HEROIC GRACE: THE CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS FILM

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s
Walter Reade Theater Presents

HEROIC GRACE:
THE CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS FILM
June 27 – July 10, 2003

Beginning Friday, June 27 and running through Thursday, July 10, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presents HEROIC GRACE: THE CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS FILM, a 19-film series of brand-new 35mm and archival prints from the genre’s heyday, at the Walter Reade Theater.
Click to read more or scroll down to see the listing of films.

Blood Brothers / Ci Ma
Zhang Che, Hong Kong, 1973; 118m
This widescreen epic of love, loyalty, and betrayal is based on actual events surrounding the assassination of a general in the waning years of the Qing Dynasty (late 19th century). This retelling finds David Jiang and newcomer Chen Guandai as bandit brothers who befriend the mercenary warrior Di Long after trying to rob him. The stage is set for tragedy when Di Long falls for Chen’s neglected wife. Blood Brothers represents a turn by Zhang toward ever-greater psychological complexity. Di Long is no longer a happy-go-lucky fighter (Chen Guandai inherits that role), but a brooding, tormented man. And as the female lead and fulcrum of the love triangle, Jing Li gets to play a role with more depth than almost any other woman in a Zhang Che film. While her character is typically portrayed as a heartless temptress in other versions of the story, here she is as conflicted as the men around her. – David Pendleton
Fri June 27: 1:30 & 6:15; Sat June 28: 4

One-Armed Swordsman / Dubi dao
Zhang Che, Hong Kong, 1967; 111m
Zhang Che’s riveting revenge thriller is often identified as the key transitional film between the old school wuxia swordplay picture and what we now think of as the kung fu movie. The titular hero, Fang Gang, is an orphaned "scholarship student" at a ritzy martial arts academy, a resentful commoner persecuted by the sneering gentry. He endures their bullying stoically, until his sifu’s spoiled daughter (Qiao Qiao) happens to spy on him as he chops wood, shirtless and gleaming. Infuriated by her own desire, she takes out her Lawrencian frustration upon its object by chopping off one of his arms. During a sojourn in the wilderness Fang masters the unfamiliar art of fighting left-handed with his broken blade, and returns home to trounce his astonished enemies—who in the meantime have perfected an unsportsmanlike sword-clamp device that turns out to be useless against Fang’s stubby weapon. One-Armed Swordsman created a revolution in the genre with its innovative emphasis on match-ups among various fighting styles and the warrior's training process. – David Chute
Fri June 27: 3:50 & 8:40; Sun June 29: 3:45

Red Heroine / Hong Xia
Wen Timin, China, 1929, video; 94m
Episode six of Red Heroine (aka Red Knight-Errant), the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. Made at the height of the martial arts craze in 20s Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior features the genre’s then-characteristic blend of pulp and mystical derring-do. – Cheng Sim-Lim, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Sat June 28: 1:30 & 6:30 (both shows with live musical accompaniment)

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan / Ai Nu
Chu Yuan, Hong Kong, 1972; 90m
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan casts in bold relief Chu’s perceptive grasp of generic conventions. This remarkable, scabrous film holds the "perverse" up to such notional martial arts chestnuts as loyalty, sacrifice, revenge, the relationship between master and disciple, and the exaltation of physicality (awe-inspiring feats of bodily agility and exertion). It’s an audacious and inspired flip, one that gives Confessions its narrative jolt and emotional potency, and propels the film into harder-boiled territory than the mere trafficking in gauzy, soft-core titillation (which the film does too). – Cheng-Sim Lim, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Sat June 28: 8:45; Mon June 30: 2 & 6:15

Swordswoman of Huangjiang / Huangjiang Nüxia
Chen Kengran, Zheng Yisheng, Shang Guanwu, China, 1930, video; 74m
This entertaining curtain-raiser to the adventure series, Swordswoman of Huangjiang, is sadly missing credits and footage at the beginning and end. (The 12 later episodes in the series are also lost.) Nevertheless, enough remains of the film’s ebullient mixing of special effects and now-familiar martial arts motifs—"weightless" vaulting, swordfighters competing to prove their superior technique, nighttime skirmishes in a temple—to make it an exemplary precursor to the Hong Kong sword-and-sorcery films of 30 years hence. – Cheng-Sim Lim, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Sun June 29: 1:30 & 6:30 (both shows with live musical accompaniment)

