In this inaugural episode of Cinema Scope, host Andy Nelson is joined by professors Leon Hunt and Chris Hamm to explore the captivating world of wuxia, a Chinese film genre that blends philosophy, action, and legend. They discuss the key elements that define wuxia, such as the chivalrous heroes, period settings, and fantastical elements, as well as the concept of jianghu, a unique world within wuxia stories.
Leon and Chris trace the evolution of wuxia from its roots in early Chinese literature to its influence on other genres, including Hollywood blockbusters. They also highlight notable works like A Touch of Zen, The Bride with White Hair, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, analyzing their contributions to the development and popularity of wuxia cinema.
This engaging and informative episode will deepen your appreciation for the richness and complexity of the wuxia genre, inspiring you to explore more of these captivating films.
In this inaugural episode of Cinema Scope, host Andy Nelson is joined by professors Leon Hunt and Chris Hamm to explore the captivating world of wuxia, a Chinese film genre that blends philosophy, action, and legend. They discuss the key elements that define wuxia, such as the chivalrous heroes, period settings, and fantastical elements, as well as the concept of jianghu, a unique world within wuxia stories.
Leon and Chris trace the evolution of wuxia from its roots in early Chinese literature to its influence on other genres, including Hollywood blockbusters. They also highlight notable works like A Touch of Zen, The Bride with White Hair, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, analyzing their contributions to the development and popularity of wuxia cinema.
This engaging and informative episode will deepen your appreciation for the richness and complexity of the wuxia genre, inspiring you to explore more of these captivating films.
What is Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, & Movements?
Cinema Scope with Andy Nelson takes you on a captivating journey through the ever-evolving landscape of film. Moreover, it offers a unique and engaging perspective on the art of cinema.
Andy:
Welcome to cinemascope where we slice through the mystique of cinema's genre landscapes. I'm Andy Nelson, your guide on this journey to bridge film genres, subgenres, and movements, ultimately deepening our understanding of
Chris:
them all.
Andy:
Today, for our inaugural episode, I'm very excited to talk about this, this one. We're diving into Woosha to discover how its blend of philosophy, action, and legend captures our imagination across cultures and eras. Joining me today, I have 2 guests that, it'll be a lot of fun to talk about this with. I have, Leon Hunt Hello. And Chris Ham.
Chris:
Hello, everybody.
Andy:
Both of you have, studied Woosha. You're both professors. You teach it. You have written about it. You have a a firm understanding.
Andy:
Do let's start with you, Leon. Just a quick, background on you and Woosha and how it came into your life and your experience with it.
Leon:
I was probably later discovering Wu sha than the version of the martial arts film, which was the first one to sort of break out in the West, which was the kung fu film. So I I very much came in through the kung fu door. I was just the right age for the kung fu craze, as they called it in the seventies. I was watching Bruce Lee films, and all the other sort of Hong Kong martial arts films that I could see. The first Wu sha film that I saw was actually, A Touch of Zen.
Leon:
Sort of about starting with one of the easy ones. Yeah. Let's start with the 3 hour one that doesn't have any fighting for the first hour. And I was aware immediately that that was very different from the martial arts films that I was more accustomed to. I wasn't yet familiar with the term wuxia.
Leon:
I I wouldn't discover that until many years later. This was sort of about the mid to late seventies. And significantly, the book I wrote about martial arts films has got kung fu in the title. That was that was my way into the genre. And my understanding of wusha really came along later.
Andy:
And how about you, Chris?
Chris:
Well, first, let me say, Leon, it's a pleasure to meet you in part because I've used your book. I co teach a course on martial arts cinema, with a colleague in the cinema and media studies department, and, we've used chapters from your kung fu cult masters in that course. So I've it's, it's a pleasure to meet you.
Leon:
Thank you.
Chris:
But, yeah, I too grew up with Bruce Lee. But years later, when I was in graduate school studying Chinese literature, I actually never thought too much about, wuxia cinema, about wuxia film, but I got interested in, wuxia fiction, martial arts fiction, and was originally intending to do a a sober dissertation on some topic in, modern Chinese literature, I was reading martial arts novels in my in my spare time, and my adviser said, you know, a lot of people read these things and no one's ever written about them, and maybe somebody should do a dissertation. So I I ended up writing my dissertation and publishing my first book on martial arts fiction. I'm not really a cinema scholar. I I I'm a a literary scholar, but I teach martial arts, film in some of my courses, and I do co teach a a a a big martial arts film course with somebody with a colleague from, the cinema studies department.
Chris:
So, you know, I kind of got back into martial arts film through the medium of literature and written fiction.
Andy:
It's such an interesting world, like what Woosha is, the way that the stories unfold. And I think I I definitely wanna dig into your, experience and understanding, Chris, with kind of like the novels and kind of how all of this really began and got started and everything. Before we do that, though, I just wanna talk a little bit about why we're talking about Woosha, as our first, episode of the show. It's a name like you, Leon. I hadn't heard of it until Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came out.
Andy:
And that was the first time that it in popular culture, people were like, oh, it's a Woosha film. And my college roommate was, from Malaysia. And when that movie came out, you know, I was talking with him, and he says, like, what is it with you Americans? Like, this has been around forever. And, you know, and I was like, oh, I hadn't heard of it.
Andy:
And without realizing, when I was young, one of my favorite films was Big Trouble Little China. And there are certainly elements that you can see that John Carpenter used through with kind of just some of the elements of wuxia in that film. I don't know if I'd call it a wuxia film, but it's definitely something that has some of those elements. And but then seeing how you can when you start understanding what it is, and you can see, like, there are elements of it in the matrix, and you can see kind of pieces of it that kind of get woven through a lot of action cinema outside of martial arts films. I think that it's an interesting, genre to talk about.
Andy:
It's definitely a unique one, and I think it's very important to explore it in the context of of global cinema. So for the 2 of you, how does it reflect kind of looking at how at where it started? How does it kinda reflect the cultures and values from where it started? And and then why is it still relevant today?
Leon:
I think its lasting relevance is is well, I think you mentioned films like Big Trouble in Little China. And I think, certainly, what sort of global cinema has taken from the wuxia genre as opposed to the kung fu films is the spectacle, the more sort of fantastical elements of it, which sort of caught the imagination. I think when Carpenter was making Big Trouble in Little China, he'd he'd probably seen films like Zoo Warriors of the Magic Mountain and A Chinese Ghost Story, and those more sort of special effects driven films. I think Crouching Tiger also probably had more of that kind of philosophical dimension associated with the genre, which doesn't necessarily always even turn up in in the Chinese films. Some are much more straight ahead for the action.
Leon:
And what I've seen of the few silent Wu Sha films that have survived from the 1920s, because I don't think many of them did survive, they don't look massively different from the sort of swashbuckler films. I mean, I've seen it said that Douglas Fairbanks was kind of an influence on them, that it was a way for the cinema of Shanghai to think, well, you know, we we could make films like this. We've got genres that will fit this sort of, adventure action template.
Chris:
Thinking about wuxia, I think the meaning of it and the kind of history of it is different for what we might think of as native audiences and international audiences. That for international audiences, it's perhaps, in many cases, a a variant of action film and adventure film that has this, oriental gloss on it, and that also has a maybe going back to the kung fu TV series, you know, the the sense that it's not just oriental action, but that by being oriental action, it also carries this kind of mystical or philosophical weight or or shadow that, western action genres generally don't. And that that was part of its appeal that kind of tie in with the, eastern mysticism of the sixties seventies and the interest in that. For, what we might think of as native audiences, I think it's a little bit different because there is this perception that the cinematic versions of all this are somehow grounded on a literary and cultural tradition that goes back 100 or 1000 of years. A perception that is in some ways true, in some ways, I think, not so true.
