Cleansing Macau's Image as the ‘Wickedest City in the World’: Eurasia,Long Way, and Luso-tropical film production in Macau in the 1950s

Abstract

AbstractThis article discusses the Eurasia Film Company (hereafter Eurasia), which was established in Macau in 1954; the making of its filmLong Way, released in 1955; and more generally the issue of film production in Macau in the 1950s. This was a period of crisis for Portugal: despite the beginning of decolonization in the post-war era, the regime's policy was to preserve the colonies. It appropriated ‘Luso-tropicalism’, a theory developed by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, which argued that the Portuguese had created a harmonious hybrid civilization in the ‘tropics’ through biological and cultural miscegenation. Luso-tropicalism became a major propaganda tool used by Portugal to deflect decolonization. Eurasia, which had links to the colonial government, presented a Luso-tropical ideal not only in terms of the content of the filmLong Waywhich celebrated interracial love but also by its very nature—it was a Sino-Portuguese enterprise that also had Eurasians as shareholders—and in its production method. Its main objective was to propagate a positive image of Macau, in response to its pervasive negative portrayal in the international press and films, which often characterized it as a centre of vice.Long Wayspecifically responded to Hollywood and French films set in Macau by using similar elements, plot, and characterization, but it transformed Orientalist tales of crime, smuggling, and sin into a Luso-tropical story of refuge, order, and interracial love. Eurasia aimed to cleanse Macau's image and thereby justify Portuguese sovereignty in the territory in a period of crisis and uncertainty marked by decolonization, the Cold War, and tense Sino-Portuguese relations.