Vengeance! / Baochou
Zhang Che, Hong Kong, 1970; 111m
Zhang Che transitioned from the swordplay subgenre with this ultra-violent revenge drama set against the backdrop of early 20th-century China. David Jiang Dawei and Di Long appear here in their first film together. A conscious departure from the wuxia pian, or swordplay film, on which Zhang built his reputation, Vengeance! heralded the rise of 70s kung fu and radically revised narrative and stylistic templates at the Shaw Brothers studio. Zhang combines expressive widescreen camera angles, dynamic editing, and breathtaking use of slow motion to forge a stylized depiction of mayhem unrivaled outside Peckinpah’s valedictory Westerns. The film is awash in blood, bright red pools of it drawn mainly by daggers and hatchets, although firearms do put in a brief appearance—a first for Zhang, and perhaps the seed for protégé John Woo’s later gunplay spectaculars. – Jesse Zigelstein, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Sun June 29: 8:30; Mon June 30: 4 & 8:10

Come Drink With Me / Dai Zui Xia
King Hu, Hong Kong, 1966; 94m
Print courtesy of Celestial Pictures Ltd.
A magistrate escorting prisoners is kidnapped by Jade-Faced Tiger (Chen Honglie), whose gang of unsavory thugs is holed up in a temple, under the protection of a mysterious abbot. In a country inn, a handsome warrior, Golden Swallow, challenges the gangsters, effortlessly warding off their attacks with his superior skills. A drunken beggar stumbles onto the scene, asking for a drink, and later, leading a posse of orphaned children. The country inn is turned into a stage on which the most elegant and dazzling acrobatics are performed. Yet nothing is what it seems. Played by Zheng Pei-pei, one of the most distinguished martial arts actresses of her time, Golden Swallow is the governor’s daughter, on a mission to rescue her kidnapped brother. The blundering drunk turns out to be top martial artist Fan Dabei. The scene changes to the temple where, dressed as a woman, Golden Swallow confronts Jade-Faced Tiger and gang. Romance is in the air, especially in the tender moment when the Drunken Hero (the beggar’s appellation as well as the Chinese title of the film) catches the swooning damsel in his arms. Yet these two have some work to do. And the final showdown is not what is expected. In his martial arts directorial debut, King Hu joins poetics to sophisticated action choreography, ushering in new school swordplay and the martial arts film as a major art form – Bérénice Reynaud
Tue July 1: 2 & 6:15; Wed July 2: 4

Golden Swallow / Jin Yanzi
Zhang Che, Hong Kong, 1968; 108m
Print courtesy of Celestial Pictures Ltd.
A nominal sequel to King Hu’s Come Drink With Me, Golden Swallow takes its title from the heroine of Hu’s film but reorients the plot around a tormented swordsman. Although popular wuxia star Zheng Peipei reprised her role as Golden Swallow, the film’s true protagonist is Silver Roc, the brooding knight portrayed by Zhang’s new male star, Jimmy Wang Yu. Silver Roc is a psychologically complex figure, drawn to violence and driven by a death wish, while at the same time possessed of a poetic sensibility and powerful romantic yearnings. In Zhang’s typically tragic scheme, these warring tendencies inevitably bring about the character’s downfall. Zhang’s revision of Hu’s narrative priorities is also reflected in the directors’ differing approaches to thematics and style. Where Hu emulates the studied rhythms and poses of Beijing Opera, Zhang emphasizes rough vigor. Nevertheless, both Zhang’s bravura aesthetic, bolstered by the martial arts choreography of Tong Kai and Lau Kar-leung, and Hu’s more ethereal method would prove equally influential on the future Hong Kong action cinema. – Jesse Zigelstein
Tue July 1: 4 & 8:15; Wed July 2: 8:15

