(徐)
Tsui Hark (born Tsui
Man-Kong; ; Yale: Tsui4
Man6 Kwong1; 15 February 1950) is a New Wave film
director in Hong
Kong
and a highly influential producer.
Early life
Tsui was
born and raised in the Chinese section (Cho
lon) of Saigon
, Vietnam by his Chinese
immigrant
parents, in a large family with sixteen siblings. By age 13,
he and his family immigrated to Hong Kong. Tsui showed an early
interest in show business and movies; when he was ten, he and some
friends rented an 8 mm camera with which to film the magic show
they put on at school. He also drew comic books, an interest that
would influence his cinematic style.
Tsui took his secondary education in Hong Kong starting in 1966.
He then
studied film in Texas
, first at
Southern
Methodist University
and then at the University of
Texas at Austin
, graduating in 1975. He claims to have told
his parents he was studying to follow in his father's footsteps as
a
pharmacist, and that it was here he
changed his given name to Hark ("overcoming") (Dannen & Long,
1997).
After
graduation, Tsui moved to New York City
where he worked on From Spikes to Spindles
(1976), a noted documentary by Christine Choy on the history of the
city's Chinatown. He also edited a
Chinatown newspaper, developed a community
theatre group and worked in Chinese language cable TV. He returned
to Hong Kong in 1977.
Career
New Wave Period
Upon turning to feature filmmaking, Tsui was quickly typed as a
member of the "New Wave" of young, iconoclastic directors. His
debut,
The Butterfly
Murders/Die Bian (1979), was an eccentric and technically
challenging blend of
wuxia, murder mystery and
science fiction/fantasy elements. His second film,
We're Going
to Eat You (1980), was an eccentric blend of cannibal horror,
black comedy and
kung fu.
But it was his third,
Dangerous Encounter of the First
Kind (1980), that put him beyond the pale. The thriller about
delinquent youths on a bombing spree was nihilistic, grisly and
pregnant with angry political subtext. Heavily censored by the
British colonial
government, it was released in '81 in a drastically altered
version titled
Dangerous Encounter - 1st Kind (or
alternately,
Don't Play with Fire). Unsurprisingly, it was
not a financial success. But it helped make Tsui a darling of film
critics who had coined the New Wave label and were hopeful for a
more aesthetically daring cinema, more engaged with the realities
of contemporary Hong Kong (Teo, 1997).
Blockbuster Cinema
But then Tsui's career made an unexpected turn. In 1981, he joined
Cinema City, a new production company founded by comedians
Raymond Wong,
Karl Maka and
Dean Shek,
that was instrumental in codifying the slick Hong Kong blockbuster
movies of the 1980s. Tsui played his part in the process with
pictures like the 1981 crime farce
All the Wrong Clues (for the
Right Solution), his first hit, and
Aces Go Places III:
Our Man from Bond Street (1984), part of the studio's
long-running spy spoof series.
For top studio
Golden Harvest, Tsui
made the
wuxia fantasy
Zu Warriors from the Magic
Mountain (1983). Tsui imported Hollywood technicians to
help create special effects whose number and complexity were
unprecedented in Chinese-language cinema and remains preoccupied
with pushing back the boundaries of the industry's effects
technology.
Many former champions were disappointed by this turn to crowd
pleasing pop films and in some quarters he is regarded as a sellout
and a prime example of Hong Kong film's inability to rise above
vulgarity and commercialism (Bordwell, 2000; Teo, 1997).
Mogul
In 1984, he formed the production company
Film Workshop along with wife and sometime
producer
Nansun Shi, making it a home
base for a tirelessly prolific roster of directing and producing
projects. Here he also developed a reputation as a hands-on and
even intrusive producer of other directors' work, fueled by public
breaks with major filmmakers like
John Woo
and
King Hu. His most longstanding and
fruitful collaboration has probably been with
Ching Siu Tung. As
action choreographer and/or director on many
Film Workshop productions, Ching made a major contribution to the
well-known Tsui style (Hampton, 1997).
Film Workshop releases became consistent
box-office hits in Hong Kong and around
Asia, drawing audiences with their visual
adventurousness, their broad commercial appeal, and hectic
camerawork and pace. Tsui has the knack of trend-setting in
film genres. He produced
John Woo's
A Better Tomorrow (1986), which
launched a craze for the hardboiled
gangster film or "
Triad" movie, and
Ching Siu Tung's
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987),
which did the same for period ghost fantasies.
Zu Warriors and
The Swordsman
(1990) brought back the long-out-of-favor wuxia film.
In fact, Tsui's "movie brat" nostalgia is one of the main
ingredients in his work (Teo, 1997). He often resurrects and
revises classic films and genres: the murder mystery in
The
Butterfly Murders; the Shanghai musical comedy in
Shanghai
Blues (1985).