Chris:
Because we shot cinema as we know it, and Leon suggested this in his comments about Douglas Fairbanks and whatnot. I mean, it really is taking some material that's familiar to Chinese audiences from the opera stage or from literature, but then wedding it to the not just the technology of cinema, but to the aesthetics and technical capabilities of Hollywood cinema. And we see that in the twenties with the early wuxia films that really are kind of Chinese versions of of Douglas Fairbanks and Swashbuckling films. But then again in the sixties, where the wuxia genre is reinvented at Shaw Brothers and elsewhere, really, as a kind of conscious effort to come up with a Hong Kong or Chinese competitor to the Japanese samurai films and the spaghetti westerns and the spy movies and stuff like that. So it's it's it's a kind of combination or wedding between this, inherited material and the possibilities, the kind of very specific possibilities of the cinema.
Andy:
And it's so interesting how it's even evolved outside of the novels into the genre that we've had and how it's changed and how all of these other genres are influencing it and how it's influencing them. I I suppose we should maybe take a quick step back and just for people who are listening to this, who are hearing us say this name, who might not actually be familiar with Wu Cha, maybe we should really quickly describe what are the key elements? Like, how would you describe WuSha to somebody who hadn't heard about it before?
Leon:
Well, I guess the the name I I suppose the easiest way is to start with the name that that sort of points to the kind of the two defining things of the genre. That on the one hand, they are people who have sort of martial or military ability. They are fighters of some sort. But at the same time, that that is wedded to a certain set of values. You know, chivalry is the way it often gets sort of loosely translated.
Leon:
That they have particular qualities of heroism, they're they're altruistic, they're loyal, they defend the weak, they stand up to corruption, they stand up to corrupt governments and and authority. Yeah. They can sometimes be seen to embody a kind of rebellious spirit that doesn't just sort of kowtow to authority.
Chris:
Yeah. One of the interesting things about the term xia in particular, the second component. So the first component, wu wu, is martial or military fighting, basically. And then xia is the element of the compound that suggests this, altruistic heroic character. One thing that you see is that when superhero characters, even going back as far as, say, Zoro or whatnot, are translated into Chinese, often this this this term xia is used to, designate them or to translate the term.
Chris:
So it does carry this this sense of a of a hero, of a superhero, of a superman who is coming in to save people, right, who has has some sort of higher ideal.
Andy:
I mean, that's interesting because, obviously, you know, and as you both brought up some of the early silent versions of the wuxia cinema, a lot of it is just not available. It's very tricky to track down a lot of those early ones. So when we start talking about some of the films specifically, we're starting in the sixties Yeah. Because that's generally where it's easier to start at this point. It's just like, I think, Leon, you were saying, unless unless you are going to, like, a a a specialty screening of one of these that still is around, it's really hard to track them down.
Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Most of them are just lost. I mean, the much of much of the early production of the Shanghai cinema in the twenties and into the thirties was lost partly by time, but partly through war. I mean, there's just very little of that archive that still survives and exists.
Andy:
Which is is I mean, even with American cinema, like, so many of the films before the fifties just are gone now. It's just such a shame. Mhmm. There's a this element of kind of, like, this superhero sort of, piece of the story. And, obviously, with some of those earlier films, we're not necessarily getting things like the wire work.
Andy:
But, definitely, as we start progressing into it, they started adding elements that kind of like, how did it come into being? Like, this element of this state of mind, this state of understanding and connection with the world that suddenly they can kind of you know, these characters can kind of move through air. They can run up walls and all and all of that.
Leon:
Well, that arise in cinema surprisingly quickly, actually. The the the the bits from the twenties that I have seen have got an early version of a lot of that.
Andy:
Oh, okay.
Leon:
People flying. There's at least one surviving episode of a film called Red Heroine, where she's kind of flying through the air. It looks not unlike the kind of flying effects that you see in very early Superman films. If somebody lie in front of a screen and and a sort of moving moving sky behind them, and and sort of magical effects. I mean, the magical effects were one of the things that the government seemed to object to about the films when they fell out of favor in the 19 thirties.
Leon:
It was that kind of the sort of the superstitious and the magical elements that they seem to have a particular dislike of, that they were encouraging superstition, that there were sort of rumors of of of people thinking that they could sort of gain magical powers or whatever. I'm sort of reminded of Batman in the 19 sixties warning children not to climb on walls. I don't know if it was a a that kind of a little more. But, yes, they certainly that that seemed to be one of the things that brought them out of favor for a while.
Chris:
Well, to go back to the, your previous question about, you know, what is wuxia? In some ways, it's these supernatural what we might think of as as supernatural or magical elements that's one of the dividing lines. And it is a a porous boundary, but one of the dividing lines between the wuxia genre and, say, the kung fu genre, is that the kung fu genre tends to focus more on hand to hand combat and on what's intended to be seen as realistic fighting. I mean, it's not. Right?
Chris:
But but but the kung fu fighting, the idea is that these are actually people, you know, using their fists and their and their feet and whatnot, and and this is what a fight might look like. Whereas wuxia is much more open, first of all, to the use of weaponry. There are lots of swordsmen. Right? The sword is kind of the archetypal weapon of the wuxia world.
Chris:
But then also this notion that martial skills extend into what we might think of as supernatural powers, the manipulation of your chi, right, of your of your, energy. This is part of where the the star wars force comes from. Right? But that the the training is not just physical training, but that it's mental and spiritual training, and that's what gives you the ability to stand on top of bamboo fronds and fly through the air and project your, energy to blow up things many paces away. So it's that supernatural element that I think in part defines wuxia and separates it from the kung fu subgenre.
Chris:
Mhmm.
Andy:
Chris, you have a real understanding of a lot of the literary works, which, you know, a lot of those obviously were from before cinema was around. Mhmm. Do you have an understanding of, like, looking at the evolution of Woosha, like, the written word, what was going on in China that kind of led to that? Like, cultural influences, other literary influences, things that kind of contributed to the the birth of it as a story form?
Chris:
I mean, stories about these kinds of supernatural powers, and they and supernatural is maybe the wrong word because the word supernatural carries our own prejudices about what's real and what's not real. But to but to use it as a kind of shorthand, I mean, you can find this kind of tale. It it flourishes as early as the Tang dynasty, 7th through 9th centuries, but there are traces of it, much earlier even than that. So, I mean, the the whole the image of the swordswoman, I think this is another element that's maybe typical of wuxia and more typical of wuxia than of kung fu, is that often the warriors are female. Right?
Chris:
And as early as the 8th 9th century, you get classical language tales about beautiful mysterious females with extraordinary powers that sort of reveal their, their powers at crucial moments in the story. So there are elements of this that go quite far back. They're not called wuxia. I mean, the term wuxia itself doesn't really coalesce until the early 20th century. The elements of it, wu the term wu is around, and the term xia is around, but that compound wuxia to designate a particular genre of, first of literature and then a film, that usage doesn't really appear until the early 20th century.
Chris:
And it's borrowed in part from Japan, where there was a genre of popular adventure novel that used the Japanese equivalent of that term.
Andy:
You mentioned a few of the dynasties. This is something that I think when you're watching these films, you're definitely I I'm trying to think. All of the ones that we're talking about are all period. I I can't speak if they're all in the Tang dynasty. I you know, I'm not I'm not sure on on the different dynasties myself, but I think they're all period also.
Andy:
Right? Is that an element of the story in general?
Leon:
Yeah. Yeah. Chang and Ming's been particularly popular.
Chris:
Yeah. And, again, I think that's one of the ways that you can kind of, the field guide to sub genres. One of the ways that you can spot a wuxia film that's distinct from a kung fu film is that kung fu films tend to be set in modern or sort of early modern, early 20th century periods. But once you get the, you know, the the the gowns and the funny hair and the hats, stuff like that, you know you're probably in wuxia territory. They're they're period dramas.
