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Here's a connection I hadn't made before.
If you saw the fine CROUCHING TIGGER, err CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (as well you might have, it was quite popular), you saw some excellent acting. Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh did great work at showing what their characters were thinking with just a downward glance or a slight hint of a smile. Ziyi Zhang is pretty good, although of course she doesn't have their experience. I was also impressed by the Jade Fox character. Yet I just now saw a reference that the actress who played Jade Fox was none other than Pei-Pei Cheng (if I'm getting this right, Cheng is her family name). Of course! This was the actress who starred in a couple of early martial arts films, COME DRINK WITH ME and GOLDEN SWALLOW. Now, I caught these back in the Golden Age of 42nd Street, when Manhattan had twenty Hong Kong flicks on movie screens at the same time. For a while, you could catch some kung fu movies made before Bruce Lee hit it big. These earlier movies had less of a Western influence, the gestures and expressions were more undiluted in a sense. Some of the Jimmy Wang Yu films, for example, where he fought singlehanded because he only had one arm. (I also remember seeing the Japanese film CRIMSON BAT, although details have faded.)
COME DRINK WITH ME and GOLDEN SWALLOW were good examples of the pre-Bruce Lee action flicks. They're not bad at all, the choreography and sets and direction showed a lot of care (if not much budget). Sure enough, there are a few clips on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmCvaImn
Seeing Cheng Pei-Pei as the embittered Jade Fox must have had an extra poignance and resonance for Asian audiences that remembered her clearly. The equivalent for Western viewers might be watching a spy movie where you suddenly realize that the angry old spy training the young girl to be a double agent was played by Diana Rigg.
If you saw the fine CROUCHING TIGGER, err CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (as well you might have, it was quite popular), you saw some excellent acting. Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh did great work at showing what their characters were thinking with just a downward glance or a slight hint of a smile. Ziyi Zhang is pretty good, although of course she doesn't have their experience. I was also impressed by the Jade Fox character. Yet I just now saw a reference that the actress who played Jade Fox was none other than Pei-Pei Cheng (if I'm getting this right, Cheng is her family name). Of course! This was the actress who starred in a couple of early martial arts films, COME DRINK WITH ME and GOLDEN SWALLOW. Now, I caught these back in the Golden Age of 42nd Street, when Manhattan had twenty Hong Kong flicks on movie screens at the same time. For a while, you could catch some kung fu movies made before Bruce Lee hit it big. These earlier movies had less of a Western influence, the gestures and expressions were more undiluted in a sense. Some of the Jimmy Wang Yu films, for example, where he fought singlehanded because he only had one arm. (I also remember seeing the Japanese film CRIMSON BAT, although details have faded.)
COME DRINK WITH ME and GOLDEN SWALLOW were good examples of the pre-Bruce Lee action flicks. They're not bad at all, the choreography and sets and direction showed a lot of care (if not much budget). Sure enough, there are a few clips on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmCvaImn
Seeing Cheng Pei-Pei as the embittered Jade Fox must have had an extra poignance and resonance for Asian audiences that remembered her clearly. The equivalent for Western viewers might be watching a spy movie where you suddenly realize that the angry old spy training the young girl to be a double agent was played by Diana Rigg.
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