This review may contain spoilers
"A swan among chickens"
Red Heroine is the oldest surviving wuxia film and the oldest surviving Chinese film to have a female action star! The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple came out first but sadly that one is lost to the ages. I was delighted to find this piece of wuxia and feminine history.Fan Xue Peng starred as Yun, a mild-mannered girl living in tiny Mulberry Village with her blind and paralyzed grandmother. A band of bad guys was fast heading there but her grandmother refused to leave. When the wealthy neighbors show up and ask to help take her away, grandma refuses. Finally, when cousin Jin Zhang arrives, grandma agrees to be carried. There was only one narrow dirt path going into and out of Mulberry Village but somehow Yun and Jin Zhang become separated. The Big Bad, Zhi Ma, captures her and takes her back to his fortress. Grandma ended up pummeled under horses' hooves as Yun was carried away.
Zhi Ma has a bevy of half-naked ladies serving him in his fortress, quite risqué for the time. Yun resists him until she is fortuitously rescued by the Taoist kung fu master White Monkey. The paradigm for a thousand martial arts films that will follow is laid out. A Loved One was killed. After being Threatened and Humiliated, Yun vows Revenge. But she fears she's too weak and powerless to do any good. Honey, that's what the Training Montage is for, but that must have been a later development. White Monkey, a Master, vows to train her with his Secret Sauce Fighting Technique and make her revenge ready. She later Flies in and storms the fortress and demolishes her enemies all in a very Exotic looking Costume.
The formula would have worked if they had known about one key part of it. The middle section of the movie dragged because it focused solely on secondary characters and the bad guys’ lair. The film would have benefited from a training and inspirational montage for Yun so that we could see her transform from timid maiden into the Red Heroine. Perhaps the writers wanted us to be surprised when she suddenly shows up later. When Yun, now the Red Heroine, came flying in, literally, disappearing and appearing in a puff of smoke, it was exciting, though almost too late to save the story from the middle act doldrums.
My favorite scene was after doing battle with some baddies, the Red Heroine paused a moment to catch her breath and roll up her sleeves before jumping on the Big Bad. I could almost hear her thinking, "a woman's work is never done."
This was definitely a low budget film. Much of the time people were either walking or riding back and forth on the narrow dirt path, it really did need at least two lanes as much traffic as it saw. Or people were going up and down the open staircase in the fortress, usually forcing captured women up it. Lastly, one window in the harem's dressing room needed a revolving door as much action as it saw with people climbing in and out it with the rope so thoughtfully dangling outside from a nearby pole.
The martial arts, mostly sword fighting and flipping people onto the ground, was more sword dancing than 1970's era blood spurting kung fu but for 1929 was entertaining. The student must have surpassed the master because she could fly and appear and disappear in a puff of smoke while her old master traveled via a donkey or running. I was quite pleased that they allowed her to kill her enemies instead of having to be daintily magnanimous with them. "The evil receive their due retribution."
The version I watched had no music though I've read that a score was added at a later date. The film has suffered through the years, with some frames so badly blown out that you couldn't see what was happening. It seems it may have been cropped as well. There were both Chinese and English intertitles, but they were cut off on the sides. Fortunately, there were better English titles below those which helped enormously as the original English subtitles were difficult to understand. I did love Yun's cousin being referred to as her cousinbrother in those subs.
Another trait that continued on into the 1970's was hammy acting. I've seen other old silent films and this movie won the award for mustache twirling and overwrought responses. The director also made liberal use of flashbacks and prosthetic goofy teeth. Many of the costumes were over the top as any good kung fu movie would have. I'm sure if it had been available the bad guy costumes would have been made of silver lame. While I'm riffing, one bad guy had the biggest sword I've ever seen. It screamed over compensation.
This was #6 in a 13-part serial, of which none of the other films survived. I have no idea if Red Heroine's character was in more of the films or not, but maybe that's why Yun didn't figure prominently in the middle of a film named after her. Unfortunately for them and us, China outlawed the popular wuxia films in the 1930's. For the most part this was a nicely feminist film in places. Red Heroine made her own choice to be trained and seek revenge on her grandmother's killers and was allowed to kill her enemies. The cousinbrother would not set aside the women he'd become attached to during Yun's absence even though the woman had been "sullied". "Love is sacred, nothing can contain it."
Red Heroine was entertaining even if it dragged badly during the long stretch without the titular heroine. This is probably a film only for martial arts movie enthusiasts. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to see the launching of this genre into filmdom, especially with a female hero who wasn't afraid to roll up her sleeves and get her sword dirty.
2/16/23
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An early gem worth checking out at least once.
A damsel in distress grows up into a strong independent warrior who slaughters sexist war-hungry pigs for breakfast.Unfortunately, that metamorphosis happens off screen, but it is pretty funny to watch her aimlessly fly and teleport (preceded by a puff of smoke) back into the plot while her mentor scrambles around on foot behind her in a desperate attempt to catch up. There were many occasions where I couldn't help thinking that it would have been incredible to see back when this technology was still new and surprising.
The version I watched included the original score performed by Devil Music Ensemble that was premiered in 2008 and let me tell you it greatly heightened the experience. The surviving copy of this film is cropped strangely, cutting off important pieces of the characters and the intertitles, and the video seems to constantly dance like it's being viewed through the steam of a summer heatwave.
As with most old film, I'm surprised that more of it isn't washed out by now, but perhaps the fuzzy quality has spared us from having to think too hard about the unsavory details that would be frowned upon today. I'm no expert on some of these character choices (the most obvious one being the fake teeth), so I really can't say.
The limitations of the medium do require modern audiences to suspend their disbelief on quite a few occasions:
~ Terrified villagers run back and forth along one stretch of road like chickens with their heads newly liberated from their bodies.
~ Warlords, henchmen, and concubines painfully slouch their way up and down that same palace staircase countless times and absolutely no one looks like they know where they're going while doing it.
~ Subtlety rarely comes through in silent film, so the characters either act with exaggerated full body emotions or look like they aren't acting at all as they amble along following orders they don't appear to understand.
~ Escaping characters waste time walking in useless circles around a room before leaving the frame.
This last nitpick is just a personal thing, but I'm not a fan of actors running up to the camera and putting it in their mouths (or near enough to it). It thankfully only happens twice and may be a cool shot for some effect, but I don't need to see that and would prefer not to.
All that being said, the ending gave me strong "since I can't marry her, my cousin will have to do it for me" vibes and I will take that to my grave.
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