SIGNS OF AN EMERGING MASTER IN EARLY FILM
John Woo’s lone wuxia feature, Last Hurrah for Chivalry, though lacking a cohesive style, contains elements of what would follow in his action classics
He is constantly reminding the audience of the artificiality of what we are watching
GRADY HENDRIX, FILM HISTORIAN
Hong Kong film director John Woo Yu-sen was riding high as the city’s comedy king in 1979, having directed big hits like Pilferer’s Progress, and although he harboured great ambitions to change the nature of local cinema, he was quite happy to continue in a comedic vein.
Woo was already a star director – the Cantonese opera film Princess Chang Ping had catapulted him to the front rank in 1976 – yet by his own admission he had yet to develop a unique and identifiable style.
Woo was signed to Golden Harvest, and although they planned for him to continue making money-spinning comedies – which he did – they asked him to direct a one-off action film. The result was the wuxia film Last Hurrah for Chivalry.
Woo had already made three undistinguished kung fu films – including the early Jackie Chan feature The Hand of Death – but Last Hurrah for Chivalry was his first and only wuxia film. It’s an idiosyncratic film, with a sprawling plot which tries to shoehorn lowbrow comedic antics and chivalrous behaviour together, and it features long martial arts sequences which lack an overarching style.
Although enjoyable, its main points of interest lie in its hints at the stylistic and thematic content of Woo’s later action films, and how it reflects the influence of martial arts director Chang Cheh. Woo had worked as an assistant director for Chang on six films, including Boxer from Shantung and The Blood Brothers, between 1972 and 1975 and has always regarded the director as his mentor.
Last Hurrah bundles many martial arts tropes together, but still finds its way to a satisfying conclusion. The story features two swordsmen who forge a bond and work together to take revenge on a manipulative double crosser. Tsing Yi (Damian Lau Chung-yan, already a successful television actor) and Chang (Wai Pak) are caught in a war between two clans, and after proving themselves against adversaries, join up to defeat an evil mastermind.
The martial arts, directed by Fung Hak-on, who also had a major supporting role, is neatly choreographed, but lacks cohesion. Most of the sword fighting scenes seemed old-fashioned at the time, featuring set pieces which lacked spontaneity, but a one-on-one duel featuring Fung is lightning quick and realistic looking.
Likewise, an early kung fu scene featuring Chang beating up the man who does not want to marry his sister is violent in a postBruce Lee style, whereas most the fights are staged more politely.
Woo has said that he initially suggested making a police story when Golden Harvest asked him to direct an action film. But the company refused and demanded that he make a wuxia, even though the genre was long dead at the box office.
“I was so unhappy [with their decision],” he recalled in the book Interviews, edited by Robert K Elder. “So I made up my mind to do a movie that was a tribute to [Akira] Kurosawa … I wanted a little bit of that stylish look from Kurosawa’s films … it was pretty risky, as there were not many people who cared about those films any more … but I wanted to make a classical swordplay movie.”
Woo said that he also wanted to use the project to direct a homage to his former mentor Chang Cheh.
The themes and stylistics of Woo’s later work are present in a nascent form in Last Hurrah, and the careful staging of the action – and the length of the action scenes – showed where his talents lay.
“A lot of Woo’s theatricality and love for big swooning emotions show up for the first time in Last Hurrah,” says novelist and film historian Grady Hendrix, who introduced the film for its Criterion-label release in the US.
“The juxtaposing of the heroes’ faces, the way the hero enters from the side as if he is about to sing an aria, the colourcoded costumes – he is constantly reminding the audience of the artificiality of what we are watching. This would flower into a fullblown style when he made A Better Tomorrow,” Hendrix says.
The wuxia ideals of chivalry and brotherhood, which are evident in Last Hurrah, formed the basis of classic Woo works like A Better Tomorrow and The Killer. “My heroes fight for justice, like ancient Chinese knights,” Woo told this writer in an interview in 1998, “and they sometimes need to sacrifice themselves in their fight.”
Many themes are taken directly from Chang Cheh, and the male bonding and the notion of loyalty in Last Hurrah directly reference Chang’s work. Such themes reappeared later in A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and so on, and Woo expressed them in a more sophisticated manner than his mentor – he proved to be a much better psychologist than Chang.
Although Woo generally references foreign influences such as Jean-Pierre Melville and Sam Peckinpah in interviews with international media, when interviewed at home he always notes the influence of his former boss Chang.
“After watching [Chang’s] films like The One Armed Swordsman, The Wandering Swordsman, and Vengeance!, I felt that I could possess the same kind of youthful romanticism as those heroes,” Woo wrote in his introduction to Chang’s 2002 autobiography.
“During the times that I felt lost and uncertain of my abilities and my future, he encouraged me to think about directing, which was at that time an impossible dream for a newcomer. Knowing my potential, he found my bearings for me, and helped me foster my confidence and self-esteem.
“Looking back, Chang Cheh not only taught me how to direct, but the way of life,” Woo wrote.
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 lesserknown aspects of the beloved genre.