A brief history of martial arts movies

Generally speaking, authors who often give a sense of manpower in their works can find too many setbacks in their lives.

Zhang Che, a master of masculine martial arts, has always been regarded as a gifted scholar and a beautiful woman. However, since Zhang Che gave up politics and turned to writing film reviews for a living, he started all over again. He helped Helen Li Mei shoot Wildfire, which was regarded as "Taiwanese accent" by the film industry. When he joined Shaw as a screenwriter, he was suppressed because of his literati status. It was not until 1967 that he made his famous one-armed knife.

One-armed knife (1967) itself is the product of personal anxiety, and it also releases social anxiety. In the 1960s, Hong Kong and the mainland became popular, and Taiwan Province Province was also at war. Both places are radical waves full of idealism. Only Hong Kong is immersed in the narrow and depressing atmosphere described in the later "The True Story of Teddy Boy" and "In the Mood for Love", and so are the men in Hong Kong.

It was a woman's "mood for love" at that time. At that time, almost all actresses dominated the Hong Kong film industry. The audience only likes to watch sad literary films with women as female roles, and actors can only act as green leaves and play the weak or bad guys in them. Even in martial arts films, it is an experiment and exploration, while Hu is a pilgrimage to traditional classical beauty and even enters a religious realm without gender and identity. This is naturally not true. Many years ago, Zhang Che wanted to use movies to change this grandiose aesthetic atmosphere and advocate martial arts. Finally, he did it with a one-armed knife. Due to the success of Zhang Che's martial arts films, the aesthetics of Hong Kong people who take movies as their first cultural entertainment began to tend to be masculine, and the resulting film-making trend also turned to affect Southeast Asia, China, Taiwan Province Province and mainland China in culture. Later, the success of Andy Lau, Chow Yun Fat and other superstars in Hong Kong can be attributed to Zhang Che.

One-armed Knife draws lessons from Jin Yong's The Condor Heroes, and all the brothers and sisters in the film can also find the shadows of Guo Fu, Wu Xiuwen and Wu Dunru in the novel. Of course, the film language at that time was far from perfect. One-armed Knife was naturally not as exquisite as Jin Yong's novels, but the masculine aesthetic style pioneered by Zhang Che was as unique and powerful as the large amount of blood that first appeared on the screen at that time.

Zhang Che's favorite is "Dance of Death", in which his hero fought fiercely before he died. However, compared with the later violent aesthetics that emphasized the form, the one-armed knife is more of a sense of strength accumulated by the story itself. Fang Gang, the protagonist of the story, was originally the best disciple among the disciples, but his right arm was cut off by his sister because of his simple and honest temperament. He became a cripple and fell into the lowest valley of his life. Even unable to resist being bullied by hooligans, he finally pulled himself together with the encouragement of a woman, practiced a one-armed knife with the broken knife left by his father, and finally defeated the powerful enemy at a critical juncture and saved the master family.

One-armed Knife now looks a bit rough in some places, but the film was quite revolutionary at that time. In the film, the dobby ghost intercepted the disciple of Golden Knife Gate, and Fang Gang and the dobby ghost just had two decisive battles at the end, both of which were the first time to use hand-held photography. Many shots were shot only partially, resulting in incomplete composition to highlight the sense of oppression, which was original at that time. Because of the innovative shooting style, Zhang Che even promoted an assistant to the position of photographer to stop the pressure. The setting of the movie story is also quite wonderful. Before the end, the dobby ghost never showed people in a positive way. Whips and javelins are all faintly exposed, but it is urgent to take the lead.

Later, Zhang Che disciple John Woo almost staged the same scene in his life. When many works were not recognized and regarded as mediocre, John Woo, at the age of 4 1, with the help of his good friend Tsui Hark, made a blockbuster "The True Color of Heroes". This movie, like One-armed Knife, has a strong sense of anger. The themes of these two films are very similar. It's all about how to challenge your destiny from scratch after losing everything, except the true colors of heroes.