King Hu
Encyclopedia
King Hu (April 29, 1932–January 14, 1997) was a Hong Kong
- and Taiwan
-based Chinese
film director
whose Wuxia
films brought Chinese cinema
to new technical and artistic heights. His films Come Drink with Me
(1966), Dragon Gate Inn
(1967) and A Touch of Zen
(1969-71) inaugurated a new generation of wuxia films in the late 1960s. He was also a scriptwriter
and set designer.
to a well-established Mandarin family originating from Da Ming, Hebei
. His grandfather was the governor of Henan
in the late Qing Dynasty
. He emigrated to Hong Kong in 1949.
as set decorator, actor, scriptwriter and assistant director. Under the influence of Taiwanese director Li Han-Hsiang, Hu embarked on a directorial career, helping him helm the phenomenally successful The Love Eterne
(1963). Hu's first film as a full-fledged director was Sons of the Good Earth (1965), a film set during the War of Resistance against Japan
, but he is better remembered for his next film, Come Drink With Me (1966). Come Drink With Me is his first success and remains a classic of the wuxia genre, catapulting the then 20-year-old starlet Cheng Pei-pei
to fame. Blending Japanese samurai
film traditions with Western editing techniques and Chinese aesthetic philosophy borrowed from Chinese music and operatics
, Hu began the trend of a new school of wuxia swordplay films and his perpetual use of a female heroine as the central protagonist.
Leaving Shaw in 1966, Hu travelled to Taiwan, where he made another wuxia movie, Dragon Gate Inn. Dragon Gate Inn broke all box office and became a phenomenal hit and cult classic
, especially in the Southeast Asia
. This tense tale of highly skilled martial artists hidden in an inn in part resembles Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
and was said to be the inspiration behind it; Zhang Yimou
's House of Flying Daggers
was also said to be dedicated to this film. In 2003 the award-winning Malaysian-born Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang
made Goodbye Dragon Inn, a tribute to King Hu in which all the action takes place during a closing cinema's last show of Dragon Gate Inn.
Chief amongst the films which exemplify Hu's blend of Chan Buddhism and unique Chinese aesthetics
is his trilogy A Touch of Zen
(which won the Technical Prize in 1975 Cannes Film Festival
and which many regard as his masterpiece), Raining in the Mountains and Legend of the Mountains (both dating from 1979, and shot in Korea
), all of which were loosely based on Pu Songling
's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
. After releasing A Touch of Zen, Hu started his own production company and shot The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) and The Valiant Ones (1975) back to back on tight finances. The action choreography in both these films was the work of Sammo Hung
.
Though critically hailed, Hu's later films were ostensibly less successful than his first two films. Late in his life, he made a brief return from semi-retirement in Swordsman (1990) and Painted Skin
(1993), but the latter never achieved the renown of those two, financially successful wuxia films. King Hu spent the last decade of his life in Los Angeles
. He died in Taipei
of complications from angioplasty
.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
- and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
-based Chinese
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
whose Wuxia
Wuxia
Wuxia is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists. Although wuxia is traditionally a form of literature, its popularity has caused it to spread to diverse art forms like Chinese opera, manhua , films, television series, and video games...
films brought Chinese cinema
Cinema of China
The Chinese-language cinema has three distinct historical threads: Cinema of Hong Kong, Cinema of China, and Cinema of Taiwan. Since 1949 the cinema of mainland China has operated under restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and...
to new technical and artistic heights. His films Come Drink with Me
Come Drink with Me
Come Drink with Me is a 1966 Hong Kong wuxia film directed by King Hu. Set during the Ming Dynasty, it stars Cheng Pei-pei and Yueh Hua as warriors with Chan Hung-lit as the villain, and features action choreography by Han Ying-chieh. It is widely considered one of the best Hong Kong films ever made...
(1966), Dragon Gate Inn
Dragon Gate Inn
Dragon Gate Inn, also known as Dragon Inn, is a 1967 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. The film was remade in 1992, as New Dragon Gate Inn, and is again being remade as The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, which is to be released in 2011.-Plot:Tsao, the emperor's first eunuch, has successfully...
