The painterly and methodical martial arts landscapes of “A Touch Of Zen”

King Hu’s epic, influential wuxia masterpiece from 1971 screens on 35mm at UW Cinematheque on April 27.

King Hu’s A Touch Of Zen (1971) is simply one of the most influential martial arts films ever made, a mesmerizing wuxia from the genre’s most visionary director. Throughout his career, Hu pushed the historical-martial arts genre to new artistic heights, blending Chinese opera theatrics and modern filmmaking techniques with a painstaking eye for detail. UW Cinematheque will be screening a 35mm print of A Touch Of Zen courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research on Saturday, April 27, at 7 p.m.

Along with his contemporary Chang Cheh, King Hu was at the forefront of the Shaw Brothers Studio’s mid-1960s efforts to rejuvenate the stagey wuxia genre for modern audiences. While Chang specialized in churning out the hyper-violent action spectacles that became the Shaws’ trademark, Hu took a more cerebral approach. Not especially interested in martial arts, Hu instead combined Peking opera’s stylized, dance-like choreography with editing techniques borrowed from Hollywood and Soviet cinema to create his own distinctive cinematic language.

After the success of Come Drink With Me (1966) and Dragon Inn (1967), Hu moved from Hong Kong to Taiwan, where he could have more artistic control over his work. Hu began working on A Touch Of Zen at his own pace, eventually taking four years to complete the film. Hu’s methodical approach to everything from set design and costumes to editing resulted in a richly detailed opus that established him as a master filmmaker.

Loosely adapted from an 18th century ghost story, A Touch Of Zen follows Gu Sheng-zhai (Shih Chun), a lowly scholar who lives with his overbearing mother in a remote village during the Ming Dynasty. Intrigued by strange noises in the abandoned fort next door, Gu becomes entangled in a conspiracy to protect fugitive noblewoman Yang Hui-zhen (Hsu Feng) from her corrupt government pursuers. Lacking any martial-arts skills, Gu instead has to rely on his cunning and armchair knowledge of battlefield tactics to survive. In a particularly dazzling third-act sequence, ruthless villain Xu Xian-chun (the film’s own fight choreographer Han Ying-jie) and Yang’s protector Abbot Hui-yuan (Roy Chiao) face off in a battle that transforms into a hallucinatory Buddhist spectacle.

Hu’s preoccupation with depicting the natural world is evident throughout A Touch Of Zen. The camera frequently drifts away from the main characters to linger on their surroundings in widescreen compositions that resemble landscape paintings. The film’s lush, foggy ambiance and balletic wirework were a major influence on later arthouse-minded martial arts filmmakers like Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee, who borrowed heavily from Zen’s bamboo forest fight scene for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Hu would continue working within the wuxia genre for the rest of career with films like The Fate Of Lee Khan (1973), but Zen’s leisurely three-hour runtime and extended production period gave Hu the chance to fine-tune his personal style, resulting in a dazzling masterpiece.