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Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema
The wuxia pian, or
film of martial chivalry, is rooted in a mythical China, but it has always
reinvented itself for each age. Like the American Western, the genre has been
reworked to keep in touch with audiences' changing tastes and to take advantage
of new filmmaking technology. Yet at the center it retains common themes and
visceral appeals.
In Japan, only members of
the samurai class could carry a sword, but in ancient China both aristocrats and
commoners could become professional swordsmen. Since the land was ruled by rival
warlords, an unattached fighter could become a killer for hire. This sordid
reality became glamorized in the wuxia tales which became popular after
the ninth century AD. Like the Arthurian legends of Europe, the wuxia
promoted a conception of knightly virtue. The roaming hero was not only strong
and skillful; he or she also had an obligation to right wrongs, especially when
the situation seemed dire. The hero fought for yi, or righteousness
- not for rights in the abstract, or for society as a whole, but for fairness
in a particular situation - usually, seeking retribution for a past wrong.
Here political history
becomes crucial. China has had an unhappy history of corrupt and tyrannical
regimes, dislodged only by court intrigue and assassination. Since civil society
could not guarantee the rule of law, the wuxia knight-errant became the
central hero of popular imagination. He or she was an outlaw who could deliver
vengeance in a society where law held no sway. The revenge motive took on moral
resonance through the Confucian scale of obligations: the child owes a duty to
the father, the pupil to the teacher. The wuxia plot often presents a
struggle between social loyalty and personal desires, as when in Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon Li Mu Bai's final mission to avenge the death of his
teacher prevents him from simply retiring from the Jiang Hu world to live with
Shu Lien.
Wuxia characters
and plots entered Peking Opera in the nineteenth century, where dazzling
acrobatics added to their impact. Wuxia novels, often serialized in
newspapers and running to hundreds of pages, became mass literature in Shanghai
shortly thereafter. As Chinese filmmaking emerged in the 1920s, screenwriters
drew stories from martial arts plays and novels, building scripts around both
male and female adventurers. (Most Westerners are surprised to find how central
women warriors are the wuxia tradition.) The epic Shanghai film Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery (1928), released in eighteen
parts, became a progenitor of the fantasy film. Using flying daggers and
wirework, it employed over 300 martial artists. The genre grew during the
interwar years, both on the mainland and among the emigr?companies of Hong
Kong. When Mao's 1949 revolution dictated new cinema policies, Hong Kong and
Taiwan held a monopoly on wuxia filmmaking.
To serve Hong Kong's large
Asian market, films were made in both Cantonese (the local Chinese dialect) and
Mandarin (the more widely spoken dialect). Cantonese wuxia pian of the
1950s and early 1960s emphasized magic and fantasy. Warriors soared endlessly,
swords and daggers turned to fire, and fighters' hands could emit jagged bolts
of lightning to stun their opponents ("palm power"). The plots were
sketchy and the special effects were crude (sometimes scratched directly on the
film negative), but the supernatural films established some permanent techniques
of the genre. Reverse-motion shooting created impossible stunts, like leaping
onto a roof. Hidden trampolines launched fighters into the air, and strong wires
kept them aloft. On the soundtrack, thunderous whooshes underscored leaps and
blows.
In reaction to the
Cantonese fantasy films there emerged the "new wuxia pian," a
school of more realistic swordplay films influenced by Japanese movies and a
younger generation of martial arts novelists. Filmed in Mandarin and produced by
big studios like Shaw Brothers, these tales didn't shy away from giving their
warriors astonishing abilities, but the supernatural aura vanished. Now feats
were presented as things which could be executed by a very disciplined fighter.
In The Jade Bow (1966), the hero and heroine pursue ninja-like
assassins over rooftops with a fluidity that seems only a slight exaggeration of
natural human grace. Women warriors remained central to the tradition, but now
they were given opportunities to contrast their styles with men's. Cheng
Pei-pei became famous and known as the "Queen of wuxia pian"
for her roles in Come Drink with Me (1966) and Golden
Swallow (1968). In Fourteen Amazons (1972), when an army's
generals are massacred, their widows take up arms to avenge them in spectacular
combat sequences.
The Mandarin wuxia pian
also intensified realism by focusing not on aristocrats but on commoners,
tormented heroes and heroines driven by ambition or revenge or devotion to
justice and undergoing extreme physical suffering. Zhang Che quickly built a
reputation for his sadomasochistic swordplay dramas, emblematized in his One-Armed
Swordsman (1967) and New One-Armed Swordsman
(1971). In contrast were the delicate, lyrical masterworks of King Hu. Hu
brought the energy and finesse of classical Chinese theater and painting to the
new swordplay movie. His films lingered on breathtaking landscapes, treated
swordfights as airborne ballets, and created a gallery of reserved,
preternaturally calm warriors who fought not for prestige or vengeance but to
preserve humane values. Perhaps the most famous scene in all the new wuxia
pian comes midway through Hu's A Touch of Zen (1971), where a
combat unfolds in a quiet bamboo grove. Although fighters clash in midair,
hurling themselves from spindly branches high above the ground or dive-bombing
one another in a flurry of fast cuts, the overall impression is of poise - the
sheer serenity of perfectly judged physical movement.