(1967) and A Touch of Zen
A Touch of Zen
A Touch of Zen is a 1971 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. The film won significant critical acclaim and became the first Chinese language action film ever to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival, claiming the Technical Grand Prize award....
(1969-71) inaugurated a new generation of wuxia films in the late 1960s. He was also a scriptwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and set designer.
Early life
Hu was born in BeijingBeijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
to a well-established Mandarin family originating from Da Ming, Hebei
Hebei
' is a province of the People's Republic of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "" , named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei...
. His grandfather was the governor of Henan
Henan
Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
in the late Qing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
. He emigrated to Hong Kong in 1949.
Career
After moving to Hong Kong, Hu worked in a variety of occupations, such as advertising consultant, artistic designer and producer for a number of media companies, as well as a part-time English tutor. In 1958 he joined the Shaw Brothers StudioShaw Brothers Studio
The Shaw Brothers Studio , owned by Shaw Brothers Ltd., was the foremost and the largest movie production company of Hong Kong movies.From their distribution base in Singapore where they founded parent company Shaw Organization in 1924, and as a strategic development of their movie distribution...
as set decorator, actor, scriptwriter and assistant director. Under the influence of Taiwanese director Li Han-Hsiang, Hu embarked on a directorial career, helping him helm the phenomenally successful The Love Eterne
The Love Eterne
The Love Eterne is a 1963 Hong Kong musical film of the Huangmei opera genre directed by Li Han Hsiang. It is based on the Chinese classic story The Butterfly Lovers, which is sometimes referred to as the Romeo and Juliet of the Far East...
(1963). Hu's first film as a full-fledged director was Sons of the Good Earth (1965), a film set during the War of Resistance against Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, but he is better remembered for his next film, Come Drink With Me (1966). Come Drink With Me is his first success and remains a classic of the wuxia genre, catapulting the then 20-year-old starlet Cheng Pei-pei
Cheng Pei-pei
Cheng Pei-pei is an actress best known for her performance in the seminal 1966 King Hu wuxia film Come Drink with Me. She continued to play expert swordswomen in a number of films throughout the 1960s...
to fame. Blending Japanese samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
film traditions with Western editing techniques and Chinese aesthetic philosophy borrowed from Chinese music and operatics
Chinese opera
Chinese opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China with roots going back as far as the third century CE...
, Hu began the trend of a new school of wuxia swordplay films and his perpetual use of a female heroine as the central protagonist.
Leaving Shaw in 1966, Hu travelled to Taiwan, where he made another wuxia movie, Dragon Gate Inn. Dragon Gate Inn broke all box office and became a phenomenal hit and cult classic
Cult Classic
Cult Classic is a Blue Öyster Cult studio recording released in 1994, containing remakes of many of the band's previous hits.-Track listing:# " The Reaper" - 5:05# "E.T.I...
, especially in the Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
. This tense tale of highly skilled martial artists hidden in an inn in part resembles Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film. An American-Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwanese co-production, the film was directed by Ang Lee and featured an international cast of ethnic Chinese actors, including Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen...
and was said to be the inspiration behind it; Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum....
's House of Flying Daggers
House of Flying Daggers
House of Flying Daggers is a 2004 wuxia film directed by Zhang Yimou. It differs from other wuxia films in that it is more of a love story than a straight martial arts film....
was also said to be dedicated to this film. In 2003 the award-winning Malaysian-born Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang
Tsai Ming-liang
Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese Cinema, along with earlier contemporaries such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang...
made Goodbye Dragon Inn, a tribute to King Hu in which all the action takes place during a closing cinema's last show of Dragon Gate Inn.
Chief amongst the films which exemplify Hu's blend of Chan Buddhism and unique Chinese aesthetics
Chinese art
Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists or performers. Early so-called "stone age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. This early period was followed by a series of art...
is his trilogy A Touch of Zen
A Touch of Zen
A Touch of Zen is a 1971 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. The film won significant critical acclaim and became the first Chinese language action film ever to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival, claiming the Technical Grand Prize award....