Peking Opera
Blues (1986) plays with and pays tribute to the traditions
of the
Peking opera that his mother
took him to see as a small boy (Bordwell, 2000) and which had such
a strong influence on Hong Kong action cinema.
The Lovers
(1994) adapts a retold, cross-dressing period romance, best known
from Li Han-hsiang's 1963 opera film
The Love Eterne.
A Chinese Ghost Story remakes Li's supernatural romance
The Enchanting Shadow (1959) as a special effects action
movie.
The pattern is also seen in perhaps Tsui's most successful work to
date, the
Once Upon a Time in
China film series (1991-97). Here, he revived the
martial arts folk hero
Wong Fei Hung, played in the first three
installments by
Jet Li. This series is the
clearest expression in his oeuvre of Tsui's
Chinese nationalism and his passionate
engagement with the upheavals of
Chinese
history, particularly in the face of Western power and
influence (Teo, 1997).
Tsui also dabbled in acting, mostly for other directors. Notable
roles include one-third of the comic relief trio in
Corey Yuen's female cop/kung fu hit
Yes,
Madam! (1985) and a villain in
Patrick
Tam's darkly comic crime story
Final Victory (1987),
written by
Wong Kar-wai.
In the face of an industry
downturn in the
'90s, he produced two expensive and unpopular movies that proved he
could fold the caustic cynicism of his early work into his
blockbuster formula.
Green
Snake (1993) was an erotic and darkly apocalyptic take on
a favorite Chinese
fairy tale.
The Blade (1995) was a
gory, deliberately rough-hewn and anti-heroic revision of the 1967
wuxia classic
The One-Armed Swordsman.
American films
In 1990, Tsui had already attempted a low-budget
American action film, the barely released and little seen
The Master, with a pre-superstardom Jet Li. In the
mid-'90s, perhaps hedging his bets in the face of the industry
crisis, Tsui tried Hollywood again with two films starring
Jean-Claude Van Damme. They were
Double Team (1997) and
Knock Off (1998). Both were flops
lambasted by critics, and later even by Tsui himself.
Recent work
Tsui returned to directing at home in 2000 after not having made a
local film since '96, but his golden touch is less certain in the
troubled climate of today.
Time and Tide (2000) and
The Legend of Zu (2001)
were action extravaganzas with lavish
computer-generated imagery that
gained cult admirers but no mass success. The comic book superhero
feature
Black Mask
2 (2002) went straight-to-video without theatrical
release.
Tsui's projects as producer haven't born the same fruit either,
despite his continuing to push technical boundaries and revise old
favourites.
Master Q 2001 was Hong Kong's first
combination of live action and
Pixar-style 3D
computer animation.
Era of Vampires (2002; U.S. title,
"Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters") reworked a sub-genre popular in the
'80s, hybrid martial arts/supernatural horror films featuring the
"hopping corpses" of Chinese folk legend. Both films made barely a
ripple with critics, fans or general audiences.
2005 saw him launch the multimedia production
Seven Swords with a related TV series,
comic book series and
online
multi-player video game. The movie was relatively more
successful than his other works of the new millennium and in
February 2006 Tsui announced plans to begin shooting the second
late in the year. As of 2008, Tsui continues to work on the script
for Seven Swords 2 in between filming projects.
In August 2008, Tsui provided
art
direction for the
direct-to-video anime
feature entitled
Kungfu Master aka
Wong Fei Hong vs
Kungfu Panda, an apparently
unofficial sequel to the film
Kung Fu Panda, featuring martial arts
folk hero Wong
Fei Hung.
Tsui's next film is the 2008 thriller
Missing starring
Angelica Lee.
Filmography
Director
Producer
Cultural reference
Tsui was featured on a track which bore his name on the 1994
Sparks album
Gratuitous Sax &
Senseless Violins.
See also
Further reading
- Ho, Sam, ed. The Swordsman and His Juang Hu: Tsui Hark and
Hong Kong Film. Hong Kong University Press, 2002. ISBN
962805015X.
- Schroeder, Andrew. Tsui Hark's Zu: Warriors from the Magic
Mountain. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. ISBN
9622096514.
References
- Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the
Art of Entertainment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2000. ISBN 0-674-00214-8.
- Dannen, Fredric, and Barry Long. Hong Kong Babylon: The
Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East. New York:
Miramax, 1997. ISBN 0-7868-6267-X.
- Hampton, Howard. "Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong: Tsui Hark and
Ching Siu-tung". Film Comment July–August 1997: pp. 16–19
& 24–27.
- Morton, Lisa. The Cinema of Tsui Hark. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland and Company, Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-7864-0990-8.
- Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions.
London: British Film Institute, 1997. ISBN 0-85170-514-6.
- Yang, Jeff, and Dina Gan, Terry Hong and the staff of
A. magazine. Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian
Influence on American Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
ISBN 0-395-76341-X.
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