‘A fabulous speck on the Earth's surface’: Depictions of Colonial Macao in 1950s' Hollywood

Abstract

European colonialism was in the background, and even forefront, of several North American fiction films, including classics such as Gunga Din (1939) and Casablanca (1942).1 The Portuguese empire had its own share of screen time, particularly in the case of the Asian colony of Macao, which was featured in over a dozen Hollywood productions while under Portuguese rule. With a population of 250,000–300,000 Chinese (around 95% of its entire citizenry) and a continually expanding tourism industry, reaching over 1,250,000 tourists a year by the late 1960s, Macao was a peculiar colony in the context of the Portuguese empire, and one that gained a disproportionate projection.2 While motion pictures can provide diverse insights into the ways in which the largest film industry in the Western world engaged with Macao, this analysis will focus on their implications in terms of presenting Portuguese colonial rule. The article will begin by contextualizing the general patterns of Macao’s screen presence, particularly in the 1950s, when there was a significant spike in American productions set in this colony. Taking into account the different scales of distribution and mass appeal, special attention will be given to films that brought greater visibility to Macao. We will therefore zoom in on the three highest profile productions of that era to feature the Portuguese colony, both as a central and as a peripheral — and contrasting — location in Hong Kong-set political dramas. The article examines how the articulation between, on the one hand, Macao’s historical and geographical characteristics, and, on the other, Hollywood’s orientalist conventions and hyperbolic sense of spectacle ended up conjuring an overall image of ‘subaltern colonialism’.