Chapter 3: Mise-en-Scène

Essay: Action Scenes and Kinesthetic Art

Hong Kong popular cinema will be remembered chiefly for its preposterously exciting physical action. Without benefit of film schools or postmodern referentiality, three generations of directors spontaneously recaptured the visual dynamism of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Fairbanks. Just as intuitively, they put into practice ideas articulated by the 1920s Soviet montage masters. The result is exhilarating entertainment. Many of these fights, stunts, and chases remain gems of audacious invention, and the best action films from Hong Kong are among the glories of popular art.

David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong, 199

In Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon(2000), Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and Jen Yu (Ziyi Zhang) square off in a multiweapon battle staged by Yuen Wo Ping

Since the earliest days of cinema, filmmakers have exploited the dynamism of motion, turning their cameras toward athletes, circus performers, animals, and all sorts of moving contraptions. Combat and its comedic equivalent, slapstick, or "physical comedy," quickly became popular cinematic subjects. Early filmmakers and theorists—especially the Russians Sergei Eisenstein, Vesevolod Pudovkin, and Lev Kuleshov—made claims for the dynamism of the film form itself, arguing that montage, the editing together of shots, had the power to create a sense of movement, energy, and conflict. (For a complete discussion of the term montage and the many powers of editing, see chapter 6, "Editing.") When the inherently dynamic filmic medium is joined with the inherently dynamic physical action of, say, an acrobat or a swashbuckler, the full kinesthetic art of cinema becomes even more apparent.

By kinesthetic we mean "related to the ways bodies move in space." Psychologist Howard Gardner argues that humans employ seven distinct intelligences, one of which is kinesthetic intelligence; and in the context of art and sport, kinesthetic refers to the supreme physical control and inventiveness of, say, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov or basketball player Michael Jordan.

Because we all share the same basic kinesthetic sense (if not the exceptional talents) of great athletes and performers, we intuitively recognize "artistry" in human physicality and movement. While theater, dance, circus, and street performances have engaged humans' kinesthetic appreciation for thousands of years, film has raised our earthly, embodied intuitions and perceptions to another level through the artificiality and virtuality of the screen. The kinesthetic artistry of film performers can be amplified and embellished thanks to editing, fast and slow motion, theatrical effects (wires that allow performers to fly through the air), and special effects. In the theoretical filmic space that we as viewers share with performers onscreen, our kinesthetic and cognitive senses of balance, inertia, gravity, force and opposing force can be manipulated in all sorts of ways. And perhaps no filmmakers have combined the kinesthetic talents of performers with the limitless effects possible in the virtual world of cinematic space as have Hong Kong filmmakers. The wonderful and entertaining films resulting from these manipulations have made Hong Kong action cinema famous the world over. As David Bordwell explains: "These films literally grip us; we can watch ourselves tense and relax, twitch or flinch. By arousing us through highly legible motion and staccato rhythms, and by intensifying that arousal through composition and editing and sound, the films seem to ask our bodies to recall elemental and universal events like striking, swinging, twisting, leaping, rolling" (244).

In addition to the skills of actors such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, Hong Kong action films depend greatly on directors and fight choreographers who know how to stage and film dynamic action scenes. Action film director and choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (b. 1945) is well known in America because of his work in Andy and Larry Wachowski's Matrix trilogy (1999, 2003) and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long, 2000). With experience and credits dating back to the early 1970s, Yuen famously launched Jackie Chan's career as a lovable and comical underdog fighter when he directed Chan in Drunken Master (1978), a significant and intelligent departure from the Hong Kong cinema's seemingly endless attempts to clone Bruce Lee's fierce, invincible fighter characters. Yuen has also worked with nearly all the great Hong Kong martial arts stars, including Samo Hung, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh.

Below, we offer a series of frame sequence animations illustrating parts of Yuen-choreographed fights from some of his most famous films. Accompanying each frame sequence is a brief commentary that relates the sequence to both Hong Kong action filmmaking and kinesthetic art.

