Wong Fei-hung - The Chinese Cinema

Wong Fei-hung

A collection of 4 posts

The Once Upon a Time in China Series

The Once Upon a Time in China Series

With the fall 2021 release of Criterion’s Once Upon a Time in China boxset, I put all my reviews of the series together here in one convenient place. Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, 1991) Tsui Hark is the John Ford of Chinese cinema, and Once Upon

Rise of the Legend (Roy Chow, 2014)

Rise of the Legend (Roy Chow, 2014)

Every generation gets the Wong Fei-hung they deserve. A fin-de-siècle doctor and martial arts instructor, the real life Wong has been inspiring cinematic incarnations for most of the history of Hong Kong’s film industry. The first was in a series of productions running form the late 1940s to the

The True Story of Wong Fei-hung: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (Wu Peng, 1949)

The True Story of Wong Fei-hung: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (Wu Peng, 1949)

This film, released in 1949, was the first of 77 times Kwan Tak-hing played the kung fu folk hero Wong Fei-hung, kicking off a wildly successful series of serials that ran steadily for the next 15 years or so (including 25 films alone in 1956). I’ve only been able

Martial Club (Lau Kar-leung, 1981)

Martial Club (Lau Kar-leung, 1981)

In the prologue to this 1981 film, Lau Kar-leung himself comes on stage to tell us about some of the unwritten rules of lion-dancing, the ways one dancer can offend another and thus incite a brawl (blinking your eyes, lifting a leg, sniffing the other lion’s butt). The next