THE BEAUTIFUL SWORDSWOMAN (1969)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* 

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

Getting the phenomenality of the film out of the way, the only "superlative skill" evinced by the titular heroine is that after a killer hurls a knife at her and misses, she throws a big cup at him, and it hits his forehead so hard it embeds itself and draws blood. Not sure if the guy collapses just from pain or from being killed outright. But she never does anything that quasi-superhuman again, so the feat doesn't weigh much in the scales.

Yuan-yuan (Wang Ling) is the daughter of a rich man, credited on HKMDB only as "Father." She, her father, and her brother Ching Tong (like Yuan, about twenty-something) live in apparent serenity together. However, Yuan and her governess (Ching-Hsia Chiang) have a secret. They take lessons in swordplay from a mysterious, unnamed tutor, and when so ordered, they go out and kill particular targets. The subtitles weren't very clear as to why this rich girl and her governess pursue this course of action, and they don't even seem to question why the tutor wants the men dead. But Father knows the men killed, calling them Yuan's "uncles," though this may just be an honorific, not a statement of literal relatedness.              

The fights-- mostly swordplay, though with a little hand-to-hand action mixed in-- don't serve to do anything but fill time until the Big Reveal in the last thirty minutes. Then Yuan finds out that her tutor and the governess know a hidden truth about Yuan's life: the man who raised Yuan is an impostor who killed Yuan's real father and forced Yuan's mother to become his wife, and the mother of Ching Tong. (I think the subs suggested that the impostor might be the murdered man's brother, but that could be a flub.) The film then builds up to its Big Dramatic Moment: to fulfill the duties of filial piety, Yuan must avenge her real father's death by killing the man she's called "Father" for twenty years-- which is the main reason I give SWORDSWOMAN a "fair" rating. There's a climactic swordfight, but like other parts of the film it too is more about dramatic torment than invigorating adventure-- and the brother figures into the tragic conclusion as well.

Wang Ling and her fellow swordswoman probably weren't martially trained, but Wang has good dramatic intensity. It looks like she didn't do much else in the chopsocky genre except a support-role in ZATOICHI AND THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN. Unlike many kung-fu films, this one doesn't drown the viewer in a parade of marvels, but the characters are underwritten, and that undermines even the film's best scenes.