Drunken Master (Zui quan, 1978)

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By contrast [with Bruce Lee], Jackie Chan's typical kung-fu film starts with him as a talented but raw and naive fighter. His are apprentice plots; he must learn discipline, stamina, and special techniques that will allow him to win—often very narrowly—against seasoned foes. In the course of Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Drunken Master (1978), and other films, Chan must literally "become a dragon"—learn to endure pain and to perfect his skill. He began to define another version of heroism, one stressing boundless determination and a good-humored willingness to suffer.

David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong , 55–56

Drunken Master made Jackie Chan a star, and, as David Bordwell notes above, helped form the Jackie Chan persona that has successfully been exported to the rest of the world. All the fights in the film demonstrate what Bordwell argues is a defining characteristic of Hong Kong action scenes, especially in contrast to American action scenes: the "pause/burst/pause pattern." While American action films tend to stage action scenes in a continuous blur of movement and simply accelerate this movement for effect, the typical Hong Kong action scene, no matter how rapid, exploits bursts of movement, punctuated by pauses, providing the scene with an internal rhythm and dramatic tension unequaled by other action film styles. Note in this sequence how Wong Fei-Hong (Chan) and his opponent parry and thrust and pause numerous times, ending with the final pause, when Jackie points at the face of his enemy in momentary triumph.

Iron Monkey (1993; Miramax U.S. release, Oct. 2001)

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While Yuen Wo Ping's Iron Monkey might remind American viewers of the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and even the Three Stooges, Chinese and Hong Kong viewers will no doubt think of Chinese opera, acrobatics, and aerial work. An exhibition of extreme balance that prepares viewers for a climactic, tour-de-force battle scene set atop burning posts, this sequence is a typical expression of Yuen's love of physical comedy, his rapid pacing of visual gags, and his inventiveness. Sequences such as this one so impressed writer-director Quentin Tarantino that he lobbied Miramax to rerelease the film in the United States, a $2 million investment that earned $16 million.

The Matrix (1999)

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This is a sparring program, similar to the programmed reality of the matrix; it has the same basic rules—rules like gravity. What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system; some of them can bent; others can be broken.

Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne)

For The Matrix, Yuen required his Hollywood actors to practice martial arts for four months—nothing compared to the years of training that Hong Kong martial arts stars undergo, but enough to make the film's action sequences both more realistic and super-realistic. The film's directors, the Wachowski brothers, situated the gravity-defying movements of the fantastic Hong Kong action style in the science-fiction-motivated alternative reality of "the matrix," allowing American filmgoers to enjoy the implausible stunt work that Hong Kong audiences have accepted for decades as a blend of fantasy, martial arts, tall tale, and visual hyperbole. In this sequence, Yuen employs a number of stylistic conventions famous from the Hong Kong action genre: fighters scaling walls with the deftness of lizards; fighters soaring through the air at tremendous speed and height; fighters hitting and breaking the surrounding environment with superhuman force while sustaining no injuries. Note, too, the exciting effects of the combination of slow motion footage and rapid editing.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

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Ang Lee's homage to the Hong Kong action film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a sophisticated, beautiful, and poetic historical epic. By combining action with intelligent drama and high production values, Lee expanded the audience for the Hong Hong style beyond the "chop socky" genre fans, wooing international art-film patrons and mainstream audiences. While this sequence relies on the pause/burst/pause pattern characteristic of Hong Kong action cinematography, other fight scenes in the film are characterized by expressionistic imagery. In the frames below, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) and Jen Yu (Ziyi Zhang) battle balletically in a dreamlike bamboo forest, and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and Jen Yu fly majestically across the rooftops of a darkened city:

FOR FURTHER READING

Anderson, Aaron. "Action in Motion: Kinesthesia in Martial Arts Films." Jump Cut no. 42 (1998): 1–11, 83.

Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Corliss, Richard. "Yeun Wo-Ping, Martial Master."

Fu, Poshek and David Desser. The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Iron Monkey website.