A touch of zen

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Movie
German title A touch of zen
Original title 俠女 (Hsia Nu)
Country of production Taiwan
original language Mandarin
Publishing year 1971
length 187 or 200 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director King Hu
script King Hu
Pu Songling (Story)
production Jung-Feng Sha
Shiqing Yang
music Tai Kong Ng
Daijang Wu
camera Chou Yeh-hsing
Hua Hui-ying
cut King Hu
occupation

A Touch of Zen ( Chinese  俠女  /  侠女 , Pinyin Xiánǚ , W.-G. Hsia-nǚ  - "knightly heroine") is a wuxia feature film by director King Hu , shot from 1969 and completed in 1971 in Taiwan . It was the first ever Chinese action film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival .

action

The educated but also somewhat naive Ku is a scribe and painter in the Chinese provinces. One day strangers appear in town, including Yang, with whom Ku falls in love. But Yang is on the run with a false identity. Among the strangers are other refugees, but also agents who hunt them down. Ku ends up in a bloody conflict between the corrupt head eunuch of the emperor and a group of resisters who want to expose the eunuch's crimes.

Influence and importance

A Touch of Zen is considered one of the most influential Chinese films ever. The epic format and dynamic battle scenes were unprecedented at the time. The famous action scene in the bamboo forest in particular was repeatedly used as inspiration in later wuxia films.
Films that A Touch of Zen had an obvious influence on include Tiger and Dragon and House of Flying Daggers .

reception

English speaking area

In the United States, film reviews have been largely positive. Rotten Tomatoes analyzed 22 reviews, of which they classified eleven as more positive ( fresh ) and only one as more negative ( rotten ). This resulted in a share of positive reviews of 95% with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10 points.

German-speaking area

Individual reviews

“An adventure film in a perfect staging that combines the lavishly equipped historical film, fantastic ghost stories, rapid sword fights and Zen Buddhism into an attractive unit. Partly virtuoso in terms of camera technology, the film condenses the trivial patterns of action on a metaphorical level into a fable about the meaning and purpose of violence. "

- Lexicon of international film

“'… Unique and visually stunning martial arts epic' (German: '… unique and visually stunning martial arts epic') and 'One of the more thoughtful and mature martial arts pics, well-worth seeking out.' (German: 'One of the more profound and mature martial arts films, worth seeing.') "

- Dennis Schwartz in Ozu's World Movie Reviews

“[…] Hu's masterpiece, however, is 'A Touch of Zen': The breathless jury in Cannes presented him with the Technology Grand Prix. Although the film is based on a ghost story, it is highly philosophical. The most ingenious thing was that Hu expanded the template to include the furious martial arts fights that were so significant for him: the sequence in the forest, which is still unsurpassed today, made him the most important pioneer of action cinema in Asia. Conclusion: Unique classic: a milestone in the genre. "

- Cinema

"In 1969 King Hu directed A Touch of Zen, a martial arts adventure film that pushed the boundaries of its genre and became a classic in Hong Kong cinema. [...] A touch of Zen set standards in terms of the choreography of the martial arts scenes and brought a technique to perfection [...] Instead of relying on the faithful representation of real, but often not very photogenic martial arts styles, he began to combine elements of different fighting techniques with aspects of dance theater and Peking Opera [...] In this high level stylization of the fighting elements, which , supported by a sophisticated system of tracking shots, quick montages and changes of perspective, which allows actors to act in a precisely choreographed ballet, is one of the great aesthetic charms of A Touch of Zen . [...] Both the development of the story and the martial arts choreographies are shaped of the breathtaking beauty of the landscape shots that a form the atmospheric background on the one hand, but also develop symbolic value. [...] The climax of the connection between landscape representation and martial arts ballet is the sequence in the bamboo forest, probably the most famous of the film [...] This balance, which combines a great thematic variety with outstanding visual enjoyment , Makes A Touch Of Zen A Highlight Of Hong Kong Cinema "

- Welf Lindner

Awards

Cannes Film Festival 1975

  • Technical Grand Prize won and nominated for the Palme d' Or

literature

  • Stephen Teo: King Hu's A Touch of Zen . Hongkong University Press 2007, ISBN 978-9622098152
  • Tony Williams: A Touch of Zen . Senses Of Cinema - Cinémathèque Annotations on Film, September 2013
  • Touch of Zen, A In: Zhiwei Xiao, Yingjin Zhang: Encyclopedia of Chinese Film . Routledge, 2002, ISBN 9781134745531 , pp. 624–625 ( excerpt (Google) )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Touch of Zen at Rotten Tomatoes (English) Template: Rotten Tomatoes / Maintenance / "imported from" is missing(accessed on 19 November 2017)
  2. ↑ A touch of Zen. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ^ Critique by Dennis Schwartz
  4. ↑ (editorial rating: 100%) Cinema criticism
  5. ^ Welf Lindner: A touch of Zen on critic.de on April 15, 2008