the gaze of others – of social responsibility and convention. From Su Li-zhen’s cheongsams to Chow Mo-wan’s suits, characters wear a uniform that projects how they wish to be seen by others. But we see that costumes also betray the secrets people keep.

The devil in the details

While pursuing the suspicion that her husband and Chow’s wife are having an affair, Su Li-zhen facilitates the infidelity of her boss. In one scene, she informs him that his wife will be at the restaurant at 5.30pm, and hands him a gift from his mistress. Presumably the gift is a tie, because Su Li-zhen casually remarks on it when she returns from getting him coffee:

Later, she catches him as he leaves the office to have dinner with his wife:

In other words, the new tie might have exposed his affair to his wife. This scene hints to us how Su Li-zhen discovered her husband’s infidelity, which is confirmed later in the film. This scene is also significant because it signals to audiences that there is intentionality on the filmmakers’ part in such minor costume details as the choice of tie for a certain actor in a certain scene – you notice things if you pay attention.

The infidelity of Su Li-zhen’s boss is employed as a parallel to the affair between her husband and Chow’s wife, often used to foreshadow the realization of the latter. Earlier in the film, Su Li-zhen asks her husband to bring back two handbags from Japan for her boss, one for his wife and one for his mistress:

Later in the movie, Chow asks where he can purchase her handbag for his wife:

She would mind, because she knows what it means to have the same handbag as the woman who lives next door, and to see their husbands wearing the exact same tie. Chow knows too; in this scene we discover that despite his verbal dismissals, he is not so naïve as to ignore the evidence before his eyes. He simply plays the fool before the eyes of others. Their astuteness becomes apparent; later on they use their attentiveness to detail to engineer a moment of deception, when Su Li-zhen changes into heels and leaves her slippers in Chow’s apartment to fool the landlords, who return home earlier than expected. The knowledge that any little detail could be used against you is perhaps why both of them take such great care with their own appearance.

Playing dress-up

This humorous remark by one of the landladies implies that Su Li-zhen’s commitment to her uniform of beautiful and restrictive cheongsams is distinctive not just to audiences, but to other characters as well. Su Li-zhen alternates between 21 cheongsams over the course of the film (though some of them only appear in one scene), and her wardrobe is one of the most visually arresting elements of In the Mood for Love. Here they are in order of appearance:

Given that the film returns to the same few interior or nighttime sets (the apartments, their offices, the noodle stand, the corridor) again and again, Su Li-zhen’s changing dresses help indicate to us the passage of time. Often they complement the rest of the mise-en-scène, such as this instance where yellow flowers in the room are echoed by her dress:

Form-fitting and elaborate, with unusually high collars that can resemble a neck brace, Su Li-zhen’s cheongsams reflect how incredibly self-conscious she is about her image and the restrictions she places on herself in order to ensconce herself in Hong Kong society, especially compared to the more varied and Westernized attire of Chow’s wife. The uniformity of her appearance means that deviations from trend are significant. At a pivotal moment in the film, when visiting Chow after he has been missing for several days, she dons a red coat. The feelings she has for him, that she had previously suppressed, are finally revealed – she literally wears her heart on her sleeve.

Four years later, we note the plainness of her last two cheongsams relative to the others, the lower collar, and a new hairstyle:

This is the last time we see her. The intertitle immediately preceding this shot reads: “That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.” Su Li-zhen, by choosing to uphold her public status at the expense of her personal feelings, is able to reintegrate back into society and move into a new stage of her life: motherhood. We have traced the evolution of a character in the way she dresses.

We can do the same for Chow Mo-wan. His uniform consists of a suit and tie, hair slicked back and neatly parted, and an opaquely polite smile:

Like Su Li-zhen, Chow is also very conscious of external chatter, and he is as reticent in private as he is among his neighbors. In a rare moment, we see Chow in a singlet reading a letter from his wife, who is in Japan with Su Li-zhen’s husband. He crumples up the letter and shuts the door on the camera:

As a storyteller, Wong Kar Wai is insistently indirect; often the camera seems to be just outside the locus of activity, like a voyeur peering into the private lives of these individuals. Audiences, too, are implicated in the intrusiveness of the public eye.

Gossip and unrequited love drive Chow away from his apartment to Room 2046. When seeing Su Li-zhen out after her visit, we notice that his normally perfectly gelled hair is partially undone:

Given that at no other point has he had a single hair out of place, we can infer that this is a deliberate costuming decision. The internal conflict between his personal desires and his social obligation as a married man has caused him to come undone. Chow cuts himself off from society – he even stops going to work – and eventually leaves Hong Kong entirely, retreating to Singapore. Since he cannot reconcile his public and private lives, he chooses instead to live in exile, only returning years later.

As long as you both shall live

In the Mood for Love is about a love story that never happened. We observe that the relationship between Su Li-zhen and Chow Mo-wan, flush with emotion and possibility, remains unfulfilled within a society that conspires to keep them apart. Yet we also observe the agency by which they determine this outcome. Just as their spouses decide to defy the promises they made in marriage, Su Li-zhen and Chow Mo-wan actively chose to terminate their relationship. The institution of marriage casts a heavy shadow over the actions of these characters, and it is visually depicted in the multiple close-ups on wedding rings we see throughout the film:

Notably, rings are always shown worn on the hand, never removed from it. When the relationship between spouses begins to break down, the rings that once signified a great love become a reminder of a social obligation, an observed and observable commitment. They are therefore tied to image, reputation, integrity – socially determined characteristics. Unwilling to relinquish the moral high ground to their cheating spouses, the bond between Su Li-zhen and Chow Mo-wan ultimately becomes a secret whispered into the hole of a tree: an unrealised wish, a blurred memory.