Chris:
They're costume dramas.
Andy:
I also noticed as, going through all of these, there's a lot of political turmoil, a lot of, like, warlords and and stories about, corrupt officials, elements like that. In those particular dynasties, were there a lot of of this sort of issue that, you know, reflective of their own history as they're looking back that they wanted to tell those stories as a kind of a key part of history?
Chris:
Yeah. I I you know, it's obviously it's a in its various forms, it is a genre about conflict, and there has been no shortage of conflict in Chinese history as in anybody else's history. And I think that these martial tales are one of the ways to kind of both address those issues and and to some extent, sublimate them or at least make them into good, rollicking stories. And in the 20th century, of course, there's also been a strong association between both kung fu and wuxia films and various nationalist concerns.
Andy:
Leon, you definitely have, studied kung fu quite a bit. Chris, you've brought it up a few times. In the scope of this, like, this big cinematic family tree that we're looking at, you know, there's all of this falls under the umbrella of action films. And then I suppose you could say under that, there's a subgenre of martial arts films. And then there's a whole variety of martial arts films, especially as we start getting into a lot of different countries releasing their own types, like, Muay Thai or things like that.
Andy:
There's a lot of really interesting subgenres under the martial arts films in general. But it does seem like kung fu and, and wusha seem to be tied together a lot in conversation. And I've talked to some people, and they kind of just refer to them all as kung fu films, which I don't know. As as I've been exploring this, it's been see it seems like that name has just become so broadly defining of all of this, even, like, to the point where we've got Kung Fu Panda 4 playing in theaters as we record this. And it seems like that also is integrating a lot of, Wusiye into kind of the way that these characters are behaving and and moving and everything.
Andy:
So is that just like a misunderstanding of the 2 and and a lot of people, especially, like, western audiences, like, just kind of merging them?
Leon:
Well, people have been familiar in the west with the term kung fu for a lot longer.
Andy:
That's true.
Leon:
I mean, very, very few people in the west, unless they were actually studying it, were familiar with that term before the early 19 seventies. And then, certainly, as you say, we've got David Carradine on television, we've got Bruce Lee in the cinema, Marvel Comics quickly get on board with some kung fu comics. And we've got Shang Chi and and Iron Fist. And, you know, it's it's got that history behind it. And then Crashing Tiger was hugely important, I think, in making people more aware of the idea of of wuxia because fewer of those films had been shown.
Leon:
Some of them did get released in the in the West in the seventies, but they were often kind of smuggled in, as though they were kung fu films as well. And sometimes even retitled. So, Golden Swallow, for example, had its title changed to The Girl With A Thunderbolt Kick. Probably to sort of make it sound more like the kind of films that Angela Maoying was was doing during that period. I know New on New One Armed Swordsman was released as well.
Leon:
Yeah. Because film distributors don't lose a lot of sleep over whether they're using the right generic category for something. And just that umbrella, Oh, it's martial arts. It could be Chinese. It could be Japanese.
Leon:
It could be a Chuck Norris film. You know, you could you could bundle them all in together. And there was a perception, you know, there was a loyal audience who were happy to watch those films. I think as Chris was saying, you know, one of the things that distinguishes the kung fu film is they're much more interested in the actual martial arts. And they're often actually about the martial arts in some way.
Leon:
That even if they don't show them accurately, and they you know, it's a very fanciful version that you tend to get of them, they tend to refer to styles of Chinese martial arts that actually exist, Or have existed. So they're doing Wing Chun or they're doing Hung Ga or Praying Mantis or something like that. It's not the sort of, you know, exploding Buddha's palm or whatever that you get in the Wu Sheol film where they're, you know, firing thunderbolts and and or sort of making trees split in half with, with a sword that isn't even touching them. You know, that kind of more fantastical element is is played down in the
Chris:
We had a list of films that we were going to talk about today, and I some of them I hadn't watched for quite a while, and so I I tried to sort of work my way through them, in preparation for today's conversation. I didn't make my way through all of them, so some of them are still a little bit hazy in my memory. But, just last night, I was watching, rewatching bride with white hair, the bride with the white hair, and was struck by I don't which I don't think I'd watched since it came out in the in the, what, early nineties. Right? 93 or something like that.
Chris:
And I was struck by how little what one would think of as martial arts there is in that. Right? That it's sort of set in this world of martial artists and and and warring sects and things like that. And there are 1 or 2 sequences where people twirl around with swords or make things blow up, but there's very little actual performance or representation of the practice of any kind of martial art. It's it's more about the setting and the vibe and the kind of, associations of that world, the wuxia world.
Chris:
Yeah.
Andy:
And that speaks to, like, even with a subgenre like wuxia, it has its own subgenres too. As I was kind of, like, researching this and, like and and they're they're smaller little niches and stuff, and we're gonna we'll touch on a few of them, but there are some that are more like the fairy tale one. There are some that are a little more romantic. There are some that, I guess, have more of a nationalist theme. And then there's, like, the new WUJA movement that kind of started with Crouching Tiger.
Andy:
And so there's there is this variety of them. But I I guess at this point, like, looking at we've already talked about some of the key elements that are within, kinda Wusha films as far as, like, this, chivalrous hero who is, you know, doing you know, fighting for what's right over the course of the story, the the period setting, the fantastical elements within it. What are some of the other key characteristics that we haven't touched on at this point? Because I I feel like there are some other key elements.
Leon:
I think a big one that we haven't talked about yet is the idea of jang hu, which the characters will often talk about explicitly, but often it's sort of evoked in a more indirect way. It comes up a lot in the dialogue in Crouching Tiger where the characters talk about entering Zheng He or leaving Zheng He. It's it's quite a sort of abstract idea, and it's always difficult to kind of pin down what it actually is. But there's a sense that the wuxia genre inhabits a particular world. And it's sometimes referred to as a subculture, or it's a kind of an alternative world.
Leon:
It's outside of the official world of the state and politics. It has its own rules. It has its own places, like, you know, we've seen a lot of inns, a lot of bamboo forests and lakes. It literally translates as rivers and lakes. But the sense that it's like, here's where these characters really live.
Leon:
And they have their own rules, they have their own codes. It's a world that can be represented in different ways, in different films. They can have a different take on it. And I guess that again is maybe why it's difficult to pin down the different narratives sort of interpret it, in a different way. But it's it's certainly, I think, one of the core things of the genre.
Andy:
Is that why we have in a number of the films where there's, like, a a monk character or kind of like a holy character because it's like that's an element of them kind of working toward achieving this this other place of being?
Leon:
It's it's not necessarily a kind of a spiritual thing, Because it's sort of full of lots of different you know, it it it there are swordsmen and swordswomen, there are bandits, there are bodyguards. I mean, Crouching Tiger is like a sort of cast list of all the kinds of people who live in Zhang you know, the Michelle Michelle Yeoh character is a kind of security guard. Xiaoyan Phat, he's, he's a Taoist, sort of, Wudang expert. You know, we spend a lot of time in forests and inns and so on. I guess the kind of the spiritual thing is kind of in there somewhere, but I don't know if it's necessarily the sort of the key defining thing of it.
Andy:
Gotcha. Okay.
Chris:
Yeah. I think the the jungle is a very interesting, concept, and I'm glad that Leon brought it up. And, literally, it does translate as the rivers and lakes. And I think that in the most general sense, it refers to the margins of society, both the geographic margins, but also the the social and even the ideological margins of society. And so there are various forms that it can take.
