To catch a thief: 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' at 25

WORLD VIEW A look at what's making waves on the global cinema scene Ang Lee's 2000 film both celebrated and broke with wuxia tradition, creating a stirring synthesis of styles

- Uday Bhatia

For such a load-bearing scene, it moves with lightness and grace. A young woman dressed as a man arrives at an inn in a Chinese village. She orders food and wine but is interrupted by a group of men spoiling for a fight. She obliges, slashing and pirouetting until they're all on the floor. This scene, along with everything else in Come Drink With Me, was a major influence on the modern wuxia film, swordplay epics derived from Chinese history and folklore. While wuxia stories had been adapted for the screen since the silent age, King Hu's 1966 film was a sensation for producer Shaw Brothers, the midpoint in their pivot from female-leaning melodramas to male-centric martial arts films.

Cheng Pei-pei must have felt a sense of quiet pride seeing Zhang Ziyi lay waste to an inn in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). She was the girl with the sword in Come Drink With Me, all of 19, trained as a ballerina. It was her ticket to stardom, even though the genre soon became the province of male action stars (even Chang Cheh's Golden Swallow, a 1968 sequel to Come Drink With Me, reduced her role in favour of male leads Jimmy Wang Yu and Lo Lieh). But Ang Lee was a huge admirer of King Hu, and when he decided to make his first wuxia film, he borrowed freely from the master. If the tavern fight is an update of Come Drink With Me, the spectacular duel in the tall trees is inspired by a similarly buoyant sequence in A Touch of Zen (1971). He also asked Pei-pei to play the supporting role of villain Jade Fox.