(which won the Technical Prize in 1975 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
and which many regard as his masterpiece), Raining in the Mountains and Legend of the Mountains (both dating from 1979, and shot in Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
), all of which were loosely based on Pu Songling
Pu Songling
Pu Songling was a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.-Biography:Pu was born into a poor landlord-merchant family from Zichuan...
's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio or Liaozhai Zhiyi is a collection of nearly five hundred mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling in Classical Chinese during the early Qing Dynasty.Pu borrows from a folk tradition of oral storytelling to put to paper a series of captivating,...
. After releasing A Touch of Zen, Hu started his own production company and shot The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) and The Valiant Ones (1975) back to back on tight finances. The action choreography in both these films was the work of Sammo Hung
Sammo Hung
Sammo Hung is a Hong Kong actor, martial artist, film producer and director, known for his work in many martial arts films and Hong Kong action cinema...
.
Though critically hailed, Hu's later films were ostensibly less successful than his first two films. Late in his life, he made a brief return from semi-retirement in Swordsman (1990) and Painted Skin
Painted Skin (1993 film)
Painted Skin is a 1993 Hong Kong supernatural horror film starring Adam Cheng, Joey Wong, Sammo Hung, Lam Ching Ying, and Wu Ma. It was directed by King Hu....
(1993), but the latter never achieved the renown of those two, financially successful wuxia films. King Hu spent the last decade of his life in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. He died in Taipei
Taipei
Taipei City is the capital of the Republic of China and the central city of the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Situated at the northern tip of the island, Taipei is located on the Tamsui River, and is about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...
of complications from angioplasty
Angioplasty
Angioplasty is the technique of mechanically widening a narrowed or obstructed blood vessel, the latter typically being a result of atherosclerosis. An empty and collapsed balloon on a guide wire, known as a balloon catheter, is passed into the narrowed locations and then inflated to a fixed size...
.
Selected filmography
- Come Drink with MeCome Drink with MeCome Drink with Me is a 1966 Hong Kong wuxia film directed by King Hu. Set during the Ming Dynasty, it stars Cheng Pei-pei and Yueh Hua as warriors with Chan Hung-lit as the villain, and features action choreography by Han Ying-chieh. It is widely considered one of the best Hong Kong films ever made...
(大醉侠, 1966) - Dragon Gate InnDragon Gate InnDragon Gate Inn, also known as Dragon Inn, is a 1967 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. The film was remade in 1992, as New Dragon Gate Inn, and is again being remade as The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, which is to be released in 2011.-Plot:Tsao, the emperor's first eunuch, has successfully...
(龙门客栈, 1967) - A Touch of ZenA Touch of ZenA Touch of Zen is a 1971 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. The film won significant critical acclaim and became the first Chinese language action film ever to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival, claiming the Technical Grand Prize award....
(侠女, 1971) - The Fate of Lee Khan (迎春阁之风波, 1973)
- The Valiant Ones (忠烈图, 1975)
- Raining in the MountainRaining in the MountainRaining in the Mountain is a 1979 Hong Kong/Taiwan film directed by King Hu.The film tells the story of a Ming Dynasty monastery on a mountain. A general and an esquire each employ martial artists to help steal a handwritten scroll of Tripitaka hidden in the monastery's library...
(空山灵雨, 1979) - Legend of the Mountains (山中传奇, 1979)
- The SwordsmanThe SwordsmanThe Swordsman or Swordsman is a 1990 Hong Kong wuxia film. King Hu was credited as the director but he allegedly left the project midway, and the film was completed by a team led by producer Tsui Hark. The film is adapted from Louis Cha's novel The Smiling, Proud Wanderer...
(笑傲江湖 in part, 1990) - Painted SkinPainted Skin (1993 film)Painted Skin is a 1993 Hong Kong supernatural horror film starring Adam Cheng, Joey Wong, Sammo Hung, Lam Ching Ying, and Wu Ma. It was directed by King Hu....
(画皮之阴阳法王, 1993)