Implicating the Social Order: The Story of a Discharged Prisoner

Made and released during protests, riots, and other social crises in Hong Kong, The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967) is a pivotal work that transitions between the conventions of the 1950s social-realist melodrama and the crime film that would flourish in the 1970s and 1980s and is a key cultural piece in Hong Kong’s changing structures of feeling during this volatile period. Lung Kong utilizes the crime film to challenge the dominant values of law and order and investigate how the system of colonial capitalist power in Hong Kong impacted social experience. This essay examines and contextualizes the industrial, historical, and sociopolitical context into which The Story of a Discharged Prisoner emerged to demonstrate how the film is a critical site for negotiating the reshaping of values in the emerging industrial city.