Chris:
The spiritual world, the world of monasteries and monks and whatnot, can either be part of the jianghu or it can be a kind of parallel version of it. Because of course the spiritual world, you know, when you decide to give up the ordinary life, whether it's the family life or the life of politics or the life of of, worldly success, that's a kind of, you know, spiritual retirement from the, mainstream world. In some ways that's echoes what the jangu represents. The jangu is, you know, if you're not in the game, the political game, or the success game, or whatever it is, then one of the options that's available to you is the the jianghu. And the jianghu is also interesting because it links the genres that we've been talking about very directly with another major genre of Hong Kong film in particular, and that's the gangster film.
Chris:
Right? Because the same concept, the jianggu, the rivers, and the lakes, then becomes a way of referring to the criminal underworld. And so in films like, better tomorrow and whatnot, they're still talking about the jianggu. Fu, right? Because that's the term that's the way they think about the, you know, the world that they inhabit.
Chris:
They're outside the law. And yes, they are struggling for power and success and wealth and whatnot, but they're doing it outside of the mainstream and outside of the boundaries of the law. And therefore, in a sense, they too are in the jungle. So, it's it's a it's a very interesting concept in the way that it carries across, what we think of as distinct, cinematic genres and and different very different worlds.
Leon:
Yeah. I mean, John Woo John Woo has said a couple of times that he sees those gangster films virtually as wuxia films. Mhmm. That they're they're about the same things as the martial arts films, that he was making in the seventies. They're still about people who, even if they're even if they're gangsters, they stand up for what's right.
Leon:
They self sacrifice, and they they stand by their friends, and, you know, so it's in in those films, it's like it's not so much, you know, pop versus gangster. It's like good cops and good gangs gangsters, bad cops and bad gangsters. It's, you know, have have you got the right sort of values?
Chris:
Yes. Principle versus people without principle is kinda what it boils down to. Yes.
Andy:
Yeah. It's an interesting, like, moral code element that's been that's woven into all of this. Yeah. Another element that I I couldn't help but notice as I was watching these, at least in more of the, not necessarily like in the, the more I guess we'll call them more serious ones like, Crouching Tiger, but the they're very violent, and they sure had a lot of fun with the with the blood in these films.
Leon:
Yeah. Sure. I think that was one of the things that Shaw Brothers particularly really ramped up the violence when they when they sort of really kind of, you know, renewed and repackaged the the the wuxia film, what they called the Wu shao century, as they as they termed it, in, in the mid sixties. This was gonna be a new kind of film. They talked about them being more realistic, although they probably don't seem terribly realistic to modernize.
Leon:
But I guess compared to what had gone before, they were sort of a little bit more grounded. But yes, in, you know, Come Drink With Me, we, we I'd forgotten watching Come Drink With Me again, I'd forgotten about the young boy who has a dart thrown into his eye. And he's sort of screaming in agony. And then moments later, these sort of cackling bandits finish him off. And actually, King Hu's later films, I don't think, are anywhere near as violent as Come Drink With Me is.
Leon:
And then of course we have, Chan Choo's films as well, which are really, really going for the bloodshed, the spurting bloods, the mutilation and so on.
Chris:
The dismemberment.
Leon:
Yes. Yes.
Andy:
You're drawing and quartering people.
Leon:
Yes. Yeah.
Andy:
Yeah. We got we got some pretty serious, bloody scenes here, which, was I don't know. It's kind of a a they do it in a fun way. It's, you know, it's in the scope of that sort of action. It's not like a horror movie.
Andy:
It's just it's kinda like the giant spurts that you get that just kind of I don't know, make you chuckle. I mean, it's a horrible thing to be watching, but Yeah. There's something funny about the blood use in these. You know, they're they're designing it to be kind of fun in its gore, I suppose you could say.
Leon:
I think that's also one of the things they brought in. I mean, Chris mentioned the influence of Japanese cinema from that period, and and they were very much looking to Japan as the kind of model for how they could raise their game, really, because Japanese cinema was much more established As, you know, it had auteur directors like Kurosawa and Stylists. And of course Kurosawa was starting to sort of and other directors were, I think, Sanjuro, where there's the climax where, sword fight ends with blood sort of geysering out of someone's chest after a sort of single blow, from Toshiro Mifune.
Andy:
And you look at stuff like Harikiri, which is incredibly bloody too. Yeah.
Leon:
Yeah. Yeah.
Andy:
So seeing how, like, it came like, there are these samurai elements from that they pulled into these, looking into how it's evolved, you know, we're we're gonna be talking about, a number of films from the beginning and then all the way up through some much more recent films. How has it evolved to the point, like, today, like, when you're looking at what the modern filmmakers are are doing with Woosha films? Like, do you see much in the way of the way that's this the stories, the style has evolved?
Chris:
I'll confess that I'm not I mean, I know that there are many of these films and also many television serials. I think that a lot of the sort of center of gravity has shifted towards television serials in in the last decade or so. I have to confess that I'm not I haven't kept up. Right? There's just there's so much.
Chris:
But my general sense is that what characterizes the most recent, crop is on the one hand, of course, the the dependence on CGI, that the the fact that you can now just you know, anything that you can imagine you can represent, not necessarily convincingly, but you can put it up there on the screen. And then there is there does seem to be a shift towards the fantastic and the romantic elements, that really characterizes the most recent films and television serials. And people talk about the xianxia genre. You know? They they don't even talk about it as wuxia anymore, or rather maybe it's a different genre that is sort of taking over, but the xianxia, the xian being the immortals.
Chris:
Even greater shift towards stories that are set entirely in a kind of fantasy world. And we see perhaps, to some extent, the effect of things like the, Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. Right? This idea that, oh, what we have here is a not the Chinese past, which seem which was one of the assumptions of, earlier wuxia films that we are making films about, you know, the Ming dynasty or the Tang dynasty or whatever, but rather we're making films about this fantasy world that's not necessarily China in any in any historic sense. It's more of a a kind of mythic or fantastic version of Chinese culture.
Andy:
Gotcha. And that was, like what was the name of, like, the zoo
Leon:
Oh, Zoo Warriors of the Magic Mountain. Yes.
Chris:
Zoo Warriors. Yeah. Which was based on a, a serialization from the 19 thirties 19 forties, which really sort of moves things in that direction.
Andy:
Let's start talking about some of these movies. We've touched on, them a little bit. Come Drink With Me is the, the earliest of the films we're talking about, King Who's film. This is a story about a woman warrior, Golden Swallow, who is the the daughter of the governor. She's on a mission to go rescue her brother who's been kidnapped.
Andy:
And, Cheng Pei Pei, plays her. You know, she's also in Golden Swallow, the sequel to this. And then she turns up in Crouching Tiger as well, which is, which I never knew when I first saw Crouching Tiger. But going back and looking at these, it was so exciting to see kind of this this thread of her being being woven through this. We get to see a lot of the fantastic combat scenes in this film.
Andy:
You know, starting out of the gate, we are are given a female protagonist who is incredibly skilled at everything she's doing. You know, especially for a film in the sixties, it definitely seems from American eyes, to be kind of challenging, traditional gender roles, which was really fun to see. And something that I think, Leon, you had mentioned, and we're so certainly be talking about this a little bit, There is also this element of, I I I don't think cross dressing is the really the right way, but disguising themselves as the other gender periodically to to just accomplish to further accomplish their mission, which I found interesting in this film.
Leon:
Yeah. I mean, that there's very much a tradition of that. And obviously, a long tradition, as Chris was saying, of of, you know, fighting women in the wuxia genre is something that is I mean, when Crouching Tiger came out and a lot of Western critics were like, Oh, this is new. It's about women, you know, fighting women. And Chinese audiences were thinking, Yep, we've seen quite a lot of these over the years.
