La légende de la montagne

King Hu while revered for a number of unique films in the 1960's was outside the HK studio system by the 1970's and only produced three films in that decade. In 1979 his made two "Mountain" films concurrently. This one being a ghost story in the tradition of Japanese ghosts films like Ugetsu or Black Cat from the Grove.

A traveling scholar, Mr. Ho, is assigned the task of translating a special sutra for a ceremony honoring deceased soldiers. Needing a place to concentrate while he works, he is sent to a fort to be hosted by a Mr. Tsui, the secretary to the general of the fort. Arriving at the fort Ho find the place abandoned except for Tsui who informs him that the general and most of the soldiers died in battle. Tsui, his crazy servant Chang, a bizarre old lady named Mrs. Wang, her beautiful daughter and a maid are apparently the only residents in the vicinity of the fort. Ho is invited to a dinner given by Mrs. Wang. He becomes strangely drunk while the daughter plays a drum and loses consciousness. Waking up he finds that two days have passed and he has married the daughter. And so the mystery begins.

A unique film in some ways, it frequently has a problem holding the atmosphere consistently. There are several interludes of beautiful scenery that interrupt the effective spookiness. Sometimes King Hu, who was also the editor, shows a remarkable mastery of the medium and other times is almost amateurish in his editing choices. His aesthetic is anchored in the 1960's as ghostly doings are accompanied by clichéd sound effects. Overall the film is very effective as long as you can forgive the primitive special effects and the occasional sappy music.

The print available is not in great shape but it's a good film.

King Hu's luxuriantly restored grandeur of a Chinese ghost story takes place in the Song Dynasty (roughly 11th century), running over three hours, LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN bracingly takes its audience to get a glimpse of many sylvan heritage-certified sites in South Korea, whereas its story-line depicts the unheimlich occurrences pivots around a hapless man of letters Ho (Shih Chun), who is a non-believer of necromancy, but accepts a job to transcribe an all-powerful Buddist sutra, which presumably will bring nirvana to legions of dead soldiers who are the casualty of the ongoing warfare between Song and Western Xia Empire.

A guileless Ho is set to the border to meet a Mr. Tsui (Tung Lin), a consigliere of a deceased general (Sun Yeuh), who can arrange him for a placid place to do his meritorious deed, but soon he is ensnared into a honey trap set by Ms. Chang (Rainbow Hsu) and her daughter Melody (Hsu Feng), and King explicitly notifies us that Mr. Tsui is also complicit. In the wake of his purportedly improper behavior towards a comely Melody one night under the influence of alcohol (which is actually triggered by Melody's hypnotic tambour beats), an oblivious Ho marries Melody with alacrity, and the latter dutifully assists him in his transcribing workload, but the fitful presence of a lama (Wu Ming-Tsai) perturbs their specious serenity.

King makes ascertain that something is iffy about every single individual around Ho with manifest gesticulations that appreciably piques audience's curiosity, although one might safely conjecture that the ulterior motive is all about the sutra well in advance, and soon Ho is paired with Cloud (Sylvia Chang), a beneficent ingénue when Melody's malevolent temperament starts to take the center and repulse everybody else, but still mired in the friend-or-foe pressure-cooker until the lama shows the backstory of Melody and Cloud, among others. Ho is urged to finish his transcription by Tsui and Cloud before Melody and co. can lay their hands on it, but after everything is said and done (all the undead meets their perdition), King tentatively hints a pipe dream scenario, does the whole cock-and-bull story really happen to Ho?

Clearly, King is immensely enamored of the locality's breathtaking geomorphology, and goes to great lengths in capturing its fauna and flora with illuminated pillow shots whenever Chinese traditional music pipes up, whether diegetic or not (the score is credited by musician Wu Ta-Chiang), be it from Melody's aggressive drum or Cloud's euphonious flute, although it is severely at the expense of narrative momentum, and renders the whole work a tad padded-out and incoherent.

On a more inspiring note, King intentionally holds back his characteristic and expeditious kung-fu shtick which has made his mark in DRAGON IN (1967) or A TOUCH OF ZEN (1971), and hammers out a series of slightly haphazard but clamorous confrontations, mostly between Melody and the lama during their elongated percussive smack-off, tarted up by vivid-colored smoke, efficient special effects (wire-fu included) and sharp editing skills.

