Fu, Poshek. “Modernity, Diasporic Capital, and 1950s' Hong Kong Mandarin cinema” in Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007.

1） Postwar Mandarin cinema in crisis

changcheng pro-beijng

yonghua- pro-taiwan

close of mainland market   inconsistent censorship of Taiwan

the plan of the Cathay Organization to expand its distribution network into Southeast Asia and expand its production facilities in Hong Kong brought hope for a renaissance of Mandarin film culture outside China

2) Air hostess (1959)

At the same time, available research indicates that Cathay-MP&GI was inadvertently entangled in the Cold War politics of anti-communism. These concerns for modernity and anti-communism come through powerfully in MP&GI’s prestigious picture, Air Hostess.

glamour and a modern lifestyle, was invariably associated in the local mind with “northern” migrants, who remained aloof from (if not contemptuous of) the local society.

gender aspects   love for a male chauvinist

The airline company as a modern transnational corporation functions in the film as an expression of Western Fordist-Taylorist capitalism, which demanded total dedication and emotional identification of individual workers to the mass production regime of hierarchy, rationality, and discipline for the sake of maximum profits and efficiency. 

Clearly pilot Xu Ke represents the “masculine values” of rationality, discipline, and fairness celebrate by Fordist-Taylorist capitalism.