Leon:
And, and in fact it seems that, you know, the earliest film that people seem to agree on was probably a wuxia film, although it's one of the missing ones, is a film called Swordswoman Li Fei Fei from, I think, 1925. So a lot of those silent ones are about about fighting women. But, yeah, the cross dressing thing is interesting. I mean, we can think of Mulan as well, Tham Mulan, as as someone who adopts a kind of male outfit to to sort of enter, a masculine world. There are some very interesting examples of this kind of cross dressing in the sixties.
Leon:
I can remember when there was a season of films that originally UCLA put together, and which then sort of went out on tour of Wuxia and and kung fu films. And they showed an episode from one of the film serials from the sixties called 6 fingered Lord of the Lute, which was, sort of adapted from a Wuxia novel. And there's an actress in that called Connie Chan who often actually just played male characters, not even a a female character dragging up as a male character, but actually played male characters. But in the same film, you also have female actors playing female characters who are pretending to be men. Now, you know, as an outsider, you think, well, this is amazing.
Leon:
But I suspect audience you know, local audiences would be very familiar with this, and not bat an eye at it. Which is why, even though Cheng Pei Pei does not look remotely like a male swordsman when she goes into the tavern any more than Jiang Ziyi does in Crouching Tiger. Right. Just tie your hair up, put a hat on, and everyone immediately goes, it's the limencer of a table. And it's a convention, of the genre.
Andy:
To the point where when I saw Crouching Tiger, I don't think I even realized that that was what was supposed to be happening with Zhang
Leon:
Ziyi, 8.
Andy:
You know? It wasn't until I was like, oh, I guess this is a thing.
Leon:
Yeah. And I think that scene in Crouching Tiger is very knowingly nodding to that scene in Country Me, which my favorite scene in the film. I mean, it's so much of that scene is build up. You know, and she's enormously they're all trying to intimidate her or hymns, they think. She doesn't bat an eye.
Leon:
She does the trick with the coins and catches them in her fan. It's beautifully shot. You know, it's composed in-depth. It's lit to perfection. I think one of the reasons why King Who didn't remain at Shaw Brothers for very long, because I think, by and large, they preferred things to be churned out a bit more quickly than he, tended to do.
Leon:
But yes, I mean, Chinese cinema and the Wuxia film, most of all, is the longest tradition of fighting women in world cinema that I know of. I can't think of any other national cinema that was doing it earlier or that has been doing it for so long.
Chris:
Yeah. And I think that there are a couple of factors contributing to that. One of them being this tradition in literature of fighting women that goes back at least to the 7th or 8th century. And within the literary tradition, the this concept of of a fighting woman, of a woman who turns out to be a deadly assassin or to have these powers, these these Tang dynasty's tales, these stories from the the 7th through 9th century in which we find these characters, you know, a lot of the emphasis of those tales is on the bizarre, the alien, the other. Many of them are about supernatural events, and then we have, this is the these the tales that sort of introduced the the fox spirits, right, that we're familiar with from film and anime and everything else.
Chris:
But that the the fact that there are these women who can kill, who have extraordinary arts, is, I think, part of the alienness of those characters in the in the tales. So that there's this association of the of the martial and the female and the supernatural, they all kind of intertwine as expressions of something extraordinary and something a little bit unsettling, from the perspective of the kind of patriarchal mainstream. But when we get to the films of the 19 sixties, another tradition that's feeding into the presence of female warriors on screen is the operatic tradition and the cinematic renditions of the operatic trend tradition. Because in the Shaw Brothers, even before they were doing martial arts films or before they were doing wu sa films, were also doing opera films, these Huangmeidiao films, kind of cinematic, modernized version of a particular form of Chinese opera. In those films and in that operatic tradition, the male characters were played by women.
Chris:
And so for instance, in one of the most famous of these films, the, the lovey tern. Right? You have it's a it's a love story, and both of the protagonists, the male and female protagonists are both played by female performers. That's just one of the conventions of this particular form of opera, is that the if you have a young male character, a sort of handsome white faced male character, it's gonna be played by a female performer. And so there is already this cinematic tradition and an underlying operatic tradition that allows for women to play men.
Chris:
And I think that that then feeds directly into the openness of the martial arts films to imagine female characters appearing on stage and being taken as men.
Andy:
That's a really interesting element that they were able to pull and then use to their advantage as they tell these stories and play with disguises and identities Mhmm. And all of these different things. And, you know, we haven't really talked about how there's also this element of the names that they have because the names themselves seem like, an entity of its own. Like, before people when when people see her, they don't realize, oh, you're actually Golden Swallow. Right?
Andy:
It's like they have this idea of, like, who this Golden Swallow is, this amazing warrior, until they finally meet her and go, oh, you're golden swallow. You know, like, there's this element of that. And then and then we also have drunken cat in this and, like, the the names, like, we we will eventually have Jade Fox when we get to Crouching Tiger. Like, there's Yeah. A lot of fun that they have with with really creative character names that kind of define the person as they're known in this I don't know.
Andy:
I guess if you could say it's the world of the jangu, like, that's kind of their presence there. You know?
Chris:
Yeah. Very much so. I mean, an element of the of the rivers and lakes of the jangu is your your reputation, which is often embodied in a a name, a sort of, nonde de guerre that you're known by in the rivers and lakes in that environment.
Andy:
There's also this element that we have with drunken cat as a character of these characters who kind of come into the stories who you don't know have that level of skill that they actually reveal to have. And I think that's an interesting element with him because he just seems like this drunk at the tavern, but then he sees kind of like what's going on. He keeps subtly helping her out without her realizing. And it's it's really fun to kind of watch that relationship between the 2 of them evolve as he's kind of, like, you know, eventually revealing how much he can do and then the 2 of them kind of working together. It's it's a fun element that we definitely see throughout this because, I mean, you definitely see that all the way up into Crouching Tiger.
Chris:
Yeah. And it also ties into the basic narrative structure of the film of, come drink with me, which is a simplified version of a narrative structure that we see in many of the martial arts novels. When we start watching the film, the conflict seems to be about these bandits who have kidnapped the governor's son for ransom. Right? That seems to be the story line.
Chris:
And then through the character of the drunken cat, it turns out that, well, that's actually just sort of peripheral to the real story. And the real story has to do with the struggle for mastery between 2 disciples of the you know, great master of the past generation. And so the the drama shifts from this, I won't say everyday, but fairly predictable cops and robbers kind of conflict to a conflict that has to do with power and mastery in the world of the Jianghu. And by the end of the film, that's really what's going on. The the the final show off is between the two disciples who are trying to claim, you know, this this position as the, inheritor of their master's role.
Chris:
And that's that's very typical of the of the wuxia genre, both in literature and in film.
Leon:
Yeah. Golden swallow just sort of disappears throughout the last sort of 10, 15 minutes of the film, which is sort of indicative of what was about to happen, I think, to the the swordswoman, over the next few years as I think we'll probably see with the next film we're going to look at.
Andy:
Yeah. Right. Right. And and definitely, you know, we'll be talking about some of these films in our member bonus content, and we'll talk about, Golden Swallow there, the direct follow-up to this one. But there's definitely a shift between when King Hu is telling a story with her and then Chen Che
Leon:
Yeah.
Andy:
Who directs this next film that we're talking about, though, which is the new one armed swordsman, from 1971. This is about Lay Li, an amazing swordsman, but he loses his arm his right arm in a duel. And he says, I'm never gonna fight again and and changes his ways. And then after he sees all of this oppression, he's just kind of, like, working as a not really a waiter, but kind of a waiter, just kind of an assistant at this bar restaurant. And, but he sees all of this oppression and eventually decides he has to pick up his sword once again and, use his left hand, and now he's going to fight, fight for what's right.
