ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA 1 & 2!!!
In conjunction with
The Criterion Collection
and
Nitehawk Cinema, Prospect Park
Subway Cinema proudly presents
ONCE UP A TIME IN CHINA 1 & 2…
The 4K Restorations!!!!
Once Upon a Time in China Part 1, Sunday, 11/21 @ noon
Once Upon a Time in China Part 2, Sunday, 11/28 @ noon
tickets are on sale now at the links above
On Tuesday, 11/16 the Criterion Collection released a Once Upon a Time in China box set containing restorations of all 6 OUATIC movies on blu-ray with tons of supplemental material. To celebrate this day we thought would never come, we’ve teamed up with Criterion and the Nitehawk Cinema, Prospect Park to screen the 4K restorations of Once Upon a Time in China 1 & 2!!!!!!
These are the 4K restorations from Perfect Productions in Hong Kong, with their original monaural Cantonese soundtracks with no added foley or sound FX that are present in much later 5.1 surround home video presentations. So this is as close as you're ever going to come to seeing these movies how they looked on Day 1 of their releases. Actually, they'll probably look a hell of a lot better.
We'll be giving away box sets of the Criterion OUATIC blu ray set as well as other Hong Kong blu rays from the Criterion Collection at both screenings. They serve food and booze at the Nitehawk so this is technically brunch.
You do not want to miss this, but if you need convincing, read on!
ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA (1991)
Directed by: Tsui Hark
Starring: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Yuen Biao, Kent Cheng Juk-si, Jacky Cheung, Yam Sai-koon
For 77 films and 32 years Chinese folk hero, herbalist and martial artist supreme, Wong Fei-hung, WAS actor Kwan Tak-hing. Sometimes making 25 Wong Fei-hung films a year, the patriarch carved his image into the brains of generations of Hong Kong audiences as THE film incarnation of the real-life Chinese folk hero. When he was done making movies in the early Eighties, the Wong Fei-hung series was considered finished, too.
By 1990, the entire kung fu genre was dead, replaced by Chow Yun-fat style heroic bloodshed and comedy kung fu movies. Yet Tsui Hark took a gamble when Golden Harvest approached him about directing a movie for them, and he announced that his film would revive the Wong Fei-hung series, and it would star Jet Li as Wong Fei-hung himself. Li was far too young for the role, complained critics, and after his initial success with his Mainland Shaolin movies he’d starred in two flops (one so bad it wouldn’t even be released for another couple of years), and on top of that he’d dumped his first wife for an actress he met while shooting a movie, and he was now living in San Francisco. How could this wash-out who had abandoned China for America possibly play a paragon of Confucian virtue?
Tsui responded to these criticisms by doubling down on the risks. He assembled Little Fortune, Yuen Biao, career actress, Rosamund Kwan, Cantopop star, Jacky Cheung, and character actor, Kent Cheng, and shot not just a movie, but an epic. Presales were huge, but Tsui wouldn’t release the film until he was completely satisfied, holding the print hostage and leaving Golden Harvest with no option but to push the release date back over and over again in the hopes it would all pay off in the end.
It did. Once Upon a Time in China paints a picture of Hong Kong poised on the cusp of the 20th Century, caught between looking forward and looking back, pulled between Britain and China. The American Dream being sold on the streets is a front for a slavery ring, and the foreigners are all busy chopping up the country into easily-digested pieces, with the assistance of the Machu government, while everyday folks just try to keep their heads down and survive, maybe making a buck in the process. In the middle stands Wong Fei-hung, an avatar of virtue and humanity. He wants peaceful coexistence between Chinese and the West, but the upper class foreigners and posh Chinese regard him as a threat to their ultimate goal: profits built on the backs of everyday Chinese.
