Johnnie To

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  • Name: Johnnie To
  • Chinese: 杜琪峰
  • Birthdate: April 22, 1955
  • Birthplace: Hong Kong
  • Height:
  • Blood Type:

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Johnnie To (Hong Kong, 1955) who has directed forty films and produced forty more in his career, has been one of the most important directors in Far-Eastern or Asian cinema for over twenty-five years, working smoothly with all film genres and demonstrating an innate sense of narration. Throughout his long and versatile career, To has created works rich in nuance, with great formal precision and a constant evolution in style and expression, establishing him definitively as one of the most popular authors in Oriental cinema.

Filming an incredible number of stories in rapid succession, Johnnie To has not only consolidated his position on the market by making extremely popular films but, with his production company, he has been able to stand apart from the rules of this market, breaking traditional barriers and creating a kind of cinema that rethinks its film language and questions the logic of the film industry. The constant factors in his poetics, which dismantle the best of genre filmmaking, are simplicity in the construction of well-rounded characters, who narrate and move the plot forward even during the most spectacular action sequences, and an approach to photography that emphasizes the contrast between light and shadow. To seeks to express the authenticity of the culture in Hong Kong above and beyond mere simplification: he ironically reinterprets references to giants such as Akira Kurosawa or, in the West, Sam Peckinpah, updating the typical heroic pitch. To discover his spectacular world means entering a parallel universe composed of coups de théâtre, devoted to a multi-layered exploration of the theme of fate and populated by policemen and criminals, guns and knights. Like most latest-generation directors from Hong Kong, To began his career as a filmmaker working for television. In the Seventies, he filmed several series for TVB until he made his move to the big screen in 1980 with the action/mystery Bi shui han shan duo ming jin (The Enigmatic Case). His first box office success came in the late Eighties with comedies in which he exploited the comic talent of Chow Yun-Fat - Ba xing bao xi (The Eight Happiness, 1988), Ji xing gong zhao (The Fun, the Luck, and the Tycoon, 1989). Though he continued to make successful comedies like Ti dao bao (Lucky Enconunter, 1992) and Sam sei goon (Justice, My Foot!, 1992), in the early Nineties he began to specialize in a different genre, martial arts films rooted in fantasy; in collaboration with choreographer Chin Siu-Turn, he filmed the cult movies Dung fong saam hap (The Heroic Trio, 1993) and Xian dai hao xia zhuan (The Heroic Trio 2: Executioners, 1993) in which Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung form an unforgettable trio of super-women, long before the bloody female assassins portrayed by Tarantino in more recent years. His first turning point came in 1995 when he directed the low-budget crime movie Wu wei Shen tan (Loving You). This film, which skillfully blends suspense and action with the psychology of the characters and their emotional relationships, lays the basis for what would soon become To’s characteristic style.

Determined to take the model he experimented with in Wu wei Shen tan (Loving You) all the way, the following year he founded Milkyway Image Productions in partnership with director and screenwriter Wa Ka-fai. From that point on he played a fundamental role in the renaissance of filmmaking in Hong Kong, producing extremely free and creative works, characterized by a manifestly noir, hard-nosed and disquieting narrative approach. During that period, Milkyway produced dark and pessimistic works (despite some humorous edges) that often cast light on the world of the marginalized and social outcasts with particularly dramatic intensity, as in Chan sam ying hung (A Hero Never Dies, 1998), Joi gin a long (Where a Good Man Goes, 1999), An zhan (Running Out of Time, 1999), Cheung fo (The Mission, 1999). But starting with The Mission, To embarked on a kind of creative split. On the one hand he joined the mainstream, bringing new vitality to cinema in Hong Kong in a long series of films – romantic comedies, manic and action films – skillfully assembled and interpreted by stars of the caliber of Andy Lau, Sammi Cheng and Gigi Leung, which became blockbuster hits at the Hong Kong box office: Goo laam gwa lui (Needing You, 2000), Lat sau wui cheun (Help!!!, 2000), Shôshen nan'nu (Love on a Diet, 2001), Lik goo lik goo san nin choi (Fat Choi Spirit, 2002), Heung joh chow Heung yau chow (Turn Left, Turn Right, 2003).

On the other hand, these box office hits have given him the financial security he needed to be free to make far more audacious and profoundly auteur films which reveal his personal poetics and visual talent. Chuen jik sat sau (Fulltime Killer, 2001), PTU (2003), Daai si gin (Breaking News, 2004), Hak se wui (Election, 2005), Hak se wui yi wo wai kwai (Election 2, 2006), Tie saam gok (Triangle, 2007) directed with Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam, Man jeuk (Sparrow, 2008) are only some of his films presented at the major international festivals in recent years, thanks to which Johnnie To’s esthetic has become acknowledged in the West.

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