New! Lady Master Fen Juhua (1904-1994)

Fen Juhua (aka Fan Fok-fa, Fan Guk-fa) may not have a lengthy list of credits under her name on the Hong Kong Film Archive database, but her influence on the development of action cinema reaches from the silent era to the Golden Age of the 1980s. Her resume includes the lead in a 1925 wuxia film, LEE FEI FEI THE HEROINE, but she was best known as an opera performer who specialized in challenging acrobatic roles. Sometime after the war, she relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong, where she opened a Peking opera academy, the Spring and Autumn Drama School.

Madame Fen Juhua coaches her students.

At first she only accepted female students. Some of her early alumnae who made successful careers in the Hong Kong film industry are Connie Chan Po-chu, Josephine Siao, and Tang Bik-wan. After opening her training program to boys, she saw her students move into the first rank of stunt performers just as kung fu movies began to attract international attention. Lam Ching-ying, star of PRODIGAL SON (1983), one of the best martial arts films ever made, is one of her proteges. So are Mang Hoi (ZU: WARRIORS OF THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, 1983), John Lone (THE LAST EMPEROR, 1987), Tung Wei (A BETTER TOMORROW, 1986), and long-time Jackie Chan stuntman Mars.

Left: Josephine Siao Fong Fong. Right: Connie Chan Po-chu. (Image courtesy of David Wells.)

I don’t really have any new information on Madame Fen, but I did find these photos of her in an old issue of Screenland magazine (March 1961). She occasionally appeared in cameo roles in Hong Kong melodramas, like the Li Lihua vehicle GENERAL CHAI AND LADY BALSAM (1953) and director Li Han-hsiang’s debut BLOOD IN SNOW (1956). She also appeared in and helped to choreograph opera-style martial arts films like CONQUERESS (1961), an adaptation of the opera “Women Generals of the Yang Family,” BATTLE AT SIZHOU (aka THE CAPTURE OF THE EVIL DEMONS, 1962), and A GODDESS’ SWORD (aka THE MAGIC SWORD OF TIAN SHAN, 1963). Madame Fan herself was played by Cheng Pei-pei in the Peking opera tribute movie PAINTED FACES (1988).

Left: Madame Fen Juhua. Right: Madame Fen and a student.

This clip from A GODDESS’ SWORD shows a fight scene modeled on a classic opera routine from “Meeting at the Crossroads.” The fighters pretend to be in total darkness, unable to see each other. Connie Chan is the combatant in the light-colored robe. I’ve edited the clip slightly to focus on the action choreography, and also attempted to lighten it, since the original video was too dark to see anything. It’s still a little hard to see, but it’s probably a good example of Madame Fan’s stage choreography.