Wuxia Season: Come Drink With Me (Dir King Hu, 1h 31m, 1966)
Wuxia. (noun). a genre of Chinese fiction or cinema featuring itinerant warriors of ancient China, often depicted as capable of superhuman feats of martial arts. (OED); from wǔ (武) lit. "martial" or "armed" and xía (俠) lit. "heroic" or "chivalrous".
China, like all cultures, has its stories of heroes, of figures stepping forth in myth and legend to defend, or destroy, to war, and to bring retribution upon wrong doers, often on flights of fantasy or drawing
from China's extensive written history-the wuxia genre itself dates back to the Third Century BCE-that often develops into the former, for example in works like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Over the history of the country, the wuxia genre evolved, from tales of political assassinations, to more legendary and outlandish pieces in the Tang Dynasty (7th to
10th Century CE), where loners outside society carry out daring and often superhuman feats, to a more societal focus in the Ming Dynasty (14th to 17th Century), where entire armies of heroes battle societal, rather than individual ills, to the detective-like "public case" or gong'an works of the Qing Dynasty that, towards its end, finally gave this disparate and ever-evolving genre
its name.
Wuxia has permeated every medium China has to offer, and cinema is no exception. Whilst the genre's cinematic outings would begin in the 1920s with films like Red Heroine (1929) and Woman Warrior White Rose (1929), taking on a patriotic bent in the 1940s with Hua Mu Lan (1939), a film made under Japanese occupation, and subversively critical of their occupying forces and a barely concealed call to arms, it wouldn't
be until the 1950s, where, buoyed by new blood in the literary field in the form of Jin Yong (The Legend of the Condor Heroes) and Liang Yusheng (Romance of the White-Haired Maiden), the cinematic medium gathered strength, headed by the Shaw Brothers Studio. A veritable powerhouse in Chinese cinema, Shaw's work of the 1960s and early 1970s,
especially the films directed by King Hu, codified wuxia cinema's feeling, its intricately choreographed action scenes, and sped-up camera work, its dramatic battles to right wrongs and
defeat evil. No film summarises how Shaw made wuxia cinema like Hu's 1966's masterpiece Come Drink with Me.
Come Drink with Me codifies much of what we will come on to discuss. Hu himself may have begun as a journeyman director (his only previous
feature to this being 1963's Sons of the Good Earth), but it is with Come Drink with Me that the cinematic language, and narrative style of Wuxia cinema
arrived, almost wholesale, a potent blend of samurai films (an already wildly successful and burgeoning genre), western editing, giving the film its fast, and often playful, pace, and Chinese aesthetics. Come Drink With Me begins with a showcase of these, as Zheng Bi-qiu (Wong Chung), the son of a local governor, is kidnapped by bandits, led by Jade-Faced Tiger (the wonderfully sinister Chan Hung-lit)
an androgynous swordsman who instantly makes his mark upon the film as a scheming and powerful antagonist. The battle is meticulously shot, its swordplay impressive and well choreographed, its sense of place, of knowing who is where in the fight unparalleled by Chinese action cinema up to this point, Jade-Faced Tiger sweeping through shots as his men make light work of Zheng Bi-qiu's retainers,
whilst the sword fights themselves are beautifully edited.
Retreating into a nearby monastery, with Zheng Bi-qiu in tow, whose corrupt abbot supports them, so Jade-Faced Tiger sends his men to the nearby town,
to confront the mysterious Golden Swallow, a figure already seemingly on the trail of the kidnapped man. What follows is one of the greatest introductions in cinema. For Golden Swallow (the later-styled "Queen of Swords"
Cheng Pei-pei) is not only Zheng Bi-qiu's sister, in disguise as a boy, but a fearsome fighter. Hu's masterstroke, above all other decisions with Come Drink with Me is in hiring a dancer for his lead, and as Jade-Faced Tiger's men threaten her, and are soundly beaten in a fight that any wuxia film worth its salt has paid homage to, that
line between dance and fight, between ballet and battle, becomes blurred, especially with Cheng Pei-pei herself, to the point of non-existence. In one scene, complete with wire-work, incredible acts of swordsmanship and martial
prowess, King Hu has practically invented modern wuxia. It is nothing less than a joy to watch as Golden Swallow makes light work of her enemies, and it is only the second of several superbly
shot, choreographed, and acted fight scenes that punctuate the film.
Bested, Jade-Faced Tiger's men slink away, to be replaced by the figure of Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua), the town's local beggar and drunkard,
who runs a small gang of beggars. However, much as Golden Swallow's initial appearance is deceiving-and quickly stripped away to leave a tough, and often fearless action heroine, just the first of many in the genre-so
too is Drunken Cat. Hua has a likeable presence in the film, at once playing the fool and singing in return for coins for him and his troupe, a charming fool who manages at points to work himself into the confidence of our
heroine and our antagonists, and the perfect encapsulation of the wuxia hero, a rough, homespun exterior masking a master of Shaolin. Whilst the first inkling of this is in a smartly done chase (that other wuxia films have,
again, paid homage to, most notably Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,(2000)) across rooftops, culminating in Golden Swallow finding the weapons Drunken Cat has stolen from her, and thus narrowly
avoiding a trap laid by Jade-Faced Tiger's men, more is to come.
Tracking down Jade-Faced Tiger to the monastery via a coded song from Drunken Cat, so Golden Swallow attempts to sneak in and rescue her brother,
only to be confronted by the fearsome swordsman and his men, and another, even larger scale fight takes place, using the layout of the monastery and its grounds to give the fight a spectacular flow, so that by the time that
the two warriors come face-to-face, the battle is at full-pitch, and the duel that follows is as dramatic and sweeping as any that would come later in the genre, only ending with Golden Swallow making her escape over the walls
of the monastery, only to be hit by a seemingly lethal poison dart. Here, then, Drunken Cat reveals his true self, as a fearsome Shaolin monk, Fan Da-pei, who nurses her back to health, and ruthlessly deals with her pursuers,
returning, as Drunken Cat, to drop off the bodies to a bewildered Jade-Faced Tiger and his men.
Here, the film reveals its final twist-the corrupt Abbot (Yeung Chi-hing) and Fan Da-Pei are former comrades, the
latter entrusted with their former master's nigh-legendary bamboo stick, which the Abbot is bent on owning. Together, Fan Da-Pei and Golden Swallow hatch a plan to defeat the forces before them, and the finale is, if anything,
grander, more spectacular, and even more action packed, settling its scores in dramatic fashion. It is the perfect finale to a film that innovates in so many ways, pared down to a battle to the death for the heirloom of a
powerful Shaolin monk, our heroine having already met her nemesis in battle.
Whilst in places, Come Drink With Me has become overshadowed by Dragon Inn (1967) Hu's very next picture, and his wuxia epic, A Touch of Zen (1971) which we will discuss next week, its lightning strike moment in Chinese-and indeed, action-cinema is incomparable, making a career for its director, and a star of its heroine,
and its influence on the genre it practically reinvented immeasurable. It is nothing less than the opening strike, the first blow, of one of cinema's great genres.
Rating Must See
Come Drink With Me is
available to watch online in the UK via Amazon Prime and Apple TV, and
on DVD from Arrow and Terracotta Distributing. It is also currently
available to stream via Amazon Prime and Apple TV, and available
on DVD from Arrow in the United States.
Next week, we carry on
our travels with King Hu as we discuss his wuxia epic, the sweeping
masterpiece of female knight errant meets unambitious scholar, in the towering three hour A Touch of Zen
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