Chang Cheh
| 張徹 Chang Cheh |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | 張徹 (traditional) | ||
| Chinese name | 张彻 (simplified) | ||
| Birth name |
張易揚 (Chang Yi-yang) |
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| Born |
February 10, 1923 Shanghai, China |
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| Died | June 22, 2002 (aged 79) Hong Kong |
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| Years active | 1967–83 | ||
| Ancestry | Qingtian, Zhejiang | ||
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Awards
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Chang Cheh (pinyin: Zhāng Chè; February 10, 1923 – June 22, 2002) was a Chinese film director.
He directed such films as Five Deadly Venoms, the Brave Archer (based on the works of Jin Yong), The One-Armed Swordsman, and other wuxia and kung fu films.
Referred to as "The Godfather of Hong Kong cinema", Chang Cheh directed nearly 100 films in his illustrious career at Shaw Brothers, which ran the gamut from swordplay films (One-Armed Swordsman, The Assassin, Golden Swallow) to kung fu films (Five Shaolin Masters, Five Venoms, Kid with the Golden Arm) to more modern period dramas (Chinatown Kid, Boxer From Shantung, The Generation Gap) to lavish costume epics (The Water Margin, The Heroic Ones, Boxer Rebellion).
After graduating from National Central University (Nanjing University) in Chungking (Chongqing), where he studied politics, Chang moved to Hong Kong, where he became a film critic. Chang got his start in the film industry as a screenwriter; his first script was The False Faced Woman, a movie from Shanghai which was released in 1947. He wrote several more scripts before making his directorial debut in 1949 with Mount Turbulence. His first big hit came with 1967's One-Armed Swordsman, the first film in Hong Kong history to gross HK$1 million. The film catapulted actor Jimmy Wang Yu to stardom and cemented Chang's status as one of Hong Kong's top directors. In the same year, he released The Assassin, another early Chang classic, and in 1968 he followed up with Golden Swallow, a sequel to King Hu's classic wuxia picture Come Drink With Me.
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