heroic grace

the pfa had a series of classic kung fu films this weekend, in conjunction with the sf asian american film festival, entitled heroic grace: the chinese martial arts film, part 2. as opposed to the original series back in 2003, this one focused on shaw brothers films from the 70’s, after the first wave of martial arts films but before the 80’s hong kong renaissance took over.

the interesting thing that michael and i noticed was the difference between the styles of the fight scenes, where they fell into two types: one really gritty, bloody, and semi-realistic (at least in that people got hurt, injured, and were forced to fight on as best they could [dramatic music underscoring their heroic efforts, of course]) and the other where the fight scenes were much longer and more elaborate, featuring lots of people with different styles and/or weapons. the latter ended being stylized to such a point where it almost didn’t look like a fight anymore, but more of an elaborate acrobatic routine, the type of thing you’d see in a chinese opera. the funny thing is that you’d expect the trend to move towards the stylized fight scenes to a point where there’s a big backlash and then the gritty realistic scenes came later. however, the gritty ones were the films from the early seventies, and the stylized ones were from later in the decade (which of course lead to the crazy hyper-exaggerated wire work films of the eighties).

as for my favorite, was it the classic king boxer/five fingers of death which includes the “iron palm” move (remember the “buddha’s palm” from kung fu hustle?)? or maybe dirty ho with the great gordon liu, or the boxer from shantung, whose hatchet gang inspired the axe gang also in KFH? no, by far it has to be clans of intrigue. why? you’ve got to love a movie where it starts out, “the king of the vermillion clan was murdered,” and it shows a guy in the forest, and then a red figure leaps from nowhere and SHWICK! he’s dead! then two other leaders are similarly killed, and only 30 seconds have gone by so far. but really, how can you not love and be amazed by a film that features not only lesbian princesses, but vengeful hermaphrodites. that’s right, i said it: VENGEFUL HERMAPHRODITES.

Posted at March 27, 2006 7:58 PM