The Return of a Chinese Classic

I first heard about King Hu’s A Touch of Zen in 1980 when I was co-editing the Film and Theatre issue of the Australian Journal of Screen Theory. We had received an article from Hong Kong academic Vicki Ooi, “Jacobean Drama and the Martial Arts Films of King Hu: A Study in Power and Corruption”. She was a little uncertain of her English and I was asked to help out. In fact her English was fine, both in the draft and when she took me through taped copies of A Touch of Zen (1971/1975) and King Hu’s next film, The Fate of Le Kahn (1973).

Although Vicki had made some telling comparisons with Jacobean plays and King Hu’s characters, I felt her observations about how the King Hu had incorporated elements of traditional Chinese theatre into the works were even more interesting. At the time I was not familiar with the Wuxia or martial-arts genre in Chinese literature and film, nor had I known about King Hu’s visit to Australia five years earlier for the Sydney Film Festival, where both the film and its director were well received. A Touch of Zen had won the Golden Palm for technical merit at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.

The reason for the gap between its first release and the film’s appearance at Cannes was the familiar story of front-office interference. The original Taiwanese producers had thought the first cut of the film was too long and insisted on A Touch of Zen being cut for release in two parts. Predictably, this was a failure. King Hu managed to get his film back and created an authentic director’s cut that proved to be an international success. It was this history that I suspect made Vicki decide to write about King Hu’s work in our journal. And indeed it was a fine article that prefigured and, I believe, inspired much of the later work on the director.

Bruce Hodson wanted a print of A Touch of Zen for the film study collection he was curating and administering at the National Library. But Bruce had no way of contacting King Hu and, because of the article, he thought I might. Fortunately Jane Hutcheon was in my class at Mitchell College so I asked her to contact the great man when she went home to Hong Kong at Christmas. “How am I supposed to find King Hu?” “You’re a journalist.” And indeed she is, and a formidable one, as we all know. Before Jane returned I had received a letter from King Hu, as had Bruce. It was not, of course, in the famous calligraphy sometimes used in the titles of his films. He was flattered by our interest and would make the film available once it was shown on SBS. Sadly it all fell through. The National Library sold off the film study collection and King Hu’s career as a Hong Kong film-maker collapsed.

Some of his films were shown in specialist Chinese cinemas and A Touch of Zen was screened on SBS and later released on DVD. Interesting as these screenings were, they seemed only to approximate the visual glories recalled by those who had seen the film at the Sydney Film Festival. Then last year Hsu Feng, the luminous star of A Touch of Zen, paid three million dollars for a complete restoration. She is now a wealthy Shanghai business-woman and film producer (of Farewell My Concubine, among others) well able to launch a crusade for the preservation of Taiwanese cinema. It is probably too much to expect our distributors to mount the theatrical screening the film so richly deserves, but ERK has released a splendid Blu-ray DVD in its Masters of Cinema series.

So how accessible is A Touch of Zen now? The special features on the DVD include a documentary on the director and a commentary on the film, along with a booklet containing interviews with King Hu plus a copy of the story “The Magnanimous Girl” by Pu Songling, one of the film’s main sources; all of which increases the viewers’ understanding of the work and would be a godsend to film students. But the Wuxia tradition is not very different from American and European film genres. The tales date back to the ninth century AD. The land was ruled by rival warlords, and wandering swordsmen acted as killers for hire. In a phenomenon familiar to Western culture, the wandering swordsman was transformed into a knight and a righter of wrongs, each age reinventing the legend.

King Hu set his stories in the Ming Dynasty, with designs and costumes exactly reflecting the period. The Ming period was one of particularly loathsome corruption, with a gallery of revolting villains all only too real. There was also a secret police controlled by the eunuchs. In King Hu’s opinion they were worse than the Gestapo. One of King Hu’s innovations was characteristically Chinese. The wandering fighter was a woman—a swordswoman. This had a long tradition in Chinese film, dating back to the early 1930s. Indeed the alternative title for A Touch of Zen is The Lady Knight.

None of this is unfamiliar to Western audiences. Medieval literature is full of tales of knight errantry. Westerns abound with stories of wandering gunfighters. Indeed the Sergio Leone westerns were a major influence on Hong Kong and Taiwanese film-makers of the late 1960s and 1970s. Often copied, even by King Hu, were Leone’s extreme close-ups of eyes.

We are better placed now to appreciate King Hu’s subtle themes and variations on the martial-arts form he inherited than when A Touch of Zen first appeared. At the outset there is no action, only a series of eerie sequences, shot elegantly night-for-night, showing a scholar, Gu Shengzhai, played by Shi Jun, investigating strange lights and noises in an overgrown fort next to the house he occupies with his mother. Gu has little ambition and is content to work at his calligraphy and art, seemingly indifferent to his mother’s pleas to take the public service exams and become a civil servant. She also wants him to have a son so their line will not die out.

King Hu has a lot of fun with this atypical opening. At one stage Gu is convinced there are ghosts and plans an exorcism—that is until he is introduced by his mother to the beautiful Miss Yang (Hsu Feng). Gu’s mother explains the need for an heir but Miss Yang declines marriage. Then she imperiously orders Gu to spend the night with her. He comes to the ruined fort and finds her in a pool of light playing a stringed instrument and singing, according to the credits, “Lu Mingdao”, based on a poem by Li Po. The words are not translated in the titles but the effect is delicately sensuous. Their love-making, however, is only suggested.

The next morning the lovers are attacked by a mysterious swordsman. The sequence is shown mainly from Gu’s perspective, as Miss Yang takes charge; a sword appears from her robe and an intricate and elegantly staged duel ensues. Unlike many other directors of the period King Hu did not leave the fights to his choreographers. The concept was always his, and unlike the often brutal Hong Kong martial-arts movies of the period, his fights were darkly beautiful ballets in a style derived from Chinese theatre.

