Movies - Hong Kong action cinema

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	Movies - Hong Kong action cinema

Hong Kong action cinema is the principal source of the Hong Kong film industry's global fame. It combines elements from the action movie as codified by Hollywood with Chinese storytelling and aesthetic traditions to create a culturally distinctive form that nevertheless has a wide transcultural appeal. In recent years, the flow has reversed somewhat with American and European action films being heavily influenced by Hong Kong genre conventions.

The first Hong Kong action films favoured the wuxia style, emphasising mysticism and swordplay, but this trend was politically smothered in the 1930s and replaced by films depicting more down-to-earth unarmed kung fu, often featuring folk hero Wong Fei Hung. Post-war cultural upheavals led to a second wave of wuxia films with highly acrobatic violence, followed by the emergence of the grittier kung fu films for which the Shaw Brothers studio became best known. The 1970s saw the rise and sudden death of international superstar Bruce Lee. He was followed in the 1980s by Jackie Chan - who popularised the use of comedy, dangerous stunts, and modern urban settings in action films - and Jet Li, whose authentic wushu skills appealed to both eastern and western audiences. The innovative work of directors and producers like Tsui Hark and John Woo introduced further variety (for example, gunplay, Triads and the supernatural). An exodus by many leading figures towards Hollywood in the 1990s coincided with a downturn in the industry.

Early martial arts films

The signature contribution to action cinema from the Chinese-speaking world is the martial arts film, the most famous of which were developed in Hong Kong. The genre emerged first in Chinese popular literature. The early twentieth century saw an explosion of what were called wuxia (often translated as "martial chivalry") novels, generally published in serialized form in newspapers. These were tales of heroic, sword-wielding warriors, often featuring mystical or fantasy elements. The genre was quickly seized on by early Chinese film, particularly in the movie capital of the time, Shanghai. Starting in the 1920s, wuxia titles, often adapted from novels (for example, 1928's The Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery and its eighteen sequels) were hugely popular and the genre dominated Chinese film for several years (Chute & Lim, 2003, 14-15).

The boom was smothered in the 1930s by official opposition from cultural and political elites, especially the Kuomintang government, who saw it as promoting superstition and violent anarchy (Chute & Lim, 2003, 2). Wuxia filmmaking was picked up in Hong Kong, at the time a British colony with a highly liberal economy and culture and a developing film industry. The first martial arts film in Cantonese, the dominant Chinese dialect of Hong Kong, was The Adorned Pavilion (1938).

Postwar martial arts cinema

By the late 1940s, upheavals in mainland China - the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War and the victory of the Communists - had shifted the center of Chinese-language filmmaking to Hong Kong. The industry continued the wuxia tradition in Cantonese B movies and serials, although the more prestigious Mandarin-dialect cinema generally ignored the genre. Animation and special effects drawn directly on the film by hand were used to simulate the flying abilities and other preternatural powers of characters; later titles in the cycle included The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute (1965) and Sacred Fire, Heroic Wind (1966) (Chute & Lim, 2003, 2).

A countertradition to the wuxia films emerged in the kung fu movies that were also produced at this time. These movies emphasized more "authentic," down-to-earth and unarmed combat over the swordplay and mysticism of wuxia. The most famous exemplar was real-life martial artist Kwan Tak Hing; he became an avuncular hero figure to at least a couple of generations of Hong Kongers by playing historical folk hero Wong Fei Hung in a series of roughly one hundred movies, from The True Story of Wong Fei Hung (1949) through Wong Fei Hung Bravely Crushing the Fire Formation (1970) (Logan, 1995). A number of enduring elements were introduced or solidified by these films: the still-popular character of "Master Wong"; the influence of Chinese opera with its stylized martial arts and acrobatics; and the concept of martial arts heroes as exponents of Confucian ethics.

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