Melodramatic over acting, sworn vengeance for the death of loved ones, scruffy looking tramps who kick arse, superfluous bucktoothed comedy characters and subtitles that don’t make sense… maybe things haven’t changed that much after all!
The first and earliest film in the NFT’s Heroic Grace season is one of the rarest and most interesting of all - a rare chance to see one of the earliest surviving examples of ‘wuxia’ movie from the genre’s original boom in 1920’s and 1930’s Shanghai. (Most of which were destroyed after the Communist Revolution.)
Red Heroine tells of a young girl Yun Mei (Fan Xuepeng) who is taken when a renegade army storm through her village killing her grandmother and separating her from her cousin. Their general plans to make her one of his many scantily clad concubines, before he is interrupted by the White Monkey, a scruffy and unassuming hermit who actually has incredible powers. Escaping with him he offers to teach her his martial (or military - as they referred to in the subtitles) arts so she can get revenge for the death of her grandmother.
Three years later things have claimed down in the village, until a disgruntled employee of a local businessman brings a correspondence from a warring fraction to the generals attention. This unscrupulous official, aided by his bucktoothed second in command, see a way to exploit this information to have his wicked way with the businessman’s daughter. He blackmail’s her into marring him, threatening hat otherwise he shall put her father to death. However, the general has no intention of keeping his promise and forces her to watch her father’s execution on her wedding day.
But who should appear to save the day? Yun Mei reborn as the Red Heroine, she pulls her twin blades from her scabbard and, in a move not unfamiliar to fans of Monkey she takes to the air in a puff of smoke. Able to scale ropes up walls with ease, and fight off legions of troops, the general is no match for her and, finally, gets his bloodthirsty comeuppance.
Yun Mei’s personal journey has taken her beyond affairs of the heart, instead she plays cupid to her cousin and the businessman’s daughter. This scholarly, non-fighter more than happy to accept a girl who had been ‘tarnished’, telling her ‘love is about more than …(sic)’.
The popularity of films quickly followed serialised newspaper stories bringing the genre of wuxia, or ’sword and sorcery’ as we’ve come to know it better in the west, to a mass audience. Their popularity was unparalleled in the 1920s and reached a peak between 1927 and 1931 when over 200 films were produced. In a rapidly changing world, what could realistically manifest such stories better than movies?
The film is a fascinating example how much of the visual language had already been set in place, as generic characters have changed little on the big screen ever since. Like the scruffy looking tramp who turns out to be more powerful than anyone, or the aid with comedy crooked teeth, and so on, are all still very much a part of Hong Kong and Asian cinema today. The White Monkey is very the predecessor of the Drunken Master character in the films of the same name, and other examples like Drunken Cat in Come Drink With Me.
In fact the idea that someone could be powerful without actually looking like it (for instance a muscular Superman), found in classic Chinese stories, seems lost on the West. Clark Kent or Peter Parker may have been wimps in their day jobs, but developed incredible physiques the second their superhero outfits where donned. Yet it’s just this aspect that allowed women to easily transcend being the weaker sex, at least until the late sixties, in Asian film.
Yet Red Heroine is difficult viewing for a modern audience, and it highlights just how much the language of storytelling changed in less than a decade from the introduction of sound.
The initial momentum carries the viewer as director Wen Yin, who also plays Yun Mei’s cousin, and cinematographer Yao Shiquan keep their imaginative ideas flowing: the first scene where a peasant runs right up to the camera, just his mouth can be seen with the text ‘the renegades are coming’ shown over it; the general’s bucktoothed aide drool literally pours at the sight of one of his lord’s concubines; the cousins dream about how life could have been, with ghostly apparitions of himself and Yun Mei; the sudden first appearance of the White Monkey when the general is expecting to see a naked Mei, subtitled as ‘an unexpected turn!’
But the momentum quickly wanes as the second act merely sets up the same story again, except takes longer telling it. The freshness of the approach in telling the story soon becomes stilted and unimaginative. The characters, as was so often the case in these times, run back and forth with little development of any kind. It might have enthralled audiences of the twenties, but few would have the patience now. Particularly with rather dubiously translated subtitles, many strangely cut off the screen.
In this instance a proper, old-fashioned accompaniment on piano by Stephen Horne made the experience a lot more bearable. Itself a lost art form that you rarely get to appreciate.
But the finale is worth seeing, as the Red Heroine’s powers seem greater than even that of her master. Though primitive, the effects stand up pretty well - the image of Yun Mei flying through the sky coming nearly a decade before Superman leapt, let alone flew, over the tallest building in Metropolis.
The NFT showed a print transferred to NTSC. Though it had suffered greatly over time this is an important look at the beginnings of one of the most influential genres on cinema ever, still very much a part of Hollywood action movies and video games today.
