Sparrow

Watch for

• Simon Yam’s bicycle rides and street photography, which make the film as interested in looking at Hong Kong as in moving its plot forward.
• The repeated choreography of hands, pockets, wallets and bodies passing each other—pickpocketing becomes a dance language rather than simply a criminal trick.
• The rain-and-umbrella climax, staged in slow motion with the precision of a musical number and the stakes of a duel.
• Xavier Jamaux and Fred Avril’s score, which helps To shift the film between caper, romance, nostalgia and airy comedy without losing its lightness.

Production notes

Sparrow was produced and directed by Johnnie To, with Cheng Siu-keung on cinematography and David Richardson editing. The project stretched across several years as To shot portions between other productions. It premiered in competition at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in 2008. The behind-the-scenes context matters because its effects remain legible in performance, location, design and rhythm. A third craft element to notice: The rain-and-umbrella climax, staged in slow motion with the precision of a musical number and the stakes of a duel. A fourth: Xavier Jamaux and Fred Avril’s score, which helps To shift the film between caper, romance, nostalgia and airy comedy without losing its lightness. Over 87-minute, the production choices become narrative choices. Sets, locations, bodies, sound and editing are doing interpretive work, which is why the film’s making belongs inside the discussion of the film itself. In other words, the making of the film is visible in the finished film rather than hidden behind it.

Trivia

• 'Sparrow' is Hong Kong slang for a pickpocket, a meaning the film turns into both title and governing metaphor.
• Contemporary accounts noted that advisers for the pickpocket sequences included both professional thieves and dancers, which helps explain the film’s unusually balletic physicality.
• Sparrow was produced and directed by Johnnie To, with Cheng Siu-keung on cinematography and David Richardson editing.
• The project stretched across several years as To shot portions between other productions.
• It premiered in competition at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in 2008.

Legacy

Sparrow is a small-scale counterweight to To’s better-known gangster films: a city symphony about disappearing skills, streets and forms of gallantry. Its umbrella finale has become one of the director’s signature set pieces, and the film remains a particularly affectionate record of Hong Kong as imagined, remembered and performed. Seen alongside the other ninety-nine films here, Sparrow helps prevent “Hong Kong cinema” from narrowing into a single style, period or export narrative. What still feels especially alive: Simon Yam’s bicycle rides and street photography, which make the film as interested in looking at Hong Kong as in moving its plot forward. Just as important: Xavier Jamaux and Fred Avril’s score, which helps To shift the film between caper, romance, nostalgia and airy comedy without losing its lightness. The film therefore earns its place twice: once for what it reveals about the development of Hong Kong cinema, and again because its actual scenes still possess a distinct rhythm, personality and point of view. That continuing readability is the strongest argument for keeping the film active in the canon.