The First Sword
Director: Tu Kuang-Chi
Year: 1967
Rating: 4.5
By the mid 1960's Cathay Studio was beginning
to fall behind its main Mandarin competitor, the Shaw Bothers. This was
for a number of reasons - the death of its founder in an airplane crash
in 1964, a number of its actresses getting married and retiring and not
keeping up with changing public taste. The mainstay of Cathay for a decade
had been a group of very popular actresses that appeared in comedies, musicals
and dramas that appealed to a growing middle class. Grace Chang, Betty Loh
Ti, Jeanette Lin, Linda Lin Dai, Lucilla You Min and Julie Yeh were enormous
stars and are still remembered today with great affection. On the male side
of the ledger though, they never quite acquired the same level of talent
- generally likable, genial polite actors who were fine in the sort of films
that Cathay were making but never overshadowing the female stars.
Suddenly though a newly reinvigorated
genre pushed the Shaw Brothers far ahead - martial arts films - and Cathay
didn't enter that market until 1967 with this film. But Cathay simply didn't
have the talent on hand either on the screen or behind it - in particular
having a male masculine hero - to compete with Shaw. In this one they use
Chao Lei who had been around for years and had jumped over from the Shaw
Brothers where he had starred in a number of films (The Enchanting Shadows,
Beyond the Great Wall) usually as a scholar or effete gentleman in period
films. But Cathay needed someone and they tried to train Chao up as quickly
as possible - but he is sort of middle aged by now, getting a bit heavy and
he is terrible in this. He is everything that Chang Cheh revolted against
when he began his "masculine" martial arts films. And it is not so much his
lack of physical skills that is the issue - that is hardly his fault - but
just the way he plays his character with such lackluster energy, constantly
sighing and moping. That might have worked in his roles as a tender scholar
but as head of a Martial Arts school, it is dispiriting.
That isn't the only problem though - it
is perplexingly confusing - not in the way many of these films are with multiple
plot threads, a myriad of characters all belonging to various martial arts
schools where you feel you need a scorecard - this is just confusing because
of incompetent storytelling. It begins with a duel between Xie Wuyang (Chao)
and some fellow who we later find out is the King of Poison. Why are they
fighting? Who knows. But it appears as the film drags on that the Poison
King has it in for the Golden Dragon School and wants their martial arts
playbook. He has a traitor inside - Yan Zongqi played by a stalwart of Cathay
films in character roles - Tin Ching - who wears this dark make-up under
his eyes that make him look like he hasn't slept in a year - or is the villain
- or the traitor - but no one figures that out though he leaves a million
clues behind. It is a mess generally with bad editing, poor action choreography
and a leading man so passive that you want to just smack him in the head.
On the positive side is that the technical
aspects are fine - it looks as good as any Shaw film at the time and has
a fine soundtrack - it also has Melinda Chen who had recently signed up
with Cathay and became fairly popular over the next few years. She became
their go to girl in the martial art films that followed. Because Cathay
stuck with it and produced a bunch of these films - two even directed by
Chor Yuen before he moved on to Shaw and became famous for his wuxia films.
Unfortunately, very few of these Cathay martial arts films made it on to
digital when Cathay began that process some 15 years ago - and then stopped
because they were not selling. Over their lifetime - they went out of business
in the early 1970's - Cathay produced about 250 films of which I would guess
perhaps 45 were transferred. A true shame because they made some wonderful
films.