However grand the background, the story of Once Upon a Time in China is always mapping the very human heart of Wong Fei-hung as he tries to hold onto his identity in an ever-changing world. Wong is the role Jet Li was born to play and he inhabits it fully — his screen presence cuts through the complex plotting like a knife. Whether he’s engaged in eternal flirtation with his Aunt Thirteen (Rosamund Kwan), fighting Master Yim (a martial artist gone astray), or laying waste to the Shaho Gang with an umbrella, the viewer’s eyes are pulled to him like a magnet. Tsui Hark uses historical shorthand to portray the period perfectly, and his flair for melodrama keeps the plot kinetic. The action is amazing, climaxing in a crazy fight in a warehouse that took two weeks to shoot. Even worse, on the first day Li broke his ankle and had to be doubled extensively by Xiong Xin-xin for the rest of the fight. It’s a testament to Tsui’s moviemaking skills that you can’t tell.
In Wong Fei-hung Jet Li found the role he would forever be associated with, and Tsui Hark made one of his most deeply imagined, most passionate, most heartfelt, and satisfying films. This is the movie that revived the entire kung fu genre, spawned five sequels, a TV series, and innumerable parodies, homages, and rip-offs. But the original is still the best. OUATIC is a classic in the truest sense of the word.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA II (1992)
Directed by: Tsui Hark
Action by: Yuen Woo-ping
Starring: Jet Li, Max Mok, Rosamund Kwan, Donnie Yen, Xiong Xin-xin, Paul Fonoroff
September 1, 1895: a cadaverous little girl stares into the camera. Holding a candle she walks across a pitch black hall, singing: “King of Heaven/Ruler of Hell/Unite with the White Lotus Sect/So your country is safe”. Lights up on hundreds of White Lotus Cultists. First there’s a bullet-defying martial arts display and then Priest Kung (Xiong Xin-xin) appears. Nothing can kill him. A bonfire is built of Western objects, including a Dalmatian. “Kill all foreigners,” the cultists chant, “so we can live in peace.” The bonfire is lit. Staring into the roaring flames, the little girl smiles.
So begins Once Upon a Time in China II, Tsui Hark’s dark, daring continuation of the Wong Fei-hung saga, a movie that outshines the classic original in its own way, sort of the Aliens to its Alien. Far from home, Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li), servant Leung Foon (Max Mok, replacing Yuen Biao), and Aunt Yee (Rosamund Kwan) travel to Canton to attend a medical conference. When they arrive, Canton is a city on fire. Red Guard-like White Lotus Cultists rampage through town, destroying all signs of Westernization. The local Governor (Donnie Yen, in his first big budget role) is trying to smoke out two revolutionaries in the midst of all this chaos: the very real Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese republic, and his right-hand man, Luke. Wong Fei-hung and company find themselves trapped in the claustrophobic city, cut off from home by the winds of political change.
The whole film takes place over 48 hours, and Tsui Hark attacks his material like nothing on earth can stop him, packing every frame with nightmarish imagery. Full of ticking clocks, sudden deadlines, and lit by fire and fury, as Chinese turns against Chinese, and Canton capsizes under the weight of superstition and fear, good men like Wong Fei-hung and Sun Yat-sen can only watch from the sidelines in horror. All the pieces of the series we’ve come to expect are in place: the two-pronged plot, the rousing theme song (yes, that is Jackie Chan singing it), Leung Foon’s puppy love for Aunt Yee, and Wong Fei-hung’s fierce devotion to her. But this time around things have a darker bent. The movie ends on an optimistic note, but the body count is high, and the future is still uncertain.
Max Mok does a credible job replacing Yuen Biao, but he’s overshadowed by the other two additions to the cast. Donnie Yen projects a quietly decaying dignity as Governor Lan, and his martial arts skills are so sharp they practically slice open the screen. But the showstopper is the wonderfully lopsided Xiong Xin-xin (Jet Li’s stunt double) as the despotic Priest Kung. Ferocious to the point of rabidity, he’s the kind of villian who leads a cult as easily as some of us chew gum. A powerhouse of a movie, no familiarity with Part I is required.