King Hu (Hu Kam Chuen)

(John Woo, director, and extra in "Sons Of The Good Earth", in an interview from Bruce Purcell's documentary KING HU: MASTER OF AN ERA, 1997)

Beijing, China, April 29, 1931 Hu Wan Chuen welcomed his only son, Kam Chuen into the world. Being the only son in a paternal culture creates interesting relationships, and as such, father Hu often shared his love of traditional Chinese history and folklore with young Kam Chuen. A naturally inquisitive child, Kam Chuen’s ravenous imagination found solace in the family library and in his studies. With a keen interest in Chinese literature, Kam Chuen could often be found reading a book, but on the occasion he wasn’t reading he was taking in the local opera, enjoying the colorful orchestration and choreography that is now synonymous with Peking (Beijing) opera. The stage would come alive with tales of heng dai, betrayal, great battles and quests that made for superb drama and spectacle - things Kam Chuen would later imbue within his cinematic ouvre.

A bright, dashingly handsome 19 year old, Hu packed his bags and headed for the bright lights and bustle going on down south. Relying on his charisma and wit, Hu wandered his way through Hong Kong's creative circles, writing and acting, eventually landing a job with the Voice Of America authoring Mandarin radio plays that would make their way into the mainland. Hu became a featured player in the bustling Mandarin film unit of Cathay. While there, Hu began crafting screenplays - simultaneously for Cathay and rival studios, landing a job as co-director on the Shaw Bros. production of ETERNAL LOVE (1961). His passion and experience in theater manifested itself in his screenwriting, earning him his first film as a director, 1965’s SONS OF THE GOOD EARTH.

With the enthusiastic response afforded SONS, Hu jumped over to the Shaw Bros. studios, helming an installment in the “Golden Swallow” saga, COME DRINK WITH ME (1966). Staring the beautiful Cheng Pei Pei, COME DRINK WITH ME stands as a watermark where Hu’s love of traditional Chinese literature, music, and opera are cinemtographically realized. With its rich, operatic composition, his stunt team’s deliberately stylized choreography resembling the tempered Japanese chambara eiga ("Sword Films"), his cinematographer’s stylized lighting, and a taught editing, Hu took this traditional wu xia pian (martial/sword chivalry story) into a lyrical realm as rich as its literary influence. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Hu crafted a visual springboard that would launch some of the most influential works in Hong Kong cinema, culminating in the masterworks: DRAGON INN (1967), the Cannes award-winning A TOUCH OF ZEN (1969), the Golden Harvest produced THE FATE OF LEE KAHN (1973), THE VALLIANT ONES (1975), 1978’s LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN and RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN. Hu had set a standard that future filmmakers like Sammo Hung Kam Bo (who worked under Hu on A TOUCH OF ZEN and THE VALLIANT ONES), Tony Ching Siu Tung, and even Wong Kar Wei - would later emulate in their own wu xia pian, but no one director displayed a fervent love of Hu’s distinctive style than that of Tsui Hark. Hu’s legendary wire and montage-fueled 400 minute masterpiece A TOUCH OF ZEN laid a blueprint that Hark successfully cannibalized and honed into his best work of the 1990s, infusing within it his own cultural ideas.

As time marched on, Hu’s popularity ebbed within Hong Kong, but his reverence in Taiwan was unparalleled. Hu eventually set up production there, contributing a segment to the anthology WHEEL OF LIFE (1980, with segments by Lee Hsing and Pai Ching Jui), standing out as it chronicles one incarnation of the film’s lovers in a tale involving trust, betrayal and death by poisoning. The long, deliberate takes, an unusual (for Hu) use of invisible editing, and its mannered pacing owed much to the finest of Peking Opera (The Tale Of Princess Chang Ping comes to mind). Hu slowed down his cinematic endeavors, spending time with his wife of the time, Cheung Ling, whil touring and lecturing in the west.

In 1991, Tsui Hark’s Film Workshop set out to produce a star-studded epic based on a novel by Jin Yong, with King Hu at the helm. Hu’s influence over Tsui’s work from the mid 1980s - onward, is more than obvious, and, looking back, the idea of the young man paying back the elder statesman with a modern wu xia pian seemed like a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, Hu’s sensibilities and Tsui’s sensibilities did not mesh, with Hu abandoning the project early on, leaving Hark, Tony Ching Siu Tung, Andrew Kam Yuen Wah, and Raymond Lee Wai Man (who would remake DRAGON INN in 1992) to finish SWORDSMAN without the master at bat. The film exudes Hu’s finest stylistic flourishes, but lacks the exposition and attention to detail Hu would have brought to the project. Hu’s final film, 1992’s PAINTED SKIN did not fare well. This Taiwanese production did not have the money to encompass the scope Hu envisioned. As his work in the 1980s had grown more into the realm of the supernatural, Hu and Chung Ah Sing cobbled together a script about a beautiful young woman (Joey Wang Tsu Hsien) who finds love from a scholar/swordsman (Adam Cheng Siu Chow). She is a disfigured spirit running from an abusive past, and in the end the pair seek assistance from various sorcerers to confront her past. PAINTED SKIN has many Hu visual flourishes, including the mannered performances, deliberately stagey mise-en-scene and some luminous cinematography, yet the narrative fails to develop and engross.

Hu settled into retirement after PAINTED SKIN bombed. He made the rounds at retrospectives of his work. All the same time a young man who had been an extra in his first film, SONS OF THE GOOD EARTH, (a young man who had successfully parlayed his career from a Cathay extra to an assistant director at the Shaw Bros. studios, later finding success as a director) was slowly becoming a major force in Hollywood. Thirty-three years earlier, as “Ng Yu Sam,” the young man had donned a Japanese soldier’s costume as a background extra, and in 1996, as John Woo, this young man was readying Hu’s American debut. THE BATTLE OF ONO was to be a sweeping historical epic to take place in China with Chow Yun Fat set to star. Everything was set in place and Hu was very happy with his latest prospect. The film would afford Hu the luxury of a large budget, state of the art production equipment, a major international star, and world wide distribution. Trades like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter enthusiastically reported that the film was “go.” On January 14th, 1997 - one week before the film began production, Hu passed away quietly at his Los Angeles residence. Gone was a cinematic genuis rarely paralelled, a quite giant whose influence on a nations' cinema remains immesurable.

- Darryl Pestilence (Image courtesy of Wal Pong Pun)

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY:

COME DRINK WITH ME

DRAGON INN

A TOUCH OF ZEN

THE FATE OF LEE KAHN

THE VALLIANT ONES

LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN

WHEEL OF LIFE

SWORDSMAN

PAINTED SKIN