It
was the biggest drum battle since Chick Webb faced off against Gene Krupa and
the rest of the Goodman orchestra. When a demon and a Buddhist lama join engage
in combat, their weapon of choice is the hand drum. The resulting percussion
further disorients her profoundly confused newlywed scholar husband in King Hu’s
freshly restored classic 1979 supernatural epic, Legend of the Mountain (trailer here), which screens
during the 2016 edition of MoMA’s To Save and Project.
Ho
Qingyun is an underachieving scholar who agrees to painstakingly copy a Buddhist
sutra solely for the money. He did not believe in anything otherworldly before
he accepted this gig, but that will soon change. While in transit from monastery
to monastery he stops in a sparsely populated village that effectively became a
demilitarized zone after an unfortunate uprising and an armistice that was even
more embarrassing for the Imperial government.
Advisor
Tsui is still on duty, but he is probably not a good influence on Ho. After a heavy
night of drinking, the scholar wakes to find he has promised to marry Melody,
whose drumming combined with the booze really did a number on poor Ho. However,
since she is played Hsu Feng, the scholar is prepared to make good on his
commitments. She also happens to be a demon, but he does not know that yet.
Shortly
thereafter, Advisor Tsui takes Ho out for drinks at the local inn, where he
meets the proprietor’s daughter, Cloud. She too makes a strong impression, but
she also has her own supernatural secrets. Everyone does in the mountain
village (practically and perhaps literally a ghost town), but nobody is telling
Ho anything. Even the Buddhist lama who will challenge Melody’s powers of hypnotic
percussion and his ally, the Taoist priest keep Ho in the dark.
Although
Legend is a story of ghosts and
demons (inspired by Pu Songling’s Stories
from a Chinese Studio) rather than a rousing wuxia epic, all the King Hu
hallmarks are present and accounted for. The restoration looks phenomenal,
which allows viewers to soak in his stunning mountain vistas and dramatic
wide-angle god’s eye perspectives. This is a big picture in every way,
including the three-hour running time. Yet, Hu turns around a stages intimate
scenes of comic farce worthy of Blake Edwards.
As
usual, Hu repertory player Shih Chun is pitch-perfect, making Ho a guileless
comic foil, but not a shticky caricature. Hsu Feng commands the screen as
Melody, playing the demonic femme fatale to the hilt. It is also remarkable to
watch the young and arresting Sylvia Chang making her mark as Cloud, especially
knowing how she would shatter glass ceilings in the HK film industry as a
director and screenwriter (for both her own vehicles and often for films
reflecting male perspectives). This is a significant early role in an
altogether remarkable career.
