The hidden gem of Hong Kong cinema. A compelling story in both dramatic and figurative terms.
It is the height of World War II; a man who had fled to the wartime capital Chongqing, stricken with increasingly severe tuberculosis and working a thankless job when not dodging air raids, is torn between two headstrong women – a stubborn, traditionalist mother and a modern, uncompromising wife.
Pitching the personal against the familial and the global-political, It was a Cold Winter Night animates the turbulence of modern China in all its consuming sufferings, embodied by the powerfully anguished performance of leading man Ng Chor-fan. The film is adapted from a novel by famed Chinese writer Ba Jin, an emblem for the transformative magic of Hong Kong cinema.
