Hong Kong action cinema
Hong Kong action cinema is the principal source of the Hong Kong film industry's global fame. Action films from Hong Kong have roots in Chinese and Hong Kong cultures, including Chinese opera, storytelling and aesthetic traditions, which Hong Kong filmmakers combined with elements from Hollywood and Japanese cinema along with new action choreography and filmmaking techniques, to create a culturally distinctive form that went on to have wide transcultural appeal. In turn, Hollywood action films have been heavily influenced by Hong Kong genre conventions, from the 1970s onwards.
The first Hong Kong action films favoured the wuxia style, emphasizing mysticism and swordplay, but this trend was politically suppressed in the 1930s and replaced by kung fu films that depicted more down-to-earth unarmed martial arts, often featuring folk heroes such as 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.
Hong Kong action cinema peaked from the 1970s to the 1990s. The 1970s saw a resurgence in kung fu films during the rise and sudden death of Bruce Lee. He was succeeded in the 1980s by Jackie Chan—who popularized 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, with genres such as heroic bloodshed and gun fu films, and themes such as triads and the supernatural. However, an exodus by many leading figures to Hollywood in the 1990s coincided with a downturn in the industry.
Early martial arts films (early 20th century)
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 20th century saw an explosion of what were called wuxia novels, generally published in serialized form in newspapers. These were tales of heroic, sword-wielding warriors, often featuring mystical or fantasy elements. This genre was quickly seized on by early Chinese films, particularly in the movie capital of the time, Shanghai. Starting in the 1920s, wuxia titles, often adapted from novels were hugely popular and the genre dominated Chinese film for several years.The boom came to an end in the 1930s, caused by official opposition from cultural and political elites, especially the Kuomintang government, who saw it as promoting superstition and violent anarchy. 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 spoken language of Hong Kong, was The Adorned Pavilion.
Post-war martial arts cinema (1940s to early 1960s)
By the late 1940s, upheavals in mainland China—the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the victory of the Chinese Communist Party—had shifted the centre of Chinese language filmmaking to Hong Kong. The industry continued the wuxia tradition in Cantonese B movies and serials, although the more prestigious Mandarin-language 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 and Sacred Fire, Heroic Wind.A counter-tradition 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 through to Wong Fei Hung Bravely Crushing the Fire Formation. 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.
"New School" wuxia (late 1960s to early 1970s)
In the second half of the 1960s, the era's biggest studio, Shaw Brothers, inaugurated a new generation of wuxia films, starting with Xu Zenghong's Temple of the Red Lotus, a remake of the 1928 classic. These Mandarin productions were more lavish and in colour; their style was less fantastical and more intense, with stronger and more acrobatic violence. They were influenced by imported samurai movies from Japan and by the wave of "New School" wuxia novels by authors like Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng that started in the 1950s.The New School wuxia wave marked the move of male-oriented action films to the centre of Hong Kong cinema, which had long been dominated by female stars and genres aimed at female audiences, such as romances and musicals. Even so, during the 1960s female action stars like Cheng Pei-pei and Connie Chan Po-chu were prominent alongside male stars, such as former swimming champion Jimmy Wang Yu, and they continued an old tradition of female warriors in wuxia storyte directors of the period were Chang Cheh with One-Armed Swordsman and Golden Swallow and King Hu with Come Drink with Me. Hu soon left Shaw Brothers to pursue his own vision of wuxia with independent productions in Taiwan, such as the enormously successful Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen which was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Chang stayed on and remained the Shaws' prolific star director into the early 1980s.
Kung fu wave (1970s)
The early 1970s saw wuxia giving way to a new, grittier and more graphic iteration of the kung fu movie, which came to dominate through the decade and into the early 1980s. Seriously trained martial artists such as Ti Lung and Gordon Liu became some of the top stars as increasing proportions of running times were devoted to combat set-pieces. Chinese Boxer, starring and directed by Jimmy Wang Yu, is widely credited with launching the kung fu boom. But remaining at the vanguard, at least initially, were Shaw Brothers and director Chang Cheh. Chang's Vengeance was another of the first trendsetters and his dozens of contributions included The Boxer from Shantung, Heroes Two, Five Deadly Venoms and Crippled Avengers. Kung fu cinema was particularly influenced by Chang's concern with his vision of masculine values and male friendship; the female warrior figures who had been prominent in late 1960s wuxia work were sidelined, with prominent exceptions such as the popular Angela Mao.Chang's only competitor as the genre's most influential filmmaker was his long-time action choreographer, Lau Kar Leung. Lau began directing his own movies for the Shaw brothers in 1975 with The Spiritual Boxer, a progenitor of the kung fu comedy. In subsequent titles like Executioners from Shaolin, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and Legendary Weapons of China, Lau emphasized the traditions and philosophy of the martial arts and strove to give onscreen fighting greater authenticity and ever greater speed and intricacy.
The kung fu boom was partly fueled by enormous international popularity, and not just in East Asia. In the West, kung fu imports, dubbed and often recut and retitled, shown as "B" films in urban theaters and on television, made Hong Kong film widely noticed, although not widely respected, for the first time. African Americans particularly embraced the genre perhaps as an almost unprecedented source of adventure stories with non-white heroes, who furthermore often displayed a strong streak of racial and/or nationalistic pride.
The popularity of these movies in North America would continue into the 1980s when ninja movies were introduced. In popular culture, the films of this era were colloquially known as Kung Fu Theater or Black Belt Theater, names that many independent stations used for their weekly airing slot.
The Brothers, a Shaw Brothers production, was a significant departure from the kung fu films the studio was known for. The Brothers was an action crime-drama, about two brothers on opposing sides of the law. It was a remake of the Indian crime drama Deewaar, written by Salim–Javed. In turn, The Brothers laid the foundations for the heroic bloodshed genre of 1980s Hong Kong cinema, inspiring John Woo's breakthrough film A Better Tomorrow.
Bruce Lee
No single figure was more responsible for this international profile than Bruce Lee, an American-born, Hong Kong-raised martial artist and actor. Despite his larger filmography, Lee starred in just four completed martial arts films before his untimely death at age 32: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon. Eastern film historian Patrick Macias ascribes his success to " the warrior spirit of old into the present day... developing his own fighting style... and possessing superhuman charisma". His first three movies broke local box office records and were successful in much of the world. Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon went on to gross an estimated and worldwide, respectively.The English-language Enter the Dragon, the first-ever US-Hong Kong co-production, grossed an estimated worldwide, making it the most internationally successful film from the region. Furthermore, his decision at the outset to work for young, upstart studio Golden Harvest, rather than accept the Shaws' notoriously tightfisted standard contract, was a factor in Golden Harvest's meteoric rise and Shaw's eventual decline.