DEEP FOCUS
The Bangkok Post has always trained its lens on the entire filmgoing experience, writes Kong Rithdee
Film reporting encompasses many things, from culture to censorship, from mass entertainment to aesthetics, from technology to public policy. For 70 years, the Bangkok Post has covered them all. Along the way, our reports on cinema have also been integral to the pop-cultural journey of the world, solid proof that film writing is a form of social engagement.
From the start, motion pictures and politics seemed to be in an awkward relationship. On July 15, 1950, our front page featured a commentary about a possible ban of the Oscars’ Best Picture, All the King’s Men, which tells the story of a vote-buying populist politician.
“For all its sordidness, the final effect that the film can bring is to demonstrate that demagoguery and corruption are alien to proper democratic government,” the article said in support of the film being released.
But of course, the most controversial ban came in October 1956 on the film The King and I. The order came from PM Plaek Phibunsongkhram himself.
“Yes, I banned the film,” proclaimed the headline from Oct 18, 1956. “Anything that may adversely affect Thai-US relations should not be permitted to take place,” the PM explained. “Asian and Western customs are different.”
In 1952, Thailand had its first television broadcast from its Public Relations Department (“First TV demonstration called ‘great success’” was the headline from July 15), and from there our visual culture entered the modern era.
Still, the movie houses remained a primary venue of popular entertainment for many more decades, with Hollywood and Thai films feeding the cinema screens. The Post’s movie ads have for 70 years carried announcements of new releases, from the days for Errol Flynn down the decades to George Clooney and many more.
We also recorded how Thai films slowly came of age on the international scene. On May 20, 1954, we carried a news item on Santi-Vina, the first Thai film to win an international film prize — “Thai film wins special prize in Tokyo, also best in photography, art direction”.
In 1961, Nang Tas became the first Thai film to be invited to the Berlin International Film Festival, followed by Prae Dam (Black Silk) the following year.
Since the 1960s, Thailand has played host to many foreign film productions, some of them high-profile. In September 1961, The Ugly Ameri
can starred Marlon Brando and MR Kukrit Pramoj, with Thailand standing in for the fictional country called Sarakhand. In 1974, Roger Moore came to the South to shoot James Bond’s The Man With
The Golden Gun (over three decades later, Pierce Brosnan as Bond came to film many scenes in Bangkok). But the most controversial shoot was that of
The Beach in early 1999, when we carried extensive reports on environmentalists vehemently protesting the crew’s manipulation of nature on Koh Phi Phi. The film was shot there eventually, but the protest continued even when The Beach opened in cinemas.
Thai movie stars rarely grabbed the headlines of the Post, but the tragic death of 16mm screen idol Mitr Chaibancha in 1970 was right on the front page (next to Nixon and the Vietnam War). “Mitr dies in plunge from helicopter” was the headline for Friday, Oct 9, of that year, with the report detailing how Thailand’s No.1 star was killed in a filming accident. That was the defining moment in Thai film history, and the Post was there to tell the story.
In the past two decades, we have reported more on various aspects of film culture, from the renaissance of Thai cinema in 1997 to several cases of censorship ( Syndromes and a Century in 2007, Insects In The Backyard in 2010 and Shakespeare Must Die in 2012) as well as various honours received by Thai films, notably the historic Palme d’Or victory by Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives at Cannes Film Festival (“Thai auteur stuns with Cannes win” was the headline on our front page on May 25, 2010).
Over the years, our film reviewers included the one and only Bernard Trink, with his idiosyncratic prose and star rating. “Hanuman” also wrote for us in the 1990s; and later the writer of this article.
The challenges of cinema — and by all means television — in this decade are something else. We have reported on the platform shift from 35mm film to digital, and on the hot issue of online streaming, where visual content is served directly to your device at any moment you choose. As long as people keep looking at the screen, the Post will continue to reflect the image on the screen for our readers.