There were no digital effects in the 1970s so the leaps into the air were achieved with concealed trampolines. The swordplay featuring Miss Yang’s killer stare is also very effective. A later mass duel takes place in a cane field. According to Hsu Feng it was shot in a remote location where there was light for only about four hours filming each day. As a result the ten-minute sequence took twenty-five days to shoot. However, the light they did capture was extraordinarily beautiful; and the choreography, confined as it was by the cane growths, was breathtaking. The leaps and somersaults were enhanced by King Hu’s fast cutting but the actors seem to have done all but the most dangerous stunts themselves. (The IMDB lists only two stunt men and they were both martial arts instructors. However, Jackie Chan is also supposed to have worked on the film as a stunt performer.) Alert readers will recall Ang Lee using this idea for his magical fight in the treetops in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But in 2000 there was no need for concealed trampolines; he was able to use wires that were later digitally removed.

It turns out that Miss Yang is the daughter of an honest official who was tortured to death by the secret police, and together with her family she has been condemned to death. She has been protected by two generals who were allies of her father and Abbot Huiynan (Roy Chiao) and his monks. The minions of the corrupt eunuch Wei are on the way and Miss Yang and her allies have to defend themselves. Here Gu comes into his own. He has studied the art of war and devises a strategy to deceive and panic their enemies. Gu advises them to spread the word that there are ghosts in the fortress: “Mother might be helpful here”—cut to shots of Gu’s mother gossiping to her cronies.

Watching Gu turn from tentative scholar to ruthless commander is quite diverting. His devices simulating ghosts and the traps he lays are genuinely frightening and filmed night-for-night largely from the point of view of the victims. Later we see Gu laughing in delight at his own cleverness but this soon changes to horror as he sees the carnage.

Vicki Ooi pointed out that all this was in the style of Chinese theatre. Gu’s laugh, his sidelong glance and his white make-up were all from the traditional stage. Miss Yang’s enigmatic stoicism is also traditional. It is a tribute to the director and his performers that the drama is so moving. Hsu Feng is a considerable screen presence, very beautiful, and her great natural warmth transcends the theatrical formalism. Ang Lee, when he made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the style of King Hu, opted for a more realistic style of performance from his actors.

The last sequences are dominated by the Buddhism that lies at the heart of the King Hu’s conception. From the beginning he wanted to film with a touch of Zen—the idea that experience can be understood by analogy. You can’t explain sweetness, but just taste a pinch of sugar. The shadows of the first half symbolise the evil that menaces Miss Yang; the sun in these last sequences represents enlightenment.

After the battle Gu cannot find Miss Yang. He tracks her to the monastery of the abbot. A monk appears and gives him his child, followed by Miss Yang, who tells him that she has decided to enter the monastery and they can have no destiny together. But as Gu returns with the baby he is tracked down by Hsu-Hsien Chen, the commander of the malignant eunuch Wei’s army. Played by Han Ying-chieh, one of King Hu’s stunt choreographers, he makes a magnificent super-villain, adept at a whole range of kung fu and swordplay. When Miss Yang and her two allies come to Gu’s rescue a superlative mass duel ensues. This time Gu does not participate. Miss Yang signs to him to get their child out of danger and plunges into the fight. This action takes place in clear daylight and there is a kind of relish in the various techniques employed. Some commentators have described these sequences as a metaphysical duel mainly because the abbot and his monks leap to the rescue (more concealed trampolines). When the abbot is felled by a sneak attack by the super-villain—he and his two sons feign repentance so they can get close enough to stab their formidable opponent—this supremely good man is transformed into an incarnation of the Buddha. His wound bleeds gold. In one of the film’s most powerful sequences the commander is overtaken by a vision that has him kill his two sons before falling mortally wounded. A battered Miss Yang contemplates the abbot on a hilltop, the sun at his back in the cross-legged pose of the Buddha, his arm uplifted, pointing the way.

It would require a longer article and more research to do justice to the richness of the imagery and the complex symbolism of these last images. Along with the Buddhism there seems also to be the Christian notion of sacrifice. Significantly Gu and the baby are seen contemplating the transformed abbot. They have clearly reached a place of safety, and to the complex emotions of the film’s resolution we can add a sense of renewal.

Purely as a work of visual art A Touch of Zen is extraordinary, particularly in this Blu-ray transfer. The documentary included as one of the special features describes how King Hu composed his shots in the style of the traditional Chinese illustrations that are inscribed on a scroll that can only be appreciated when the scroll is fully unrolled. It all makes for a richly complex aesthetic experience, even for viewers unaware of the history.

The final passages of this article were written after I returned from Bob Ellis’s funeral. I don’t think Bob ever saw A Touch of Zen but if he were still with us I would have found an occasion to show it to him, together with the friend who introduced us, Les Murray.

At the funeral there were handsome tributes to Ellis’s superb prose. This was as it should be. But he was also one of Australia’s great film-makers. He scripted Newsfront (1978), one of the best films of Australia’s new wave, and this was only the beginning; others included Man of Flowers (1983), My First Wife (1984), True Believers (1988) and Infamous Victory (2008). There is as well a vast archive of unproduced work that needs to be revived, while Ellis’s adaptation of Homage of Catalonia has yet to appear even though it has been supposedly green-lighted on a number of occasions. Bob was also an excellent director: Unfinished Business (1985), Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train (1988), The Nostradamus Kid (1993).

Much was made in the days following Bob’s death of his eccentricities and sometimes extravagant behaviour, but as a director he was sensitive and considerate. This was the man I knew.