Melancholic Nostalgia, Identity Crisis, and Adaptation in 1950s Hong Kong: Ba Jin’s Family on Screen

The communist takeover of mainland China in 1949 created physical, cultural, and political segregation between the mainland and Hong Kong, thus fostering a sense of dislocation and alienation among filmmakers who had migrated to Hong Kong from the mainland. The aim of this study is to explore the symbiosis between nostalgia and adaptation in Hong Kong cinema within the cultural landscape of 1950s Hong Kong, when Cold War politics was operating. With a detailed analysis of the 1953 Hong Kong film adaptation of mainland writer Ba Jin’s novel Family, and a comparative reading with the mainland film version produced in 1956, this study illustrates the cultural and historical significance of nostalgia in the development of Hong Kong cinema. This article further argues that nostalgic sentiment was expressed effectively through adaptations, while simultaneously improving these adaptations artistically and strengthening their political alignment with the mainland.