- Taiwanese actress, one of the greatest female martial arts stars, recalled King Hu as more a painter than a director, with actors and crew part of the picture
- When A Touch of Zen won at Cannes festival she saw filmmaking in a new light and vowed to return and win the top prize, which she did for Farewell My Concubine
One of the greatest martial arts actresses of all time, Hsu Feng (or Xu Feng) is best known for her leading roles in classic King Hu movies including A Touch of Zen, The Fate of Lee Khan, and Raining in the Mountain.
Born in Taiwan in 1950, Hsu auditioned for Taiwan's Union Film Company in 1966 because she needed money to support her family. She impressed King Hu, who had left Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong to work in Taiwan, and made her debut with a small part in his smash hit Dragon Gate Inn (1967).
King Hu's philosophical wuxia masterpiece A Touch of Zen (1971), in which Hsu starred as a lady knight on the run from some assassins, took her to the Cannes Film Festival in 1975. The film, which had been a box-office failure in Taiwan and Hong Kong, won the Grand Prix de Technique Superieur at the festival.
"I was impressed with the respect that filmmakers were accorded on the Croisette in Cannes, because back home in Taiwan, filmmakers were looked down on," she said.
Hsu resolved to return to Cannes one day and win the festival's top award, the Palme d'Or, for herself. Eighteen years later she did just that as the producer of mainland Chinese director Chen Kaige's Cultural Revolution drama Farewell My Concubine .
The actress appeared in more than 20 martial arts films, and played a wide variety of characters within the genre. Notable performances for King Hu include the feline thief White Fox who's out to steal a Buddhist scripture in Raining in the Mountain, a ruthless and cold fighter in The Fate of Lee Khan, the jealous ghost Melody in Legend of the Mountain, and a swordswoman fighting Japanese pirates in The Valiant Ones.
Hsu also excelled in performance outside the martial arts genre, notably as the wife of a famous general in Eight Hundred Heroes, a wartime story set during the defence of Shanghai in 1937.
She stopped acting in 1980 when she got married, but quickly moved back into the industry as a producer, forming the Tomson Film Company in 1983. At first, she made a series of popular comedies about kung fu kids, then produced works by Hong Kong directors Yim Ho and Ann Hui On-wah.
Her last two notable films as producer were Farewell My Concubine and Chen Kaige's less successful Temptress Moon.
Hsu spoke to this writer about working with King Hu at the Tomson Films office in Hong Kong in 1998.
What are your memories of working with King Hu?
When I entered the movie business, I didn't know much about films at all. I hardly knew anything, in fact. So I learned everything from King. He was not an "actor's director", he was very stern. He was actually more like a painter. The actors and the crew were just part of the picture that he was painting " we were just the paint he used to express himself. But his impact on me was tremendous.
What was one of the things he taught you?
King taught me a lot about how to act in front of the cameras. He once said to me, "I don't want you to act. Remember that a cinema screen is very big, and when we do a close-up of your eyes, all the emotion will show in them." Ever since then, I have been told that I am a woman who acts in martial arts films with her eyes. My eyes know martial arts!
Did you do your own stunts for King Hu?
King always preferred the actors and actresses to do the stunts themselves if they could. But if the stunts were too dangerous, he would use a stuntman. The editing played a big part in what we had to do.
Cannes 1975 was very important for me. It helped me see that there was a world beyond Taiwan.Hsu Feng
For instance, King would tell us to do a jump, and then he would use a bit of that shot cut with something else. If there was a really difficult stunt in the sequence, he would cut in a shot of the stunt person doing that part. As everyone knows, he was always thinking about the editing when he was shooting " it was the editing that gave his films their special rhythm.
How did you feel about going to Cannes for the first time in 1975, when A Touch of Zen won the Grand Prix de Technique Superieur?
Cannes 1975 was very important for me. It helped me see that there was a world beyond Taiwan. We didn't expect to win any kind of prize with A Touch of Zen, so we were very happy when we did. But I noticed that all the awards except for the Palme d'Or were just bits of paper. So I said to myself, one day I want to go back and win that one. Little did I know that 18 years later I would go back and win it for Farewell My Concubine!
Can you still do martial arts?
Yes, of course I can! But not as well as I could when I was younger.
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the genre.
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