Author: Camille Zaurin

The early 1990's were a strange time for Hong Kong cinema. They were a time of prosperity and a time of panic, a period of intense artistic creativity and of disappointing commercial performances, half a decade of genres failing and running out of steam only to rise back up, completely reinvented, for a measly two or three years. Just as a second wave of young directors emerged amidst the reinvigorated Hong Kong film industry of the period, the men (John Woo, Kirk Wong, Chow Yun-Fat) who had made the success of the first one sought their fame and prosperity in the United States. The Handover of '97 was looming large ; the events in Tian'anmen Square in the spring of '89 loomed larger. Film directors feared they would lose their artistic freedom, and as the triads and rampant piracy began to infect the film industry from within, the mavericks of the new wave of '79 all left the british ex-colony. All but Tsui Hark. Tsui Hark's departure to the United States was much later, in 1997, and even then it was only for one film, Double Team, as he convinced Jean-Claude Van Damme and his Hollywood execs to take the production of Knock Off to Hong Kong ; where he has remained since. And why not? Ever since founding his film company, the Film Workshop, in 1984, Tsui Hark had been the leader of the Hong Kong film industry. A Better Tomorrow, the Workshop's third production, became the highest-grossing Hong Kong film in history when it hit the big screen in '86, only to be topped a year later by A Chinese Ghost Story, another Film Workshop production. Between '84 and '95, it was as though Tsui Hark could do no wrong, singlehandedly setting and re-setting the standards and the direction of the industry with every major release, every one so different from one another one might wonder if they were indeed made by the same man. Ever since his first feature, The Butterfly Murders in '79, Hark sought to reactualize Hong Kong cinema and its major genres, from chinese chivalry films (Swordsman, The Blade) to fantasy dramas (Green Snake), often bringing those genres to new technical highs. Yet it was not until 1991, a full seven years after the establishment of his studio, that he would finally tackle the genre Hong Kong is most famous for, the kung fu pian, with Once Upon a Time in China. It is difficult to think of Hong Kong cinema without thinking of kung fu ; impossible even. Kung fu is what made Hong Kong movies popular in the West to begin with, or at least Bruce Lee did, as early as the seventies. Kung fu is a great part of what kept Hong Kong films popular in the West through the eighties and nineties, with Jackie Chan becoming an international star thanks to his martial and athletic prowess. And sure enough, kung fu films are as old as Hong Kong cinema itself. The genre goes back to the very roots of cantonese cinema, and from there kung fu grew to influence every aspect of Hong Kong action cinema. Yet it was not always so. Kung fu films, or kung fu pian in Hong Kong, have a complex history, punctuated by epic highs and dramatic lows. It all begins in the 1940s in Hong Kong. At the time, depictions of chinese chivalry and martial arts were deemed subversive in mainland China and had therefore been banned by the Kuomintang, but that never stopped Hong Kong filmmakers, who even then took advantage of the colony's political immunity. Both the second sino-japanese war and the later years of the Chinese Civil War prompted many mainlanders to seek refuge in Hong Kong. By the late forties, the Shanghai film industry, which had once been dubbed the chinese Hollywood, had essentially moved to Hong Kong, kickstarting an industry that had thus far been slow to develop. Throughout the fifties, the Hong Kong film industry underwent a drastic transformation, with mandarin companies like Shaw Brothers and Motion Picture & General Investment turning the british colony into the crown jewel of southeast asian cinema. As mandarin cinema began to dominate the industry, traditional mainland chinese film genres like the wen yi pian ('civil drama') and the huangmei diao (opera films) soon took over the market. It would not be until the early seventies that cantonese cinema would develop enough to rival mandarin films, which had better funding and a plethora of seasoned, experienced directors. Wong Fei Hung. But in 1949, Wu Pang directed True Story of Wong Fei Hung, quite possibly the first kung fu film of all time. Starring Kwan Tak Hing, one of the foremost cantonese actors of his time, it told the story of southern chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hun, the son of one of the famed Ten Tigers of Canton, and himself a reputed martial artist and master physician. He established his clinic, Po Chi Lam, in his hometown of Foshan and became a pillar of the communiy. The legend goes that he became the medical officer and martial arts instructor of the Black Flag Army, who fought the french in Vietnam, and that he fought alongside them