

White Powder and Neon Lights
1947-01-01 · 94 min · ★ 9.0
This is the first 16mm Cantonese film in full colour, shot on 1940s state-of-the-art Technicolor film stock. Opera star Man-ha (Leung Bik-yuk) enjoys tremendous popularity during her performances in San Francisco, but drowns herself in the vices and temptations of the big city. Increasingly, she fails to show up for performances, almost causing the theatre to go bankrupt. When she sees her lover for the scoundrel that he is, she also sees the errors of her own ways and saves the theatre, restoring it to glory. Joseph Sunn Jue established the Grandview Film Company in Hong Kong during the 1930s and continued making films in the USA during wartime by collaborating with Chinese opera performers in exile there. Wong Hok-sing, an opera actor himself, directed, wrote and starred in this film. He staged a spectacular play-within-a-play at the end, not only to promote the art of Cantonese opera but also to boost solidarity among overseas Chinese through difficult times.
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- Hok Sing Wong
- Production companies
- Grandview (US Branch)
- Countries
- Hong Kong
- Status
- Released
Top Cast
Title information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Availability not listed for this country.
Seasons & episodes
Recommendations

Norwegian immigrant Marta Hanson keeps a firm but loving hand on her household of four children, a devoted husband and a highly-educated lodger who reads great literature to the family every evening. Through financial crises, illnesses and the small triumphs of everyday life, Marta maintains her optimism and sense of humor, traits she passes on to her aspiring-author daughter, Katrin.

Despite the pandemic sending most industries into recession, debt-ridden wedding planner Dominic (Dayo WONG) gets a miraculous chance to turn things around when a funeral planner retires and passes the baton to him. His creative gimmicks for funerals help his business find unexpected success, but Dominic’s biggest obstacle is winning the approval of respected and sternly traditional Taoist priest, Master Man (Michael HUI). After some unordinary funerals, Dominic gradually understands Master Man’s code of ethics and the meaning behind each farewell.

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.

Following the death of his wife, Ip Man travels to San Francisco to ease tensions between the local kung fu masters and his star student, Bruce Lee, while searching for a better future for his son.

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.

94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

Through a series of flashbacks, four Chinese women born in America and their respective mothers born in feudal China explore their pasts.

A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

A Hong Kong man with a disability hires a Filipino migrant worker to care for him. As they spend more time together through different seasons, they start learning about themselves.

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.

Set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s Chinatown, this cross-cultural biopic chronicles Bruce Lee’s emergence as a martial-arts superstar after his legendary secret showdown with fellow martial artist Wong Jack Man.

Jackie Chan stars as the young warrior Hsu Yiu Fong. Hsu has been entrusted with the book of the "Art of the Snake and Crane," after the mysterious disappearance of the eight Shaolin Masters who had written it. He must fight off numerous clans who are all attempting to steal the book from him, to find out the true reason for the disappearance of the Shaolin Masters.

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.

Ah-Long, a father living a low-class lifestyle, while trying to raise his son, Porky. The strong bond between father and son is tested when a chance encounter from Ah-Long's ex-girlfriend changes the course of their lives.
Similar titles

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

An elusive serial killer known as the Zodiac terrorizes the San Francisco Bay in the late 1960s, while detectives aim to stop him before he claims more victims. Based on a true story.
Hanna, a cantankerous nonagenarian, patrols the Golden Gate Bridge every day and intervenes when people get too close to the edge. On what was to be Hanna’s last day as a 'bridge watcher', she stops Amy, a younger woman as stubborn as Hanna herself, from jumping. As the holiday season sets in, Amy and Hanna challenge each others' resolve and form a bond.

Kowalski works for a car delivery service, and takes delivery of a 1970 Dodge Challenger to drive from Colorado to San Francisco. Shortly after pickup, he takes a bet to get the car there in less than 15 hours.

In a rundown apartment complex in San Francisco's Tenderloin, a septuagenarian seer is waiting for his final message. For decades the eccentric recluse has chronicled the phrases of the Wheel of Fortune and deciphered their hidden meaning - the details of a mission to save his neighbors from their troubles.

Scrappy, defiant, and done being treated like a burden, Judy Heumann turns her outrage into a revolution. In 1977, she and more than 100 disability rights protestors send a very loud message: The system is broken—not us.

A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.

Johnny is a successful banker with great respect for and dedication to the people in his life, especially his future wife Lisa. The happy-go-lucky guy sees his world being torn apart when his friends begin to betray him one-by-one.

A vampire relates his epic life story of love, betrayal, loneliness, and dark hunger to an over-curious reporter.

A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.

Loving but irresponsible dad Daniel Hillard, estranged from his exasperated spouse, is crushed by a court order allowing only weekly visits with his kids. When Daniel learns his ex needs a housekeeper, he gets the job -- disguised as a British nanny. Soon he becomes not only his children's best pal but the kind of parent he should have been from the start.

A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.

At the opening party of a colossal—but poorly constructed—skyscraper, a massive fire breaks out, threatening to destroy the tower and everyone in it.

The Story of Qin Xiang-Lian is a Hong Kong Chinese Opera musical starring Jackie Chan in a child role.

Bruce Banner, a genetics researcher with a tragic past, suffers massive radiation exposure in his laboratory that causes him to transform into a raging green monster when he gets angry.

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

Two cabbies search San Francisco's Chinatown for a mysterious character who has disappeared with their $4000. Their quest leads them on a humorous, if mundane, journey which illuminates the many problems experienced by Chinese-Americans trying to assimilate into contemporary American society.

In the fall of 1963, Eddie Birdlace is an 18-year-old Marine Corps volunteer who is about to ship out with three of his buddies for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Planning a massive blowout for their last night in San Francisco, Eddie, his buddies, and a number of other Marines set up a contest they call a "dogfight”.

"Dirty" Harry Callahan is a San Francisco Police Inspector on the trail of a group of rogue cops who have taken justice into their own hands. When shady characters are murdered one after another in grisly fashion, only Dirty Harry can stop them.

Dirty Harry Callahan returns again, this time saddled with a rookie female partner. Together, they must stop a terrorist group consisting of angry Vietnam veterans.