The editing skills in Chungking Express

 Editing

Tempo:

The editing of the film is strange. Wang’s camera looks like time-lapse photography, which creates a weird tempo of the film. The camera moves really fast when the blonde woman and the first cop are running. The fast running, neon light, and time-lapse effect create a dizzy feeling.

The opening shot closely follows the blonde woman. After the fast shot, it is a still shot of some chimneys. Only clouds are moving. Then, we have a fast shot of the first cop, 233 runs. He bumped into a man that carries a fake blonde woman. 233 starts to pay attention to the blond fake man. Suddenly, he starts to chase a man whose head is covered by a paper bag. The camera moves to the opposite street and the audience can only see 233 running but the side walkers are all blended into a time-lapsed blurry background. When the camera follows the running 233, it moves very quickly; when the shot is taken across the street, it moves very slowly. These two points of view are alternating until 233 bumped into the blond smuggler. The camera and character completely stop.

These fast and slow tempo of the movies gives us the background stories of these two characters but also let the audience expect the encountering of these two characters. If I can use a metaphor to describe the tempo of these beginning scenes, these are in staccato. The eerie electronic violin, neon light, and time-lapsed shots are totally the opposite of Ozu’s movies. There is no sense of order in Wang’s movie.

The movements of the camera are diverse. The camera can turn around, like a drunk person; it will turn to whoever starts to speak, like an interlocutor; it also follows human’s movement, like a companion of the runner; sometimes it’s like a bystander, standing at a far distance.

Unlike Ozu’s movie, most of the shots are still and steady. Wang can film a still shot of Cop 233 calling many women, but there are still some slight movements of the camera. Wang gives more spatial reference than Ozu does.

Maybe the strange tempo is like a strange tango dancer, sometimes leading you to a fast pace but other times dancing slowly, but you never know what his next move is. The tempo can also relate to the name of this movie, Express. If everyone is an express train, one will only see the fast movements of other people. The background will exactly look like the crowd background. Only when a train arrives at a station, it will stop. Its travel becomes meaningful through stopping. The tempo of a train is also in staccato. 

Frame:

Wang likes to use narrow frames. The characters usually are blocked by a clear medium, such as glass, or framed between the walls. Sometimes, the medium between the actors and audience is half-transparent, such as a group of walking crowds.

On the contrary, Ozu always puts his actors into a rigid rectangular space. The space is bound by doors or wooden pillars of a house.