The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute, Part 1
Chan Lit-ban, Hong Kong, 1965, video; 94m
An action-packed sword-and-sorcery three-parter, The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute leaves no narrative device unturned. There is a McGuffin (a box containing a mysterious object); a martial arts couple feuding over the education of their son; and the son, ravishingly played by 1960s female teen idol, Connie Chan Po-chu. There is a bevy of martial arts masters, thugs, and lone women—all from different martial arts schools, dressed in ways that do not always coincide with their biological gender, wielding swords, knives, bludgeons, whips, darts, or chains. There are beggars, ghosts, and the mysterious Lord of the Lute himself, whose evil music, illustrated by some of the most exuberant pre-Tsui Hark special effects in Cantonese cinema, can paralyze those unlucky enough to hear it. – Bérénice Reynaud
Wed July 2: 2 & 6:15

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin / Shaolin Sanshiliu Fang
Lau Kar-leung, Hong Kong, 1978; 115m
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is the most popular screen version of one of the key foundation myths of the kung fu sub-genre: the story of the dissemination of the top-secret combat techniques developed at the Shaolin Temple to the populace at large. An ebullient Lau Kar-fai plays a real-life figure long-since transmuted into legend, a Han Chinese commoner on the run from the Qing Dynasty’s Manchu oppressors who seeks refuge at Shaolin. The Shaolin style is known for its emphasis on the external and the physical, but as depicted here the training process is very much an inner voyage of discovery: the novice must work his way through a series of torturous "chambers," designed to build strength and self-discipline, before winning permission to acquire actual fighting skills. The newly minted monk, now known as San De (Three Virtues), soon demonstrates the truth of the adage that "the mind is also a muscle"; he invents a new weapon, the three-section staff, to counter a rival’s "butterfly twin swords" style. San De is drummed out of the corps when he suggests opening a "36th Chamber" to teach Shaolin techniques to the masses. Many of the pupils the reluctant apostate acquires in the final reel went on to become famed martial heroes in their own right. – David Chute
Thurs July 3: 2 & 6:45; Sat July 5: 5

Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin / Shaolin Dapeng Dashi
Lau Kar-leung, Hong Kong, 1980; 111m
A freewheeling follow-up to the original, immensely popular The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), this quasi-sequel applies a light touch to the "warrior-in-training" subgenre and ably showcases director Lau Kar-leung’s considerable talent for kung fu comedy. Lau Kar-fai reprises his starring role, but rather than a full-fledged kung fu master, he portrays a con man merely impersonating a Shaolin priest. When Manchu thugs thrash him soundly and expose his imposture, he retreats to the fabled monastery, where the monks assign him a series of menial jobs while steadfastly refusing to teach him martial arts. Expelled from the temple, he returns to his village and discovers that, to his great surprise, he now possesses superb fighting skills. Indeed he realizes that his apparent drudgery in the temple actually constituted an oblique form of kung fu training! Return to the 36th Chamber is a delightful self-parody that pokes fun at the very conventions Lau Kar-leung was so instrumental in establishing. Along with the slapstick kung fu films of Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin helped usher in the vogue for martial arts comedy in the 1980s Hong Kong cinema. – Jesse Zigelstein
Thurs July 3: 4:30 & 9; Sat July 5: 7:15

Ashes of Time / Dung che sai duk
Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, 1994; 100m
The director: Wong Kar-wai. The cast: Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Kar-fai, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Jacky Cheung, and Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia. Writing more seems almost unnecessary. However: the story takes place in and around a hotel run by Ouyang (Leslie Cheung). He was once the best-known horse thief in the martial arts world, but he lost his lady to his brother. Frustrated and cynical, he observes the friends and strangers around him. All have reached 30 years or more, and each has lost love or whatever they held most dear — and the film’s underlying theme concerns just such losses and uses of memory. As always, Wong Kar-wai merges his tale with precise compositions and lighting that illuminates the soul and emotions of each character. For the first time, he has left contemporary Hong Kong to examine the past, but his concerns and vision remain confident. – David Overbey, Toronto Film Festival 1994
Fri July 4: 2; Sun July 6: 4:15 & 8:45; Thurs July 10: 2

