Hello, Dragon Inn: A Journey Through King Hu

[Raiders]

http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/ab3219/touch_of_zen.jpg

I have long wanted to explore some of the older Chinese martial arts/kung fu cinema. I am starting my journey with what I feel will likely be my favorite artist in the genre, King Hu. I have seen three of his films already and I have liked/loved all three. Reading up on some of his other films convinces me this is a journey I really want to take.

My KG ratio be damned, I'm going to try and get as many of these as I can. The ones I expect to see are:

The Story of Sue San (1964) (http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=263031&postcount=10) - 7.0
Sons of Good Earth (1965)
Come Drink With Me (1966)*
Dragon Inn (1967)*
A Touch of Zen (1969)*
The Fate of Lee Khan (1973)
The Valiant Ones (1975)
Raining in the Mountain (1979)
Swordsman (1990)

* seen previously

The only one that might be difficult is The Valiant Ones but I'll do my absolute best. Also, uh Davis, if you happen to have copies of any of these, or the other even more obscure ones, feel free to lend a brother a hand.

These will take me a while to procure and watch, so I'm not even sure when this will begin. But, I've made the preparations so I figured to go ahead and create the thread to at least build a modicum of anticipation, even if it is only Davis who cares.

[Boner M]

Come Drink With Me and A Touch of Zen are great. Will you be posting thoughts on the ones you've seen too? Will follow this thread anyway.

[Raiders]

Come Drink With Me and A Touch of Zen are great. Will you be posting thoughts on the ones you've seen too? Will follow this thread anyway.

Yeah, I'm going to rewatch those three and post thoughts same as the others. I haven't seen any of them in more than two years anyway.

[Qrazy]

Come Drink With Me and A Touch of Zen are great. Will you be posting thoughts on the ones you've seen too? Will follow this thread anyway.

I actually preferred both Come Drink with Me and Dragon Gate Inn (probably my favorite of the bunch) to A Touch of Zen. Zen while compelling in many places was way too unwieldy for it's own good. It just meanders all over the place.

[D_Davis]

Nice. I have them all except for The Story of Sue San and The Fate of Lee Khan.

Don't forget about:

The Painted Skin (1993)
Legend of the Mountain (1979)

Both are worth seeing.

[D_Davis]

Suggested Reading:

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/hu.html#film

and

http://www.brns.com/picts20/zen.jpg

[Raiders]

Nice. I have them all except for The Story of Sue San and The Fate of Lee Khan.

Don't forget about:

The Painted Skin (1993)
Legend of the Mountain (1979)

Both are worth seeing.

I would love to see all of them, but I went only with those I could find online. If anything else becomes available, I'll get right on it.

[soitgoes...]

I would love to see all of them, but I went only with those I could find online. If anything else becomes available, I'll get right on it.I'm pretty sure Legend of the Mountain is on KG. I've seen it, and I'm 99% sure it was from there.

Anyways, good luck with this!

[B-side]

I've been meaning to see something of his. Will watch.

[Raiders]

THE STORY OF SUE SAN (1964)

A film of two halves. The first is innocent enough, a typical tale of a man smitten with an inaccessible woman, here a prostitute who, as the film cliche goes, has a bigger heart then we initially see. Wang Jinlong, a magistrate's son who is seeking out his own life becomes obsessed with Sue San upon seeing her being chauffeured down a city street. He follows her to her brothel and waits around all day until she is available (as the brothel "mother" tells him, she is very popular). Eventually she comes to see him, but expresses initial disinterest, or perhaps unexpected shyness, and he takes offense and leaves, his pride getting the better of him. Eventually he invites her to a dinner party with a fellow magistrate and after a series of meetings he and his magistrate friend arrange for him to marry her. Unfortunately the plot details are a little vague on just how this marriage comes about, something about him buying her for the first night and then paying rent to live with her at the brothel.

Wang Jinlong's pride is his weakness, and before long he is buying everything for his wife left and right including building a huge house on the back of the brothel which winds up bankrupting him. Naturally, the film hints that this is the plan all along as he is pushed into his expenses at every turn by the brothel mother and father. Eventually, he is evicted from the brothel and forced to return home in shame and Sue San sold to a wealthy magistrate from another village. Here, the film makes its shift into the darker second half.

Sue San is nothing if not a noble presence who is turned into a martyr, both the image of affection for all men and scorn for those men's women. Sold as a concubine and eventually framed for murder, Sue San is tossed about like a piece of trash on the side of the road. All the while Wang Jinlong must make amends at his house and eventually becomes an important inspector whose job it is to review important cases for accuracy. Naturally, he stumbles upon Sue San's case, where there has been various levels of corruption to assure her conviction, and the rest is classic melodrama.

Likely only a middle-tier film in King Hu's canon, his marvelous craft and elegant mise en scene are still on full display. His framing and camera movement during the trial scenes fluidly captures the persecution of Sue San and her isolation. Hu also magnificently parallels the arcs of both Wang and Sue San with a great use of montage, juxtaposing the pain with the triumph and showing how the two paths are diverging and foreshadowing their eventually intersection. Though not a proper musical, there are many instances of song being used to express emotion and often the songs are quite elegant and haunting, though perhaps the lyrics lose something in translation (much of it very perfunctory). Perhaps the best scene in the film is the dinner party guests playing a singing game which is essentially a "finish-the-sentence" exercise, each guest telling a strange little ditty until one is unable to think of anything and must drink. It is a film of starts and stops, a little uneven and the plot an archetypal and melodramatic throwaway, the acting both expressive and sometimes awkward, but still a well composed, nicely mounted film from a talented visual filmmaker.

[7.0]