against the japanese during their 1895 invasion of Taiwan. Arguably, however, his legend did not truly start until the release of True Story of Wong Fei Hung in 1949, twenty four years after Master Wong passed away. The film was an immense success, which led to Kwan Tak Hing returning to the role for a further seventy or so installments. Between 1949 and 1969, Wong Fei Hung was undoubtedly the most popular character in all of cantonese cinema, his run only ending when Kwan Tak Hing chose to go into semi-retirement. Master Wong swiftly became a symbol for traditional chinese values ; respect of traditions and of the elders, discipline, righteousness... Often travelling in the company of his students, the most famous one being the butcher Lin Shi Rong, Master Wong's adventures generally have him put his martial skills to the service of justice and rightfulness. If he is not fighting bandits, he is fighting evil rival schools of kung fu, although fighting might be the wrong word. The earliest Wong films do not even feature any physical confrontations ; duels are limited to two opponents showing off their skills without there being any actual physical contact. Much like Zatoichi or Tange Sazen in Japan, Wong Fei Hung also became a symbol of the genre that featured him most prominently, long before the genre was even truly defined. When the seventies finally came along, Golden Harvest spearheaded a return to form for cantonese cinema by producing Bruce Lee's Big Boss and Fist of Fury. A strong rivalry began between Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, which swiftly became the most important cantonese film studio in the colony. Bruce Lee's death was a devastating blow to the cantonese film industry, but in a mere four films Bruce Lee had set the course for Hong Kong cinema, and by the mid-seventies the kung fu genre had entered its first true golden age. With Kwan Tak Hing's retirement, however, Master Wong appeared only sporadically in Hong Kong cinemas, and even then only in fairly mediocre films such as The Skyhawk. As kung fu films picked up steam, Shaw Brothers saw dollar signs, and jumped feet first into the genre, producing dozens of kung fu flicks every year as early as 1972. The Master of Kung Fu, Shaw's first attempt at a mandarin twist on Master Wong's legend, went unnoticed between the staggering successes that were Five Fingers of Death and Blood Brothers. Yet the cantonese side of the industry seemed reluctant to replace Kwan Tak Hing, and so it fell to Shaw Brothers choregrapher and filmmaker Liu Chia Liang to subvert the character for the very first time. Master Wong's film incarnation had grown old with Kwan Tak Hing, but in Challenge of the Masters, Liu Chia Liang cast his brother Gordon Liu as a young, inept, clueless Wong Fei Hung who has to learn everything about kung fu in order to stand up to the values and principles the legend binds him to embody. The success of Challenge of the Masters led to the rise of a new subgenre within the kung fu film landscape, the Kung Fu Comedy. Characterized by a delicate balance between gaudy humour and elaborately choregraphed fighting sequences, Kung Fu Comedies emphasized traditional values of kung fu : discipline, surpassing one's limits, restraint of oneself, and wisdom. More importantly, Kung Fu Comedies would mark the next step in Master Wong's film journey, as in 1978 Jackie Chan would put on the mantle of the character for Yuen Woo Ping's Drunken Master. Heavily inspired by Liu Chia Liang's film, Drunken Master features a young, immature, dishonest, lecherous, all around mean Wong Fei Hung. After pushing his father Wong Kei Ying to anger in a long, uncomfortable sequence which sees Fei Hung sexually harass his cousin, he is sent to train under his uncle, the Beggar So (himself a famous folk hero). What follows is an hour of ludicrously sadistic training sequences, punctuated by sequences of sheer bad taste and mean-spirited cantonese humor. Drunken Master was wildly successful, propelling Jackie Chan to stardom pretty much instantly, and prompting Yuen Woo Ping and Golden Harvest to produce two other Wong films, Magnificent Butcher and Dreadnought, both of them starring Kwan Tak Hing. Though the focus is very much on Wong's students, they would prove to be Hing's goodbye to the character, as he would never return to the role. By the time Dreadnought hit the screens in '81, however, Kung Fu Comedies were fading in popularity, in no small part because of the emergence of the Hong Kong New Wave in '79, which would eventually see crime films and police dramas emerge as the dominating genre in the industry. Kung fu films as a whole were on the way out, not so much because kung fu was becoming less popular, but because the genre was essentially being absorbed into crime and police dramas, with Jackie Chan's Project A and Police Story films leading the charge. The unprecedented success of A Better Tomorrow in 1986 cemented that state of affairs, and the kung fu genre hit an...