\Writer, stuntman and fight choreographer Craig Reid, who has worked with Jackie Chan, wants to let people know – everybody was not kung fu fighting.
“That song shouldn’t have been created,” Reid said. “It cheapens what the martial arts film is about. Chop socky is a very derogatory term to me because it creates that image of those badly dubbed kung fu films.”
Perhaps the best way to counter the stereotyped versions of Chinese cinema, such as the recent “Kung Pow,” is to show the actual films as they were meant to be seen: in widescreen and with the original language. Enter the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s “Heroic Grace” film series which chronicles the evolution of those films from their early silent days to the early 1980s. Tonight, martial arts fan Quentin Tarantino will present the series premiere at the Writer’s Guild Theater.
While Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were revolutionary figures in Chinese film, American conceptions of martial arts films often mistakenly begin with them. In fact, a breadth of films made before the 1970s.
“What I encountered was mainly surprise,” said series programmer Cheng-Sim Lim, who put the series together over five years. “People didn’t know that there was such a long and rich history of the martial arts film. They saw the films panned and scanned and horribly dubbed. I’ve seen (those versions) and I don’t blame people for disliking them.”
The images of hokey special effects and lapses in continuity don’t help the genre gain respect. In Hong Kong, the fight choreographer is given as much power as the director because the fight scenes are often the meat of the film.
“Usually the director has nothing to do with the fight scenes,” Reid said. “I can remember films that I was involved in where you would do a fight scene for two weeks and then put a script together later.”
The most popular martial arts cinema in the West were the kung fu films of the 1970s, especially of Bruce Lee.
“Bruce Lee wanted to show the martial arts,” Reid said. “With director Lau Kar Leung, you have wide shots of 35 to 40 punch routines before he cuts to the next shot. He wanted you to see the martial art, to understand the spirit of it.”
In fact, the kung fu film is but one of many subgenres of Chinese martial arts films. Others include the fantasy films of Tsui Hark, the wuxia films to which “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is an homage, and wuda films based on stunts, street fighting and gymnastics which Jackie Chan popularized.
The wuxia films and later the fantasy films were known for their wire-work flying, parodied in films such as “Wayne’s World 2.” In Hong Kong it’s a respected art form which has now been transplanted to “The Matrix” and “Daredevil.”
“What made Hong Kong films so exciting (was) you knew some poor guy was dangling on a wire 30 feet from the ground,” said Reid, who has done wire work. “It’s really cool but you have to have strong stomach muscles. It’s uncomfortable too because those harnesses are very tight.”
Chinese films, especially in the wuxia genre, were unfaithful to the gender stereotypes of domestic females and fighting males. Often, the films featured prominent women fighters early on.
“Director Zhang Che actually said in interviews that he wanted to break the dominance of female stars in the Hong Kong industry,” Lim said. “In the 50s and 60s, the big stars were primarily women. He felt that the men needed to have equal time.”
“Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan,” which screens March 13, transfers the idea of a martial arts school to a brothel with a lesbian madam being the master, or sifu, substituting sex for swords and challenging the sometimes formulaic conventions. Embodying female martial arts prowess is actress Zheng Peipei, who returned to the screen as the aging Jade Fox in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Peipei will attend the March 8 screening of her 1960s films.
“What she did on film was create a whole new genre of swordswomen heroes that had never been done before,” Reid said. “She could kick butt without having to be the demure lady. She’s the one that would actually fight for her man and beat him.”
The martial arts film began in 1920s Shanghai, on the heels of popular serials that ran in newspapers. After the Communist revolution, the Japanese invasion and World War II, many of those films were destroyed (two of the surviving ones will be screened March 2). The industry fled to Hong Kong, which was a protected British colony at the time. There, the Shaw Bros. film studio set up shop and was home to Peipei and directors King Hu, whose “A Touch of Zen” was the first Chinese film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival, and Zhang Che, who was John Woo’s mentor.
With the death of Zhang Che last year and a sinking Hong Kong film industry, the history of these films is fading. The UCLA Archive hopes to keep the memory alive through this film series, which will tour cities in America and Canada.
“The impression here of kung fu is based on the very distorted encounter,” Lim said. “We want to just show people what was there truly.”
For more info, call (310) 206-FILM or go to www.cinema.ucla.edu.