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AMERICAN CINEMA PAPERS PRINT ARCHIVE
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Beyond Kung Fu: Seven Hong
Kong Firecrackers IS THE GANG ALL HERE? by Harlan
Kennedy Hong Kong is a tiny community exploding with the kind of demographics
that film producers swoon over. From a population of 600,000 in 1945 it has
grown to more than 5 million today, forming a big enough regiment of movie
customers to allow medium-budgeted films to recoup their initial costs.
(Bigger profits then come from sales to Taiwan, the Philippines, and other
Asian ports of call – and, for ultra-successful movies, the West.) And since
most of that Hong Kong population is under 30, and 40 percent are under 20,
the large cinemas perform to regular capacity business. The best-known product from this British crown colony is the wu xia pian – the martial arts film. More than 800 have been produced in Hong Kong
since the war, ranging from costumed sword-and-swashbuckle
to modern-dress kung fu, absorbing and cannibalizing a rich diversity of
Asian physical arts, from Chinese Opera to swordfighting
to wrestling. Until recently, popular Hong Kong cinema was dominated by the Shaw
Brothers and Golden Harvest, two companies that pushed the kung fu boom
Westward with such marketable human firecrackers as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. But in the last ten years, as Shaw Brothers
decelerated and Golden Harvest got stuck in a popular entertainment groove, a
host of independent production companies have helped prove that barnstorming
martial arts pics are not a Hong Kong
cine-qua-non. In addition to the innovative cutting and jugglings
with time and space of Ann Hui, there could also be thought and grace and beauty of line (King Hu); passionate and compassionate social
realism (Allen Fong); and adventure films totally transfigured by a new
aesthetic of visual bravura and sardonic wit (Tsui
Hark and Patrick Tam). ● King Hu's A Touch of Zen was the
forerunner and perhaps the finest flower of the new movement: a Ming Dynasty
costume Epic as strong on philosophy as fisticuffs and composed with a
dazzling painterly eye for widescreen images. Hu, born in Peking in 1931, is the oldest and longest-working of the new
directors. He was a supporter of the Communist takeover in China in 1949 and
became a Hong Kong resident almost accidentally – stranded in the colony on a
visit when the borders were closed. He has lived and worked there ever since,
making seven feature films, of which the most recent to reach the West were Raining
in the Mountain and Legend of the Mountain, both made in Korea in
1977-78. His feature debut was Come Drink With Me in 1966. But it was
with his second film Dragon Gate Inn (1967) that his career achieved
lift-off. The movie was an explosive box-office success in South-East Asia, outgrossing even The Sound of Music. This helped
to win financing for A Touch of Zen, shot in 1968 and the subject of
tribulations and litigation. Hu's producer first
determined to split the story into two separate full-length movies, then
whittled the material down for mass distribution to a single two-hour
feature. The final version shown in the West in 1975 was all one movie but
the footage ran to a near-complete three hours. None of Hu's later films have equaled the
extraordinary episodic structure of A Touch of Zen, a slow-motion
relay race with three different "heroes." Nor have they matched Zen's
sumptuous visuals: the war of ghosts in a deserted fort; a battle of
soaring limbs and stylized cries in a bamboo forest lanced by dazzling shafts
of light. But of his other films, The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) had a
cunning, chess-game plot, and a typically astounding action showdown. The
Valiant Ones (1974) flaunted intermittent visual bravura in its tale of
rival warlords and pirate bands. And Raining and Legend use
their wild and beautiful Korean locations to mystical, lyrical effect. ● Allen Fong, 38, sits firmly ensconced at the opposite end of the
seesaw between mysticism and realism. He served his apprenticeship in Hong
Kong television, after getting his B.A. in film at the University of Georgia
and his M.F.A. at the University of Southern California, and like Ann Hui he made his name with two episodes in a vérité-style TV film series called Below the Lion
Rock. Fong's episodes (Wild
Children and Song of Yuen-Chow-Chai) proved him a brilliantly
acute and unsentimental realist who could catch the big-eyed expression of
slum children caught between wonder and mischief, the frozen, stoic grief of
a bereaved family, or the tiny truthful details of waterfront poverty. His first feature film, Father and Son (1980), was financed by
Mainland China and partly shot there. It pooled all Fong's strengths in the
tale of a shanty-dwelling Hong Kong family and the generational conflict
between Dad, a paper-shuffling office clerk, and Number One Son, a semi-delinquent
who wants to be a filmmaker. Again Fong's forte – indeed fortissimo – is his handling of children. "I get them to make up their own
lines," Fong says. "As shooting goes on, they come to trust me, we
become friends, and there's no shyness or diffidence in front of the camera.
With grown-ups as well, I try to allow space for improvisation in my films.
That way a movie creates its own life inside the structure you build for
it." Fong's newest film, Ah Ying, is due to bow
at Western festivals later this year. ● After the Big Three of Ann Hui, King Hu, and Allen Fong, the
liveliest young Hong Kong helmers today are the
three or four giving a novel twist to wu xia pian forms. Tsui Hark's The Butterfly Murders (1979)
was a magnificent morsel of costumed derring-do, set in an action-packed castle and boasting
an inventive use of composition and cutting. It was balanced on a knife-edge
between lyricism and absurdism. His second film Don't Play With Fire (also known as Dangerous
Encounters of the First Kind)
toppled right over the edge and onto the knife. This visceral and
freely chaotic melodrama contained many examples of the ancient art of disembowelling and caused much tut-tutting
among the Hong Kong censors. The unpredictable Hark recently finished
shooting Hong Kong's most expensive ever spectacular, Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain. Meanwhile, Kirk Wong has made the stylish underworld movie The Club (for Bang Bang Films!). Patrick Tam (The Sword, 1980; Love Massacre, 1980; Nomad,
1982) is a dashing poet of the action story. Alex Cheung has hit the big
time this year with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,
a popular special-effects extravaganza. Shu Xuan's The Arch was the hit of this year's Pesaro Film Festival. Next spring, London's National Film Theatre will mount a giant retrospective
of the Hong Kong New Wave. And in June 1984, the Pesaro Film Festival will concentrate on Asian
films. Hong Kong turns out about 150 films each year; and because it is still
a British Crown Colony (until 1997 when the lease runs out), they are all
sub-titled in English. Hui, Hu, and Fong have lit the way to the new Hong Kong Cinema. Now it's high
time Americans started enjoying the fireworks. Why shouldn't we have
some fun as well? COURTESY T.P.
MOVIE NEWS. THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE OCTOBER 1983 ISSUE OF FILM COMMENT. ©HARLAN KENNEDY. All rights reserved. |
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