Posted in: Film Festival, Movies, Review | Tagged: 10th Old School Kung Fu Fest, Joseph Kuo, The Swordsman of All Swordsmen, wuxia

The Swordsman of All Swordsmen Shows How Far Wuxia Movies Can Go

The Swordsman of All Swordsman, Joseph Kuo's major entry, gets its North American premiere at the 10th Old School Kung Fu Fest.

The Swordsman of All Swordsmen is, in its breathless way, a quintessential Taiwanese wuxia film. It's having its North American premiere at the 10th Old School Kung Fu Fest in New York City. It was such a hit in Taiwan in 1968 that it spawned two even wackier sequels to form a trilogy featuring Tien Peng as avenging swordsman Tsai Ying Jie and Polly Shang Kuan as swordswoman Flying Swallow. Director Joseph Kuo is best known for his kung fu films but also became a major director of wuxia films during the genre's boom in Taiwan, starting with this film.

The plot starts out straightforward, like a Spaghetti Western, on a journey for revenge. Tsai Ying Jie sets out for revenge against the five men who murdered his father. It's a classic set up often found in the Spaghetti Westerns that were being made by Italy at the time. But things get complicated when he gets injured and is saved by swordswoman Flying Swallow, who implores him not to waste his life on revenge. She has a reason for that, which is that the leader of his family's killers is her father, now old and filled with remorse. On top of that, a warrior named The Black Dragon wants a duel with Yang to prove who the greatest swordsman of the land is and agrees to wait till he completes his mission of revenge. Tsai Ying Jie is another heroic archetype in Wuxia: the angst-ridden swordsman. He grapples with issues of revenge and virtual as his growing desire to show mercy threatens to throw him off balance. Wuxia and martial arts movies from Hong Kong usually trade on bloodlust and end with the heroes killing the bad guys. The Swordsman of All Swordsmen goes in a different direction as the hero chooses grace and mercy by the end.

The Tsai Ying Jie trilogy – The Swordsman of All Swordsmen, The Bravest Revenge, and The Ghost Hill – all restored to vibrant color, is playing at the festival. The sequels were not directed by Joseph Kuo but Chien Lung and Ting Shan Hsi, respectively, with The Ghost Hill featuring Tsai Ying Jie and Flying Swallow storming Hell to fight demons because why not? It's gloriously berserk and shows how far Wuxia movies would go.

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