Andy:
And, I think continuing the the thread of bloody stories, this is definitely a very bloody story. Lot of fun. But it's definitely there we're definitely seeing the shift because there's definitely now we've got Lei Li as our protagonist. The female in the story doesn't really have as much agency. She she feels very much more here to kind of be more of a love interest sort of element.
Leon:
Yeah. And and in some ways, barely even that. Because I guess another characteristic of of of Chang Che's films is if you're looking for the love story, it often is between the guys. You know, it's sort of associated with these very sort of homosocial, male bonding narratives. He was very vocal about the fact that Hong Kong cinema had been too dominated by women.
Leon:
We needed to get sort of men back into the center of films. And by this point I mean, 1971 is an interesting year still to be making a film like this because it's it's kind of the year the kung fu film is about to really take off in 71. Bruce Lee made The Big Boss. Shaw Brothers made a film called King Boxer, also known as Five Thinkers of Death, which was the first of the Hong Kong films to really take off in the West. Warner Brothers picked it up.
Leon:
But yeah. You know, here it's it's about the guys. And these 2 actors that Changsha discovered, they're actually, David Chang, who plays Lei Li, has a a small blink and you'll miss it role in Golden Swallow. But at this point, they were the 2 guys he was working with a lot, pairing them up. They always worked really well together.
Leon:
But yes, I mean, this is the third of the 1 armed swordsman films. He'd done 2 already with an actor called Wong Yu, or Jimmy Wong Yu, as he became known. But what I like particularly about this one is, well, the fact that it's got David Chang and Di Long in it. These pair of actors who made
Andy:
Yeah, they're great.
Leon:
Piece of films together. The fact that it's a classic example of Chang Che's sort of male bonding narrative. Because what really sort of drives him back into Chang He is the death of his friend. Is when he comes to a pit you know, talk about blood soaked ends. I mean, you know, he's he's he's literally cut in half by the by the bad guys.
Leon:
I also think this film has a wonderful villain, because he doesn't actually cut Leigh Leigh's arm off. He defeats him
Andy:
Right. Yeah.
Leon:
With his three section stuff, and then he says, oh, I'm not gonna hold you. I know you said you'd cut off your arm if you lost, but I'm not gonna hold you to that. He's well aware this is the guy who's gonna keep his word. There's there's no way Leigh is gonna go, oh, alright then. Great.
Leon:
And so he actually cuts off his own arm, which is left pinned to a tree, and we see it several years later in skeletal form.
Chris:
It's a great scene. He cuts off his own arm, and then as it falls towards the ground, he kicks it through the air and then throws his sword and impales.
Andy:
A lot of fantastic shots of of of swords, of needles, of, darts, of all sorts of things like whisking through the air Yeah. At incredible speed to do things like, you know, pinning an arm into a tree. It's yeah. There's a lot of that too.
Leon:
And he has to he has to pull off this extraordinary technique at the end because he's failed to defeat the villain with his 3 section stuff with 2 swords. Now with one arm, he's somehow gotta figure out how to use 3 swords.
Chris:
Mhmm.
Leon:
He's figured out that's the only way he can defeat him is to use 3 swords. So he I don't I I to this I've seen this film many times and I still don't fully quite understand how he pulls it off. There's this kind of weird sort of juggling trick he does with his 3 swords.
Chris:
Yes. Yes. There's this theme of juggling. He's as a waiter in the tavern, he learned how to clear the table by, like, throwing cups up in the air in order to stack them, and so he uses his juggling. So so, Ian, I was actually going to ask you, and you've in part answered this question, but I was curious, as I was looking over the list of films why you had chosen the new one armed swordsman rather than the original one armed swordsman of, I think, 67, which is one of my favorite films.
Chris:
I mean, I really love that one. But this is I mean, this one is also great. I mean, I'm not saying that this is in any way inferior, but I think you've partly answered that question, in terms of the this representation of male bonding, which is so central to the new one armed swordsman, and typical of Jiangsu's films, the original, the 1967 one armed swordsman is more about father son and master disciple relationships rather than male friendship as such.
Leon:
Yeah, and he's much more of a kind of loner, outcast hero in that film. I mean, how he loses his arm in that film is pretty extraordinary as well because the master's daughter just gets in a strop and cuts his arm off.
Andy:
Wow.
Leon:
And there and there is Changsha's view of women in a nutshell, really. Yep.
Chris:
Yeah. Yep.
Andy:
It was it's funny. You brought that up with this one, and I had mentioned it kind of a love story. But it really isn't. It's like she her purpose of being there is really to kind of help him see the path that he needs to take. Like, that's really her thing.
Andy:
Like, she she has the sword, and she is there essentially just to get him back on on track once his friend dies so that he knows what he has to do. And that's kind of her role in the story. We go from that film to, returning to, King Who with a touch of zen, which my understanding, when it was released, it was actually released in 2 parts. And then, eventually, they kind of combined the 2 and made the 1 3 hour film. And this one feels so different from those previous two films.
Andy:
It definitely feels more in line with where Ang Lee would take it with Crouching Tiger, where it's a very it's a much slower film, much more philosophical and thoughtful. It takes its time to tell its story. We're still getting you know, there's this this noble woman who is hiding out in this haunted fortress, And, it takes its time as we get to know slowly, not even through her. We're following this this young artist who is he and his mom are living at this abandoned, part of the, I don't know, abandoned part of town because they're too poor. So he's doing his art, and then he ends up meeting, as we learn, the antagonist of the story as he's doing his painting.
Andy:
But and and it's this very slow relationship that builds between him and this antagonist and the the girl who's living across the way that turns out to be this noble woman. And it's really her story as we're gonna be following it, but so much of it is told through his eyes. And it's such an interesting way to kind of enter this story that feels it ends up feeling very different from what we'd experienced so far in these first two films that we talked about.
Leon:
I mean, in retrospect, it's almost like the first arthouse was shot film. I mean, it was it it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975. It it won one of the prizes. I don't think it was necessarily designed to be an art house film, but it seems to have many of the qualities that we now associate with the sort of the the Ang Lee or the or the Jang Yemo, sort of martial art house films that have come along in the last 20 years. As you say, it's got a slower pace.
Leon:
It's very aestheticized. It takes its time. It's it's a very sort of perfectionist film. It's a little bit mystifying at the end. I remember watching it as a teenager, not quite understanding what was going on in the last bits, but not really minding because it was so fascinating.
Leon:
Yeah. As you say, it's a it's a it is a very different kind of film.
Chris:
I think it's an arthouse film also in its, what, self awareness or self referentiality. In a sense, it's the story of the of the woman, of the woman warrior, but that we get her story through the eyes of the male protagonist. I think that's the way you put it. And as I was rewatching this one, I was struck by the extent to which it structured visually and narratively around eyes, around who sees what. Much of the film, both in terms of the way that the story develops, but just in the way that the camera moves and what the camera shows us, really is built on who's looking at what.
Chris:
And there are long sequences that, consist just of people looking at things, and the camera showing us the person looking, and showing us what the person is looking at, and then giving us a different perspective. It's really you know, it's it's sort of about, in that sense, it's about about seeing, about the cinema, about the representation of of, reality through this this visual, lens.
Andy:
It's an interesting way of describing it because there's definitely that element of we're watching him watch her watch this other guy as he's, like, following him around the streets and everything. And, like, there there is this entrance to the story where it really takes its time. But by the time we get into that story, it's it's so funny how they recognize, you know, King Hu, the storytellers, recognize that he's not the story. Because by that point in the story, we're like, okay. Here's your baby.
Andy:
You can go. And he's kind of, like, almost dismissed from the story as that we kind of, okay, now we're gonna have our actual resolution to the story with the characters that are are the ones who are the main thrust of it. And that's that was such an interesting element to see how this character that was so dominant and, our entrance to the story from the beginning, by the time we get to the end, it's like, yeah, we don't need to pay attention to him anymore.
