Beyond a sweating Bruce Lee dubbed with usually robotic English
pronunciation, the history of Chinese martial arts cinema has
remained relatively obscure.
However, thanks to decades of collecting and newly remastered
prints, the UCLA Film and Television Archive is currently
presenting “Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film, Part
II,” a continuation of the 2003 series intended to change
preconceptions of Chinese martial arts cinema.
The series runs through Dec. 11 at the James Bridges
Theater.
“People have this image that Chinese martial arts films
are just one fight after another, with no moral lesson or cinematic
value. We’re in a position to correct that,” said David
Chute, a film critic for LA Weekly who has written extensively on
the subject.
This part of the series features films from the 1970s and early
1980s, a time when Chinese martial arts films first became popular
in the United States.
This period also nurtured such talents as directors Chu Yuan and
Lau Kar-leung and the well-known actor-directors Bruce Lee, Jackie
Chan and Jet Li, among others.
Martial arts films can be traced to the very beginning of
Chinese cinema and the tradition of “wuxia,” which
literally means “martial arts chivalry” or
“martial arts heroes.” The wuxia genre first took form
on stage, but then became a natural subject matter for Chinese
film.
“In a time when China was in a space of disarray, there
was a need for a fiction that would create a parallel utopian
China,” said Bérénice Reynaud, a film professor at
the California Institute of the Arts.
“In the Republican era, starting in 1911, China became
prey to war lords. The wuxia was an alternative world where
(anyone) could actually be better than a king, because they could
be superior in the martial arts.”
According to Chute, wuxia fiction in Chinese cinema is
comparable to the American Western.
“When American filmmakers were looking for things to make
films about, Westerns were natural. For China, the biggest works of
fiction were wuxia,” he said. “(Chinese filmmakers)
didn’t really pay attention to the world outside of Asia
until the 1960s.”
As Chinese world consciousness increased, however, the world
also began to take note of Chinese film.
First brought back by servicemen stationed in Asia, Chinese
films were immediately attractive to audiences worldwide. Bruce
Lee’s popularity helped Americans to become enamored with the
Kung Fu film, a subgenre of wuxia, culminating in the short-lived
“Kung Fu Craze” of the 1970s.
“For a few months in 1973, three of the top five films in
the American box-office were Kung Fu films,” Chute said.
Consequently, the market was bombarded with imperfect
imitations, poorly made and badly projected. In only a few years,
Chinese cinema lost any semblance of artistic respect ““
something some critics argued the films lacked in the first
place.
“Because these movies were foreign, they were considered
little, third-world movies, even though many times they made more
money than American films,” Reynaud said. “And American
distributors who had these films thought they were designed for a
very lowbrow audience who didn’t read subtitles, so they
dubbed them.”
“Heroic Grace” offers prints of films rarely
screened in their original form, and with them an opportunity to
revamp appreciation for the Kung Fu and wuxia genres.
According to Chute, the recent success of films such as
“House of Flying Daggers” and “Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon” have proven that American audiences have found
beauty and artistry in Chinese martial arts cinema.
“What we have right now is a chance to resuscitate the
image of the genre … to show people that there were always
pictures like this,” Chute said.
Though they have always existed, these films are only now
readily available.
Previously, cropped and dubbed versions on late-night television
or copies purchased in foreign countries were the only sources.
Today, however, companies such as Shaw Bros. have gathered and
refurbished these films, preparing them for wide release on
DVD.
“Because these films were (previously) unavailable,
opening these vaults of Chinese film history has probably been one
of the most significant events in film of the last 10 years,”
Reynaud said.
Saturday’s screening, the next in the series, features two
films that have both recently yielded comic and satiric tribute:
Zhang Che and Bao Xueli’s 1972 classic, “The Boxer From
Shantung” (respectfully mocked in the recent “Kung Fu
Hustle”), and Lau Kar-leung’s 1982 “Legendary
Weapons of China” (referenced in “Kill Bill
2″).
After the conclusion of “Heroic Grace II” in Los
Angeles, a package of titles will travel on an international tour
organized by the Archive in hopes of reopening eyes worldwide to
the artistry of Chinese martial arts films.
“What would you think if French audiences only had access
to “˜Citizen Kane’ in a badly cropped, badly dubbed
version?” asked Reynaud. “Wouldn’t you think they
were missing an important part of American cinematic
history?”