Swordplay films fell out
of favor in the mid-1970s as kung-fu swept the world and gave the Hong Kong film
industry a cheaper genre to exploit. Still, there were efforts to revive the wuxia
pian. Patrick Tam's brooding The Sword (1980) reflected Japanese
influence. Action choreographer Ching Siu-tung turned to directing, and created
a supple, modern flying swordplay style in Duel to the Death (1982).
At a less spectacular level, the great Shaws kung-fu director Lau Kar-leung
turned to wuxia swordplay in his comedy Shaolin vs. Ninja
(1978) and especially in Legendary Weapons of China (1982), a
virtual anthology of wuxia devices, both magical (a magician controls a
fighter from a distance by manipulating a doll) and historical (the final fight
scene displays over a dozen weapons and fighting techniques).
Above all, it was
producer-director Tsui Hark who spearheaded the revival of all manner of wuxia.
Tsui's first film, The Butterfly Murders (1979), enhanced swordplay
with futuristic weaponry, and he went on to revive fantasy swordplay in his
dazzling, flamboyant Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983),
for which he imported Hollywood special-effects experts. He went on to team with
Ching Tsiu-tung for the trailblazing Chinese Ghost Story (1987),
which melded supernatural swordplay, horror, comedy, and romance. With its
bisexual ghost and animated skeletons, A Chinese Ghost Story
triggered a fashion for flamboyant, almost campy swordplay fantasies. Tsui knew
a good thing when he saw it. His productions The Swordsman I (1990)
and Swordsman II: The East Is Red (1992), Green Snake
(1993), and other hits relied on gender-bending transformations, outrageous
aerobatics, thundering music, and stunning set designs. They also showcased
Brigitte Lin, Jet Li, Joey Wang, Maggie Cheung, and other popular stars of the
period.
Like all Hong Kong cycles,
the updated fantasy wuxia wound down, and a new trend surfaced. Under
Tsui's auspices Yuen Wo-ping, one of the great
kung-fu choreographers and directors, made Iron Monkey (1993), a
mixture of kung-fu and swordplay that was also grounded in the reality of
traditional techniques. Daniel Lee's fascinating What Price
Survival? (1994) featured classic wuxia performers in an enigmatic
tale pitting Japanese and Chinese swordsmen against one another. Tsui himself
revisited the 1960s grittier wuxia pian tradition in The
Blade (1995), a savage and tumultuous tale in which a one-armed swordsman
avenges his wounding and his father's death. Most important was Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time (1994), told in laconic dialogues over wine,
splintered flashbacks, and strobe-pulsed fight scenes, all awash in a
melancholic score. Ashes offers a poetic meditation on the wuxia tradition
itself, as old fighters brood over their wasted lives, mourning the youth and
loves they have lost.
In a historical
perspective, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon becomes a millennial
synthesis of the great wuxia tradition. Based on a wuxia novel
from the interwar period, its story of two generations recapitulates elements
from the greatest of the Chinese swordplay films. The serene self-possession of
Li Mu Bai is reminiscent of King Hu's fighters, and his decision to give up his
Green Destiny sword becomes a solemn acceptance of the wastefulness of killing.
Still, he cannot foreswear the need to avenge the death of his master, and so he
launches a new cycle of pursuit and suffering. Yu Shu Lien's rooftop pursuit of
the mysterious thief echoes 1960s adventures, and her unfussy prowess puts her
in the line of women warriors played by Wu Lizhen, Josephine Siao Fong-fong, and
Cheng Pei-pei. Cheng herself is on hand as a witness
to the golden age, playing Jade Fox, the vengeance-mad swordswoman. The young
couple, Jen and Lo, recall the combative couples of Shaolin vs.
Ninja; by the end, however, their love affair, told through sumptuous
desert flashbacks, acquires a sweeping poetic anguish akin to that of Ashes of Time. Behind the scenes is choreographer Yuen
Wo-ping, a living encyclopedia of Peking Opera, martial arts techniques, and
cinematic fireworks. In Yuen the sheer energetic physicality of the wuxia
tradition has found one of its masters: the purpose, he explains, is "to
make the viewer feel the blow."
Blending everything is Ang Lee, fully aware of the landmarks of the genre he's working in, and like
his predecessors he at once pays homage to them and reworks them to new effect.
Yu Shu Lien's rooftop pursuit of the mysterious thief recalls similar plot
twists in The Jade Bow, and her frantic efforts to defeat Jen in the
courtyard evoke the climax of Legendary Weapons of China, where the
old master turns to a panoply of armaments to test his adversary. King Hu would
surely have applauded the gentle grace of the floating battle between Jen and Li
Mu Bai in the forest, each drifting down to pause effortlessly on gently bobbing
branches. Thanks to computer graphics, wires can be erased and figures can be
pasted into landscapes with stunning effect - updating the special effects on
which the genre has always depended. In the old days the Green Destiny sword's
tense quivering would have been rendered in somewhat forced optical effects, but
now its tingling energy can be evoked through sound. Indeed, every weapon, every
strike and parry, carries a distinct acoustic weight and texture. In reimagining
through the most modern means an elemental story of grace and strength, of
conflicts between duty and desire, love and the quest for power, Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon continues a great tradition and brings the wuxia
triumphantly into the twenty-first century.
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