A mudra-exerting Shih Chun might appear somewhat harmless reckoning that he is kit up with Confucian etiquette sans blistering martial art, but enough to make for a compassionate, reluctant hero; there is Hsu Feng, projecting her fierce glares with unadulterated virulence, proves herself to be a superlative villain when she is requested, and emphatically humbles Sylvia Chang's angelic presence into nonentity. An abiding impression pertains to the anonymous actress Rainbow Hsu, who plays Melody's mother, the officious but sprightly Ms. Chang, is that she is cross-dressed and played by a male actor, so it comes as a real surprise that it is apparently not the case (according to the source on various internet websites though).

An eerie oriental gem cunningly cashes in on traditional mythology, occult and legendary, undermined only by occasional longueurs as the result of its maker's undue passion sparked by the purlieu, nevertheless, King Hu's scintillating idiom of synesthetic felicity is an awestruck coup de maître, that no one can ever gainsay.

When someone say a film is Epic these days, we think about big sets with loads of actors, big battles and massive effects, either special or practical ones. However, if you see Legend of the Mountain you'll experience epic scenery, wide angle shots where the humans take up little of the screen and you see just how massive the skies or mountains really are. Combined with the soothing flute music playing, I really felt like I wanted to dive into the screen and just be there, enjoying the views the calmness and what have you.

As for the plot however, it's where I find the film not finding its feet, being over 3 hours long, it sure fit in a lot into those hours, but it also becomes very difficult to follow exactly what's going on, a couple of flashbacks as well as magic using that shifts from powerful to not so powerful, it's pretty much decided what's best for the story.

Our main guy Ho ends up married to a woman that he don't even remember accepting in the first place, but it's obvious quickly that things aren't what they seem to be. Ho is very naive, always bowing and apologize for the smallest thing and he keeps smiling all the time with his teeth pushed forward, making him look a bit goofy. If the film had have a more sharp and focused protagonist, this film would probably have been over quickly, I became rather tired of Ho's behavior at the end and started to sympathize more with the people around him towards the end. However, the drum battle was really creative and fun and something I've not seen before in films.

But just like everyone else here, we don't watch this film for Ho, we watch it for the amazing directing of King Hu. It's the first film of his I've seen and I really love the whole mood of the film, the cinematography, the music, even if the plot wasn't to my taste, I will definitely rewatch this film again and again, just to experience the scenery and the chinese flute tunes again.

And an extra thumb up for the Masters of Cinema bluray cover, it really fits the whole film so much better, smoke and mysterious vibes - because I could see how other studios would have try to sell this as a fantasy horror film instead, we can see how the different covers look like in the image gallery on this site and I really love MoC's version most.

Ching Sui Tung, long time admirer of King Hu (he helped arrange Hu's direction of the first Swordsman film), was to take the bare bones of this film and make his legendary "Chinese Ghost Story" films. It's about a monk on retreat to an isolated temple in order to write a sutra, who thereby comes under the observation of two female ghosts who may or not actually fall in love him - Hu maintains a careful ambiguity on this and other issues, clearly conveying to the audience the very confusion of the scholar himself, who never quite gets a handle on what he's accidentally walked into here.

But in the last analysis, this is neither ghost story nor romance, but a determined effort on Hu's part to make a visually beautiful set-piece of open, well-lit Chinese landscape, and high-contrast, sharply defined interiors. In short, it is an attempt to make a beautiful work of art.

Because Hu's principle interest is just this visual beauty, the pacing of the film gets a little slow at times, and Hu shows no interest in "cutting to the chase" story-telling. Consequently, I think he has succeeded in this artistic perfectionism, but at a price, which is that the film is not going to appeal to a wide audience. But given some patience, it offers real rewards to the senses.

China is not short of magical / fantasy / fantasy stories. Ancient myths, Fengshenbang, Shanhaijing, Journey to the West, and Liao Zhai Zhiyi are endless, yet this long over 3hr full cut of this film reveals the beauty of Chinese heritage in new clothes and perspectives, very much reflecting the innocence of the late 70's. Here the literature and mythology of ancient Chinese culture is distilled into the beauty of a film that has spoekn to my soul for a long time. I used to return to this film once in a while since its release, to take a notice of my own changing perspectives upon the unchanging piece of film art.

This film's story I find mainly revolving around a man who's bound by the material quality of life, yet slowly and gradually coming face to face with the unseen, the world he has merely studied, not fully experienced. It is a serene look at the nature of mind, the unresolved traumas, and the ways forward.

It also demonstrates the location almost as a character or a symbol of magic, wonder or child-like innocence. It awakens in me time and again the sensations I've experienced the most in my childhood with regards to the depth of perception.

This is what I consider the most essential King Hu film for me personally.