1. Impersonal beginnings

1980

The Enigmatic Puts
With: Damian Lau Chung-Yun, Cherie Chung, Hon Gong, Kong Lau

Damian Lau plays the role of a beggar named Lu Chock Kwan, accused to have flown gold and put in jail. The three true robbers are found died but gold disappeared. Kwan will have to flee the authorities and the friends of the died robbers, in order to discover who is the instigator of the robbery.

It is the first film of Johnnie To, directed in China, after 8 years of work for the TVB. In front of the difficulties of the realization and the result obtained, he gave up the cinema for 6 years and came back to the channel which formed him... Those which had the chance to see it thinks that is closer to Butterfly Murders de Tsui Hark. Laurent defines it as a " police wu xia pian (...), with not very enthralling intrigue and not many fights ".

  Available in dvd at Mei Ah.

1986

Happy Ghost 3
Co Director: Raymond Wong Bak-Ming
With: Raymond Wong Bak-Ming, Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Fennie Yuen Kit-Ying, Wing Lam, Sabrina Ho, Tan Bee Lee, Danny Poon, Wong Ching, Leung San, Tsui Hark, Charine Chan Ka-Ling

Second film of Johnnie To after his second passage at the TVB where he took time to mature by producing and directing series for the small screen. Happy Ghost 3 is the third opus of a popular series which counts five episodes (from 1984 to 1991), all co-produced, co-scenario written and played by Raymond Wong (who plays the happy ghost). It should be noted that for this opus, he is moreover Co-director, it is easy to realize that Johnny To was a simple "Yes Sir" at the service of the star of the film. This series followed the kind of the ghosts movies such as Mr. Vampire and other Spooky Bunch or Closed Encounters of the Spooky Kind . Happy Ghost 3 enableed Johnnie To to come back to the cinematographic industry, Moreover he met (and directed) Tsui Hark. For the small history, this film is one of the first appearence of Maggie Cheung.

I did not see this film, but I think that it is out-of-date.

1987

Seven Years Itch
With: Raymond Wong Bak-Ming, Sylvia Chang, Nina Li Chi, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Woo Fung, Tam Sin-Hung, Cheng Kwan-Min, David Wu Dai-Wai, Sham Miu-Ha, Yeung Ar-Kit

Still a movie, produced, written by and with Raymond Wong. It is a marital comedy which takes again besides the title of a master piece of Billy Wilder, The Seven Year Itch ( with Marylin Monroe and Tom Ewell ). Johnny To was again in the shadows of Raymond Wong. To note an little appearance of Maggie Cheung.

I did not see this film.

1988

The Eighth Happiness
With: Chow Yun-Fat, Raymond Wong Bak-Ming, Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau, Carol " DoDo " Cheng Yu- Ling, Cherie Chung Cho-Hung, Petrina Fung Sore, Michael Chow Man-Kin, Fennie Yuen Kit-Ying

It is a comedy made for the Chinese New Year's day, the adventures of three brothers with women. They find their new love thanks to a breakdown of the telephone system which put them, by chance, in communication with young women whom they did not know. Fai, the elder one, is working at television and will fall in love with a divorced woman. Long, is a playboy which, although having a good relation with a pretty girl, will fall in love with another. Sung, the junior, is an artist comic, timid with the women... until this strange meet.

Always a movie directed under the supervision of Raymond Wong, once again Co-productor, Co-scenario writter and actor (with however, Chow Yun-Fat and Jacky Cheung this time), which was a big public success (first at the box office for the year) and, strangely, too critical (the Hong Kong Film Award of the best film). The receipts won thanks to The Eighth Happiness would enable Johnnie To make his following movie, a much more intimist and risked film. A film terribly sexist, sometimes racist and very obsolete that his author does not like so much.

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  Available in dvd at Universe.

The Big Heat
Co director : Andrew Kam Yeung-Wah
Producer: Tsui Hark
Scenario writer: Gordon Chan Ka-Seung
With: Waise Lee Chi-Hung, Philip Kwok Chun-Fung (Kuo Chui), Matthew Wong Hin-Mung, Stuart Ong (Yung Sai-Kit), Joey Wong Cho-Yin, Michael Chow Man-Kin, Paul Chu Kong

During the production of The Big Heat , Tsui Hark, producer of the film, decided to fire Andrew Kam that he found too soft . He engaged a young director for whom he had been actor two years before (in Happy Ghost 3 ), Johnnie To, and awaited from him that he directed big scenes of action. Tsui Hark would not be satisfied and would add gore sequences (gangster cut into two pieces in the elevator, hand transpierced by a drilling machine...). According to Johnnie To, the communication between him and Tsui Hark was not great, Tsui Hark being too complicated. But Johnnie To had the occasion to see the working of a firm of production, the Workshop, what he would use ten years later, when he found his own company, the Milkyway Image. It is interesting besides to note that he would not hesitate to act like Tsui Hark towards his " employees " (see Beyond Hypothermia and Patrick Leung).

The Big Heat is a very good polar, directed in an oppressive, black and despaired atmosphere, a polar that go til the end. Each thing is thorough there to the extreme : violence, feelings, acts... All the protagonists are wounded at least once in their flesh or among their close relations : nobody is saved. Bored bodies, flarings sharp, atrociously mutilated, sifted with balls, shredded by grenades, crushed... a true cinematographic inventory of the violent deaths !!! Flop at Hong Kong, The Big Heat would very quickly become very known in Occident. But what did Johnnie To make ? Where is his print ? It is often the problem of the collective works : to succeed in put a single name on the ideas, good or bad. Finally, the film is fatherless. It is the case of The Big Heat . But Johnnie To admits that he learned lot of things with Tsui Hark.

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  Available in video cassette at Video HK and dvd at Mega Star.