The Grand Passion (1970)

Future kung fu starlet Polly Shang-kwan in her third feature film is a swordswoman who joins forces with her onscreen brother (Bai Ying), an undercover agent tasked with safeguarding a list of rebels from occupying Jin forces in 12th-century China. With spies and double agents lurking at every turn, the two end up on the run from a military commander (Sit Hon) with supreme martial arts ability, and his army of soldiers.

THE GRAND PASSION (sometimes misspelled as “The Grant Passion”) is yet another hit wuxia film for Taiwanese studio Union Film Co., the producers of King Hu’s masterpiece DRAGON INN. Both films are similar. THE GRAND PASSION borrows the same James Bond-inspired period espionage theme from Hu’s film while the production, like all of Union Film’s movies up to this point, possesses the same attention paid to elaborate sets, costumes and general spectacle although director Yang His-ching doesn’t utilize picturesque outdoor locations as much and ultimately the effort comes across as a lesser, though still entertaining copycat.

Rousing opening credits with hand-drawn military art set to patriotic vocals establish a strong nationalistic tone that would have been familiar to local audiences at the time. The historical-based plot involves efforts by Song Dynasty loyalists to prepare for ultimately futile efforts to reclaim Northern China from the Jurchens who established the Jin Dynasty and conquered China north of the Yangtze River. Yue Fei, a famous military general who fought against the Jin at the time is referenced in the film as being responsible for issuing the list to help organize resistance among the conquered Song loyalists. This was to be in advance of his planned defeat of the Jin, which never happened in real life although he might have succeeded with a sword-fighting Polly Shang-kwan on his side.

The Jurchens would later fall to the Mongols and come back many years later as the Manchu to found the Qing Dynasty and rule all of China until 1911. Parallels between the Song-versus-Jin period and China’s exiled Kuomintang party and their defeat at the hands of the Communists in 1949 which forced them to retreat to Taiwan can easily be drawn. The Jin were representing the conquering People’s Republic of China and Polly Shang-kwan and her accomplices were the valiant knights of the KMT, ultimately fighting a losing battle but making sure that their enemy’s representative went down with them. In this case it would be Sit Hon, a prolific character actor playing one of many memorable martial villains throughout an acting career spanning over 25 years.

Bai Ying, who had a fantastic debut performance as the villainous fighting eunuch in King Hu’s DRAGON INN returns as a Song spy working undercover in Jin territory. He is first depicted in the film wearing an officious-looking uniform and striking a gong while walking through town at night with a lantern. My guess is that he is posing as someone tasked with driving evil spirits and bad karma away. This is something that would have been viewed as a valuable service by superstitious villagers despite the noise it made. He’s well matched with Polly Shang-kwan, even though they player brother and sister. Bai has a lot of charisma and presence that he continued to display in popular genre films from LADY WHIRLWIND (1971) to ROYAL WARRIORS (1986).

Martial arts action choreographed by A TOUCH OF ZEN co-action director Poon Yiu-kwan is in limited quantity and at times relies far too much on editing tricks to awkwardly simulate the kind of high-flying wuxia action we take for granted today but was still difficult to achieve in 1970 due to the limitations of wire handling techniques and equipment at the time. In spite of these flaws, the fighting action is energetic and dynamic with liberal use of colorful acrobatics, trampoline jumps and rarely seen disarming and counter-attack techniques primarily used by Bai Ying in one of his better fighting performances.

More importantly, director Yang His-ching and his action director consistently ensure that the action serves the plot, at least until the end when the perfunctory, extended showdown takes place as the need to protect the valuable list is largely forgotten amid a running skirmish of swordsmen dropping from treetops and Polly Shang-kwan darting between large boulders, cutting her way through attackers. At this point the film sheds its dramatic spy work and becomes an all-out actioner similar in many ways to King Hu’s mountainous-set finale in DRAGON INN. The big difference is that this time Polly Shang-kwan takes on a much larger action role and sidelines her male co-stars, Bai Ying and Miao Tien. Shih Chun, the male star of DRAGON INN is reduced to an odd supporting role as a spy posing as a cripple who spends most of his screen time sitting on a cart. I think it’s clear that Union Film knew who their greatest screen fighting talent was at this time given Shang-kwan’s rising status as a martial arts headliner, not only in name but in practice as well.

Visually, THE GRAND PASSION is superb. Production standards are relatively high with detailed sets, lots of extras and colorful costumes, all of which compare favorably to the best that Shaw Brothers had to offer at the time. Lighting and cinematography and are both uniformly excellent. The one sore spot is with outdoor scenes toward the end where natural light doesn’t appear to have been defused properly because the skyline frequently looks unnaturally hazy or soft-focused. Another gripe concerns editing, where some action scenes are overly spliced up. Otherwise, the film is quite attractive.

THE GRAND PASSION is further evidence that Union Film Co. was Taiwan’s best challenger to Shaw Brothers’ growing stature as the leading martial arts moviemaking studio in the world as of 1970. The challenge didn’t last beyond the early-1970s’ wuxia boom as kung fu movies gained momentum, Hong Kong action filmmakers came to dominate the genre and Shang-kwan left the studio to work for other independents before cementing her fame at Gold Harvest with the fighting comedy classic BACK ALLEY PRINCESS in 1973. Yet at this time Union Film was cranking out some of the best martial arts in Asia and still had more quality wuxia films with Polly starring to follow.

THE GRAND PASSION is available on DVD as a licensed release with removable English subtitles from Taiwanese distributor Hoker Records.

Related Topics: Bai Ying, jidai geki, Jin Dynasty, Polly Shang-kwan, Song Dynasty, The Grand Passion (1970), Union Film Co., Wuxia