The Grand Passion (1970)

This Union Film production was evidently shot simultaneously with King Hu's masterpiece A Touch Of Zen, on which the director here was production manager, and with which it shares much of its cast and crew.

Sadly it doesn't share King Hu's vision and penmanship. The story is very simple, but the script kind of meanders around it making it quite hard to grasp. Like The Fate of Lee Khan the film assumes we'll be on the side of the rebels without actually making a case for it... I guess if you lived in Taiwan in the 1970's it wasn't a question.

The film does have a lot of the visual craftmanship that King Hu's production team were capable of at least, and it looks gorgeous... and there's a big fight at the end, so it's certainly not a bad film!