Chris:
Yeah. But he's still there really as as the witness, and we're sort of with him. Right? Mhmm. In a sense, we as the watchers are with him because he's just sort of I think he's standing or maybe even kneeling, holding the baby as these bizarre events unfold with the, you know, the golden blood gushing out of the abbot, and the the swordswoman seems to be moving on to some sort of spiritual other state or something like that.
Chris:
And he's just standing there watching it, right, while all of these bizarre things happen.
Leon:
And the other thing about it, as well as the this sort of emphasis on looking, is actually how little dialogue there is in it. It it was one thing that struck me again, watching it alongside Come Drink With Me, of actually how talkative Come Drink With Me seemed to be by the standards of the King of the film. Where often they are these characters who, they communicate through these looks. They, you know, they look, they show things to people, they give little signals or, they sort of catch sight of someone across, a tavern. It was surprising watching Come Drink With Me again to see, you know, people having conversations, and sort of communicating verbally, which they don't do quite so much in in Touch of Zen.
Andy:
Yeah. No. It definitely didn't seem that. I haven't seen many King Who films. I I might have seen another one in my, watching of other films.
Andy:
But I mean, would you say more of his films are more like Come Drink With Me or more like, Touch of Zen?
Leon:
To me, I I would say a bit more like shorter versions of Touch of Zen.
Andy:
Oh, okay. Okay. Gotcha.
Leon:
Dragon In was a was another big success.
Chris:
Dragon Inn's. Yeah. Wonderful film. Yeah. But the focus really is on the on the action, the choreography, the glances more than the dialogue as such.
Andy:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From there, we're jumping, several decades to 1992 with swordsman 2, aka the legend of the swordsman because, you know and I was like, well, why aren't we, like like, you know, the new one armed swordsman swordsman? Why aren't we starting with the 1st swordsman film?
Andy:
1, it's much harder to find, interestingly. Yeah. And 2, it's not really, like, much of a direct, sequel. Like No.
Leon:
I mean, they re they recast all the roles.
Andy:
Yeah. Right. Right. Right. This one has Jet Li in it.
Andy:
He's, a fairly carefree guy kind of riding around, and he stumbles upon this plot to overthrow the government by this kind of this cult that he runs into. This one is an interesting one because we have an antagonist that is, much more gender fluid, and it it was definitely an interesting element to kind of introduce the fantastical with this story. What about, swordsman 2? Why why did we, put this one on the list, Leon?
Leon:
In the early nineties, Wushar and Kung Fu make a comeback very much. And that's often interpreted that there's a connection between that and the impending return to Chinese sovereignty in 97.
Andy:
Oh, interesting.
Leon:
You know, some of the political themes in the film's subtext can be read, in that way. And I think this is one of the most remarkable ones, from this period. The producer of the film, who really is the key figure, I think, in bringing both genres back, Choi Hak, who would also make the Once Upon A Time in China series, also with Jet Li. And I think really was responsible for sort of turning Jet Li from someone who was a very good martial artist, but maybe not quite a film star yet. I think he really transformed him into a film star, in the nineties.
Leon:
And I think he also kind of molded the career. We've got another interesting star here in Bridget Lin, who plays the the character of Dongfang Bu Bai. This figure who who who transitions in the course of the film. Who starts off as, you know, because the the the figure of the eunuch often sort of appears in these narratives as a kind of, a figure in the sort of the royal court. And this character transitions, so it seems, into a woman in the course of the film, following this kind of sacred scroll.
Leon:
And Brigitte Lin sort of specialized, sort of, for a period in these kinds of roles. She plays a not dissimilar role in, Wong Kar wai's film, Ashes of Time. Where she plays a character with a split personality who has both a male and a female persona. She's been written about quite a lot as this kind of interesting figure in terms of, you know, what people used to call gender bending at the time. But this kind of gender fluidity, as you say.
Leon:
And and, you know, I guess now we would say a transgender swordswoman, essentially. She's playing in this film, certainly in the second half.
Andy:
Definitely going through the transition though. Because, like, early in the film, the voice is dubbed male.
Leon:
Yeah.
Andy:
And then and then and and when he when Jet Li encounters her, she never speaks. So he never hears that voice. He just thinks this is a this amazing beautiful woman I'm in love with. But over the course of the film, eventually, her voice changes, and I thought that was really interesting to kind of really explore that in this film.
Chris:
Yeah. There's a there's another transition, that might be worth mentioning here just in terms of drawing a continuity between the films that we're talking about. Swordsman 1, or I guess it's just called swordsman, is, I think, a much less successful film. But it's interesting because it was originally intended to be King Who's comeback, and he was enlisted as director and basically didn't get along with Choi Hark. I don't know the details of what happened.
Chris:
But, even though his name still appears on, the credits for swordsman, he basically distanced himself from the project. And it's much more of a Troy Hark film than a King Who film. But there is this kind of transition from, you know, from the the the the King Hu films and what was intended to be a King Hu comeback, but then instead led us into this very different era of the Troy Hark vision of the wuxia film, which we see coming to, bizarre fruition, as it were in, swordsman 2.
Andy:
Which which he only produced at this point.
Leon:
Yeah. He was a very handsome producer.
Andy:
Interesting. Interesting. We're gonna talk about another of, his films. A very interesting one, the butterfly murders in our member bonus content. Yes.
Andy:
For now, let's let's wrap up this conversation. We've already been talking about crouching crouching tiger, hidden dragon quite a bit through the course of this, but this is definitely a, I don't know, kind of a rebirth? I I is it fair to say that this kind of kicked off kind of a new, wusha movement and, kind of got us go going with things like, the Zhang Yimou's films that he was doing, and it really kind of pushed this into, world notice. What else about Crouching Tiger, is there I mean, we've there's a lot going on with this story. It's a really interesting one.
Andy:
But what else is it doing for this genre, and what else is it saying?
Leon:
It certainly globalizes the genre. I mean, as we were saying earlier, I think it's it's it's thanks to Crouching Tiger that many more people became familiar with the term whoosha. I think it was a a, you know, an introduction for a lot of people to to to what that was. It establishes I mean, we talked about Such a Zen as as kind of an arthouse film. But this really seemed to solidify the idea of a kind of arthouse martial arts film by the fact that it's got an Auteur director attached to it.
Leon:
And then of course, you know, Zhang Imodo's hero and Has to Climb Daggers a few years later. And for a time, that becomes a kind of almost the dominant form of the wuxia film. That it's a prestige movie, it's got an auteur director attached to it. It's got, you know, big names from Chinese cinema, from Hong Kong, from the mainland, from Taiwan, attached to the films. I do still think Crouching Tiger is way, by far, the best, of these films.
Leon:
I was watching it again last night, and it felt like it had held up tremendously well. Whereas I, over time, did get a little burnt out on some of those sort of big budget, prestige wuxia films with sort of increasingly saney looking CGI fight scenes. And this was the action scenes seemed to get a nice balance between the special effects, but some actual physical skill as well, on display in the action scenes.
Andy:
And much less bloody action scenes.
Leon:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was, a martial arts film that lots of people saw, who perhaps wouldn't otherwise go and see martial arts films. I think particularly because the gender aspect of it, even though as we say that wasn't, that was nothing new, I think it's presented in a more self conscious way. It's a film that is more knowingly about the restrictions that women face in Zheng He as well as in respectable society.
Leon:
The Jiang Ziyi character sort of believes that she'll have complete freedom if she enters Zhang Hu. And Michelle Yeoh sort of says, No, you're gonna find it tough there as well. You know, look at look at me and show you how, you know, why do you think our relationship hasn't worked out?
