"Heroic Grace" catalog - UCLA Film & Television Archive

films with King Hu) and Lau Kar-leung (working with Zhang Che before
launching his own career as a director) developed long shots which cut
smoothly together through exact control of what was pictorially salient
at each moment: one or two bodies thrusting or flipping across the
widescreen frame. The much-maligned zoom lens played a crucial role
in this long-shot strategy, not only picking out the most salient action,
but also lending its own rhythm to redouble that of the figures. The shot
can start with a rapid zoom back, echoing the first whoosh of action, or
the zoom can punch in and out, reinforcing the action’s rhythm.
The opening test of strength between Hong (David Jiang Dawei/
David Chiang) and Ma (Di Long/Ti Lung) in BLOOD BROTHERS can stand
as a stripped-down model of the full-shot approach, which Zhang Che
refined across a dozen years. The same principles rule LAST HURRAH FOR
CHIVALRY (HAO XIA, 1979), the work of Zhang’s assistant and pupil John
Woo. Look, for example, at the six-minute combat between Zhang (Wai
Pak) and Pray (Fung Hak-on), in which 75 shots render each thrust and
blow utterly intelligible, the whole sequence but a warm-up for the two
grueling battles in the finale—which reveals the fearsome Pak as only a
subsidiary villain after all. The Hong Kong martial arts style was far from
uniform, however: against Zhang’s no-frills pan-and-zoom fights stands
the pictorially dense, almost decorative imagery to be found in KILLER
CLANS (LIUXING HUDIE JIAN, 1976) and other Chu Yuan (Chor Yuen) works.
A younger generation of choreographers began to explore a more
“precisionist” approach to staging and cutting combat. Here the action
is built out of many more detail shots—a face, a body part, a weapon
lashing out—and the rhythm comes not only from the figures’ action but
also from a barrage of hyper-composed details, which we assemble into
an integrated action. This became the dominant style of Woo’s 1980s
Triad films, Tsui’s PEKING OPERA BLUES (DI MA DAN/DAO MA DAN, 1986),
and Ching Siu-tung’s A CHINESE GHOST STORY (SIN LUI YAO WAN/QIANNÜ
YOUHUN, 1987). The fights in the gangster’s lair at the close of Corey
Yuen Kwai’s YES, MADAM! (WONG GA BAI CHE/HUANGJIA SHIJIE, 1985) perfectly
illustrate this approach, with Michelle Yeoh’s dodges and feints captured
in a flurry of tight, exactly-judged setups. And skillful choreographer-directors
like Jackie Chan fused the two approaches; the climactic
mall fight of POLICE STORY (GING CHAT GOO SI/JINGCHA GUSHI, 1985)
superbly balances full-shot choreography with passages built out
of precise details.
Fig.1
Fig.2
One of the pioneers of rapid editing and rhythmic staging was King
Hu, who perhaps best exemplifies the range of experimentation available
in this kinetic genre. He was famous as a fast cutter (once boasting of
making China’s first eight-frame cut), but just as important was his
powerful awareness of screen space. Allowing his choreographer Han
Yingjie to model his fights on Chinese opera rather than real kung fu, he
experimented with unnerving, almost subliminal spatial effects. In the
stupendously inventive DRAGON INN, as the woman Zhu (Polly Shangguan
Lingfeng) fights with an adversary outside the inn, the camera tracks
back to catch the crumbling edge of a wall; she may seem to be trapped
(Fig. 1). A quarter of a second (that is, six frames) before the cut, a dim
12
shape pops up at the wall, and Chu starts to stab it (Fig. 2). Cut to a
disorienting extreme long shot in which her attacker is already recoiling
in agony (Fig. 3). The attack and the response are over before we have
fully registered them. No less bold is the moment when the fleeing Mao
(played by choreographer Han Yingjie) ducks behind a wall in long shot
(Fig. 4) and appears at another end of it instantly, leaping up to the inn
balcony (Fig. 5). Not only does the wall hide the mini-trampoline, but
(allowing for the use of a double) it suggests that Mao commands an
otherworldly speed. Hu’s films are full of such ingenious spatial twists,
driving home the agility and resourcefulness of his fighters.
For many young viewers today, the swordplay and kung fu films of
Hong Kong’s Golden Age are less immediately accessible than the gunplay
dramas and supernatural fantasies of the 1980s and ’90s. The suavity
of Chow Yun-fat may seem more appealing than the self-torment of
ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN. And the 1960s and ’70s movies may seem
embarrassingly rooted in crude conventions and local limits of budget,
time, taste, and imagination. In fact, though, the crime and costume
sagas owe everything to these strange and wondrous creations. Here we
find stories which are refreshingly baggy, full of unexpected turns and
returns. Here protagonists are defined through their obsessive pursuit
of moral and professional achievement. And here we encounter a cinematic
technique aiming to carry the characters’ percussive energy down
into the fibers of our bodies. These films, cranked out by directors
almost completely unaware of experimental cinema, made a revolution
in the way movies work, and work upon us.
copyright @ 2003, David Bordwell
David Bordwell teaches at the University of Wisconsin—Madison,
where he is Hilldale Professor of Humanities and Jacques Ledoux
Professor of Film Studies. He has written several books on film theory
and history, including two on Asian cinema: Ozu and the Poetics of
Cinema (Princeton, 1988) and Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the
Art of Entertainment (Harvard, 2000). He is completing a book on cinematic
staging as practiced by Kenji Mizoguchi, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and
other filmmakers.
Fig.3
Fig.4
Fig.5