Killer Clans / Liuxing Hudie Jian
Chu Yuan, Hong Kong, 1976; 103m. Print courtesy of Celestial Pictures. This print has been dubbed from the original Mandarin into Cantonese.
Along with The Magic Blade, made the same year, Killer Clan’s syncretic, extravagant mood piece stands as a highpoint in director Chu Yuan’s copious adaptations of the novels of Gu Long. This swordfighting parable of treachery and betrayal brilliantly translates to the screen the author’s propensity for solitary heroes caught in complex webs of intrigue. An assassin (Zhong Hua) is sent to murder a famed martial arts patriarch, but as he sets about infiltrating his prey’s inner sanctums, the killer with the clinical touch finds himself increasingly willing to be diverted from his mission. The lure of romantic love proves too hard to resist, while as a mere professional in a power struggle waged as a cryptic move and counter-move by unseen actors, he is decidedly a bit player. Chu Yuan’s depiction of a landscape of failing codes and afflicted warriors foreshadows the later, starker alienation of the Hong Kong New Wave martial arts films. – Cheng-Sim Lim
Fri July 4: 4:15; Sun July 6: 2 & 6:30

Dragon Inn aka Dragon Gate Inn / Longmen Kezhan
King Hu, Taiwan, 1968; 111m. Print courtesy of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive.
King Hu’s follow-up to Come Drink With Me is a rousing period tale about a heroic trio who defy the ruthless secret security forces of a corrupt despot to protect a family of political exiles. At the eponymous frontier establishment, the murderous agents of a powerful imperial eunuch lie in wait for the banished children of an executed rival. The trap, however, is complicated by a series of mysterious warriors who arrive at the inn as meddlesome guests to distract the waiting killers. An exquisite game of cat-and-mouse ensues as each side tests the martial skills of the other. When the exiles finally arrive, the mounting tension explodes in successive sword-flashing climaxes that build to the entrance of the reputedly invincible Cao himself. A huge hit across Asia, Dragon Inn firmly established Hu as a master of the emerging "new school" wuxia film – Paul Malcolm
Fri July 4: 6:30; Thurs July 10: 6:30

Last Hurray for Chivalry / Hao Xia
John Woo, Hong Kong, 1979; 107m. Print courtesy of Fortune Star Entertainment (HK) Ltd.
Strongly influenced by the films of Woo’s directorial mentor Zhang Che, Last Hurrah is a mournful meditation on the decline of the old swordfighterly virtues, that live on only as the cherished illusions of a few high-minded weirdos. The central action unfolds in an almost totally cynical, mercenary world. "You don’t keep your promises," one character complains, and his rival cheerfully agrees: "That’s the secret of my success!" A key subplot centers on a single glory-seeking fighter, Fung Hak-on’s Pray, who is so fixated on showing his prowess that he attacks a celebrated knight’s family just to draw him out of hiding. The production values may be scrappy but this is recognizably a movie with a modern sensibility. There’s an effort to make the characters talk and behave naturally, and the emotions feel authentic—as does the grim sense of a fog of amorality settling over the jiang hu. – David Chute
Fri July 4: 8:45; Wed July 9: 4:15 & 8:45

Escorts Over Tiger Hill / Hushan Hang
Wang Xinglei, Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1969; 95m.
Print courtesy of Cathay-Keris Films Pte. Ltd.
The impressive arsenal of film technique in Escorts Over Tiger Hill—including flash cuts, freeze frames, and a roving camera—has been described as a foretaste of the postmodern style of Wong Kar-wai. The film’s meticulous production design and dazzling fight choreography, courtesy of celebrated martial arts director Han Yingjie, meanwhile reveal a debt to King Hu. At the center of the stylish interplay is the story of a hero at odds with himself. Though ex-guerilla fighter Jing Wuji has renounced his violent past and become a monk, he is impelled by the Song imperial court to return to duty for one final mission: to escort a convoy of Tartar prisoners through enemy territory. – Paul Malcolm
Sat July 5: 1; Wed July 9: 2 & 6:30