Andy:
Chris, any thoughts on this one?
Chris:
Oh, lots of thoughts. I but I think to pick up a previous thread, that, again, we see the persistent influence of King Who because in so many ways this film is an homage to King Who, I mean, most obviously perhaps in the bamboo forest fight towards the end of the film, which is a nod or more than a nod to the spectacular bamboo forest fights in Touch of Zen, which is such a central part of the film that it's we see it twice, or at least in the versions of the film that I've watched, that we the first half of Touch of Zen ends with the fight in the bamboo forest, and then we get the second half of the film, and we get to watch the same fight again because it's just so you know, it's so spectacular. Not only central to the narrative, but just such a, wonderfully staged and filmed, combat sequence. What I think, Ang Lee is so successful at in this film is really bringing out the melodramatic and human aspects of, the wuxia tradition in a way that some of the more frenetic earlier films perhaps are not so successful at.
Chris:
The Crouching Tiger film is based on a a novel, a series of novels by an author from the thirties, Wang Du Lu, who, on the one hand, wrote martial arts fiction, and on the other hand, wrote romance novels. Right? So he was very much a a writer who was about human relationships and kind of, romantic melodrama. And I think that Ali, who is himself so skilled at representing relationships and the kind of intricacies and subtleties of relationships on film, that he's the perfect person to to take that and to do this wedding of the, spectacle and special effects that we associate with the martial aspects of wuxia, on the one hand, and then on the other hand, these these intense human dramas. And I think a lot of the success of the film, both as a a Wu Xia film, but also as something that caught the, attention and appreciation of much wider audiences, lies in his success at making that fusion.
Andy:
Yeah. It's an incredible film, and it really holds up. So as we kind of wrap up this conversation, looking at Crouching Tiger, Ang Lee, that kind of shift, how has Wu Shi at this point influenced other genres, other film movements, And how can we see its, imprint in cinema? Like, can you pinpoint particular elements that are starting to get pulled out?
Leon:
Some of the thematic elements, I think, are difficult to pull out, because they do seem so culturally specific. I think the spectacle is obviously the easiest thing for other forms of cinema to pull out. The wire work and the sort of the, the kind of weightless flight that we see. So obviously, things like The Matrix and other films like that. One of the more interesting attempts to sort of do, I'm trying to remember the title of it now, but there was an English language film that Jackie Chan and Jet Li did together that I've forgotten the title of.
Andy:
Was it the the Forbidden Kingdom?
Leon:
That's the one, yes. It was like it's like Hollywood had been trying to figure out how could we do an English language version of something like Crouching Tiger when we don't, we don't understand the historical period, we don't particularly want everyone to be speaking Mandarin. And so this idea of someone who's a fan of kung fu and wuxia films, having this kind of Wizard of Oz type experience that sort of takes him back into ancient China and he's sort of with, Jackie Chan and Chet Lee. And there's a kind of Golden Swallow type character in it. That was kind of an interesting attempt to think, you know, how can we take something from Crouching Tiger?
Leon:
And and weirdly enough, there was also a there was an English language Crouching Tiger sequel directed by Yun Woo Ping, which has,
Andy:
Straight yeah, Netflix release, right?
Leon:
Michelle Yeoh. Yes, straight to streaming. Donnie Yen has been it as well.
Chris:
Blade of Destiny or something like that. Yeah.
Leon:
Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. But other than that, I think it's a it's a it's a tough one to to sort of take the more thematic elements of it. Yeah.
Chris:
And in particular, the kind of historical and cultural elements, because, yes, you can reproduce the spectacle and the action, and you can even make an attempt at reproducing some of the philosophical pretensions. Leon mentioned the the matrix, and I think that the end of the matrix where we sort of where the protagonist, where Neo sort of sees through reality. Right? That's That's almost it almost echoes the ending of, Touch of Zen, right, where Yes, sure. There's this this play between the black and the white, and and the female character seems to be not only vanquishing your opponent but somehow entering a a higher level of reality or a higher perception of reality.
Andy:
Spiritual plane.
Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I think that that's that's one element that filmmakers in other genres take from wuxia or at least aspire to.
Chris:
But there are other elements. And again, especially the kind of historical grounding or even the sense of historical identity, even if it's constructed or invented or false, just doesn't carry over for non Chinese audiences in the same way.
Andy:
Well, to that end, at least let's hope that the genre has its own entity continues because I do find these films really enjoyable to watch, and I wanna see that that people continue making some wuxia films. Would you say that it's a genre that fluctuates in its popularity, but it's still alive and well?
Leon:
Yeah. It it has its periods of popularity. And there was and there was very much a period in the early seventies when the kung fu film pushed it to one side. And that was that was the thing up to at least the mid seventies. Then it made a comeback.
Leon:
It largely went out fashion in the eighties where modern day action was much more popular in the eighties, the Jackie Chan films, the John Woo gangster films. And then Choi Hart brought it back in the nineties, so it always comes back.
Andy:
Always comes back. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation with the 2 of you about a fantastic, subgenre of action film that is a thrill to watch. I certainly hope that this has, enticed you listening to go check out some of these films and explore the genre some more. Before we close, the 2 of you, I know you have some books. Do you have anything that you'd like to plug?
Leon:
It it's on a completely different subject. It's not martial arts related. My most recent book is a book about Mario Bava, the Italian, horror director. It's called Mario Bava the Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur. So if anyone listening is interested in Italian horror or giallo cinema or, or Mario Bava, it's now, frankly, much more affordable than it was when it first came out.
Leon:
You know? Overpriced hardback.
Andy:
I'll have to have you back when we talk about, Giallo. It'll be fun to dig into those too.
Leon:
Oh, yeah. Please do.
Andy:
Chris, you've got a book about the WuSha novels.
Chris:
Yeah. I've got I've got a couple. I mean, this this is it's a a real pleasure to talk about film like this. I'm kind of here under false pretenses because I'm not a film scholar. I do, you know, Chinese literature and and Chinese fiction, but I do have, a book from almost 20 years ago now about Jin You, one of the foremost wuxia novelists, and then the most recent book, which is about the martial arts fiction of the republican era in China, that is the 1920s, which is the period in which both the literary genre and the wuxia film really came into existence or or at least took their the beginnings of their modern shape.
Chris:
So they're, you know, they're academic works, and they're on literature rather than film, but but they're also great, so I recommend them to your, listeners' attention.
Andy:
Fantastic. We'll put links for those in the show notes. Leon, Chris, both of you, thank you so much for joining me here today.
Leon:
Thank you.
Chris:
Thank you. I've really enjoyed it, and I appreciate the invitation.
Andy:
Absolutely. And before we close, members, don't forget about our special bonus segment. We're gonna, talk a little bit more about 5 other films, Golden Swallow, The Magic Blade, Last Hero for Chivalry, The Butterfly Murders, and The Bride with White Hair. These titles offer a richer perspective on the martial arts epics that we love. If you're not yet a member but are eager to learn more, visit the next wheel dot com slash membership to access the exclusive content.
Andy:
Next month, we will be venturing into the shadowy world of German expressionism. We're gonna explore how this movement's stark angular visuals and deep psychological themes dramatically shaped the course of cinema and continue to influence filmmakers today. So join us as we dissect the dark allure and lasting legacy of one of the most visually striking movements in film history. Thank you for joining us on CinemaScope, part of the True Story FM Entertainment Podcast Network. The music is junky monkey by orcas and fireflies by Lux and Spira.
Andy:
You can find our show and the entire next real family of film podcasts at true story dot f m. We'd love for you to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, threads, and letterbox at the next real. We greatly appreciate your ratings and reviews. So if your podcast app allows it, please let us know how we're doing. And as we part ways, remember, your cinematic journey never ends.