Kung Fu!

Curse of the Golden Flower

With the recent release of Curse of the Golden Flower and female stars such as Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi making Martial Arts movies ever more popular it's no surprise that we're flocking to see breathtaking fight scenes and sumptuous Asian sets. But where did it all start? Vera Brozzoni charts the rise and influence of the Kung Fu flick.

We have to go back to the late Fifties in Hong Kong to catch the first beams of this popular genre. Until then, Hong Kong was a harbour for Chinese filmmakers who escaped the war, and provided all kinds of films; but in 1958 entrepreneur Run Run Shaw created the Shaw Brothers Studio, where directors and actors specialized in wuxiapian films. Often translated as "film of martial chivalry", this genre takes inspiration from the Peking Opera as well as spaghetti western and focuses on acrobatics and swordplay. Lavish pictures like Xu Zenghong's Temple Of The Red Lotus (1965) and Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman (1967) are considered milestones; whereas King Hu became famous as a pioneer of rapid editing and complex plots, especially in Come Drink With Me (1965) and Dragon Inn (1967), made in Taiwan when the director left the studio.

At the stroke of the Seventies, it was clear that the genre had to be renewed to survive: the audience was craving for more than the usual wuxiapian fights; the head of production of Shaw Brothers studio, Raymond Chow, left in 1970 to create a rival studio, Golden Harvest; Hong Kong cinema needed a new hero. With a perfect timing, Bruce Lee arrived and made a revolution. Now a symbol of modern culture, Lee starred in four films produced by Golden Harvest (The Big Boss, Fist Of Fury, The Way Of The Dragon, Enter The Dragon) before his untimely death in 1973; violence is more crude and realistic, less acrobatic, and bears a political message: Lee is the pure, fearless Chinese knight who resists the Western invasion using traditional Chinese martial arts as a cultural and physical weapon. His role was crucial in opening a new market for Hong Kong films, and the genre itself reached its apex: combats got longer and more realistic; the direction was at the service of the hero.

After his death, Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest gathered a bunch of Lee's imitators; the studios were still producing one third of Hong Kong films, yet kung fu cinema was waning. One of Lee's imitators, Jackie Chan, decided to bring fresh air to the genre and concocted his own formula, with the help of director Michael Hui: a mix of popular comedy and dangerous acrobatics performed by Chan himself. Snake In The Eagle's Shadow (1978) and Young Master (1980) revitalized the genre by mixing it with appealing plots and comedic turns. Meanwhile, the New Hollywood had spread its influence: Hong Kong director Tsui Hark, after studying cinema in America, came back to direct The Butterfly Murders (1979), a new style wuxiapian mixed with futuristic elements. Tsui's films are baroque and his camera is nimble and as acrobatic as the actors; this opened the path to John Woo, whose admiration for Hollywood is clear in his masterwork A Better Tomorrow (1986) – the director eventually settled in America.

Tsui's and Woo's films are undoubtedly important for the history of cinema, yet their Western taste mirrors the end of the classic kung fu film season. It's no accident that a ravenous action film fan like Quentin Tarantino has decided to pay a homage to the great martial artists of the Seventies in Kill Bill, and not to John Woo's hybrid style. Is it the dawning of a new kung fu film era? We'll have to wait and see, while Jackie Chan keeps stunting and the Far East more and more resembles the USA.

The NFT is running a season of Kung Fu movies. Check out www.bfi.org.uk for more details.

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