From the Highway / Luke Yu Daoke
Zhang Zengze, Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1970; 79m.
Print courtesy of Cathay-Keris Films Pte. Ltd.
This epic saga, framed against the windswept expanse of the northern Chinese plains (actually central Taiwan), channels into furious action the frenetic energies of a genre in flux. Set during China’s post-1911 republican era of rampant warlordism and social upheaval, the film opens in the midst of chaos as a bandit horde, led by a slick-domed thug, Iron Gourd, ravages a defenseless village. The same bloody fate awaits the heavily guarded An, a remote but bustling outpost, until a lone stranger bent on revenge, He Yilang (Yang Qun), emerges to assume the mantle of hero. After Iron Gourd’s gang, disguised as street performers, infiltrates An, he must battle the threat from within in order to save the town and avenge the death of his own master. Just as An teems with signs of an oncoming modernity—there are cannons on its ramparts and nickelodeons on its streets—the film’s heroes and villains present a colorful array of fighting styles from bare hand to bare head that marks an imminent shift in the martial arts genre itself. – Paul Malcolm
Sat July 5: 3:15; Thurs July 10: 4:15 & 8:45

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon / Wo hu cang long
Ang Lee, USA/Hong Kong/China/Taiwan, 2000; 120m
The most successful foreign-language release in U.S. history, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon explores the power and importance of family—Ang Lee's favorite theme—within a spectacularly beautiful and kinetic dreamwork about legendary martial-arts heroes. Retiring master Li Mu Bai (played with transcendent Zen calm by Chow Yun Fat) might settle down with the woman warrior (the luminous Michelle Yeoh) he's always loved—until potential daughter-disciple Jen (Zhang Ziyi) turns up, torn between an evil "witch-mother" and the "way of the Tao." Matrix fight-choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping delivers breathtaking action sequences that often move like epic sword-dances, over and through castles and mystical landscapes. Crouching Tiger offers a cornucopia of cinematic riches: the movie's first incredible pas de deux (between martial-arts divas Yeoh and Ziyi) inspired a spontaneous ovation during its Cannes' premiere screening.
Sat July 5: 9:30; Mon July 7: 3:45 & 8; Tue July 8: 1 & 9

The Story of Wong Fei Hung, Part 1
Wu Pang, Hong Kong, 1949; 72m
Print courtesy of the Hong Kong Film Archive
In 1949 filmmaker Wu Pang, seeking to revive the moribund Cantonese cinema in Hong Kong, hit upon the idea of making a film about the legendary patriot Wong Fei-hung. He and screenwriter Ng Yat-siu sought out one of Wong’s surviving disciples. In the title role, they cast Kwan Tak-hing, an actor trained in Cantonese Opera. Although replete with trap doors, sliding walls, and venomous snakes, The Story of Wong Fei Hung, Part 1 is close to actual Southern martial arts styles, marking the arrival of realistic combat onscreen, with Kwan Tak-hing as the kung fu forerunner of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. – David Pendleton, UCLA Archives
Mon July 7: 2 & 6:15

Additional notes regarding Heroic Grace

Cheng-Sim Lim, curator of the series and co-head of programming at the UCLA Film and Television Archive writes, “By the globalization yardstick of popular culture, the Chinese martial arts film has arrived; it has ‘crossed over.’ Bursting into American consciousness in the social ferment of the 1970s with Bruce Lee’s lightning kung fu, the martial arts film found the mythic-romantic idioms of its other subgenre, the wuxia pian (swordplay film; literal: the martial chivalry film) propelled into the mainstream with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

“HEROIC GRACE: THE CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS FILM sheds light on the studio’s heyday when heroes and heroines somersaulted rather than walked the earth, villains were legendary, humbleness and loyalty were prized among all virtues, agility of mind and body was exalted, pursuits were almost always obsessive, and fighting wondrously became percussive dance. The genre’s most innovative directors prior to the 80s—names such as King Hu, Zhang Che, Lau Kar-leung, and Chu Yuan—were Shaw luminaries in this period.

“For the past 20 years, their achievements have largely gone unheralded beyond circles of specialists and fans because their works, like other Shaw films, were kept out of circulation. What with faded color, panning and scanning, and atrocious dubbing, those prints and videotapes that did exist gave only the faintest impression of the films’ original impact. HEROIC GRACE: THE CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS FILM remedies the situation by presenting newly preserved 35mm and archival prints, all in their original language with English subtitles.”

HEROIC GRACE: THE CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS FILM touring program has been selected and organized by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and has been made possible with Presenting Sponsorship from the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco, and additional sponsorship from Cathay Pacific Airways. © Licensed by Celestial Pictures Ltd. (a company incorporated in Hong Kong SAR). All rights reserved.