“Dragon Inn” (1967), directed by King Hu, Film Society of Lincoln Center, opens May 6Due to some recent series dedicated to his work — at the Harvard Film Archive in 2013, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014, for example — and the restoration of his three-hour Cannes-winning epic “Touch of Zen” (1973), which screened at Film Forum in April following its premiere at the Classics section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, a wider audience is finally becoming more aware of the work of Chinese director King Hu. The filmmaker, who died in 1997, is notable for his contributions to the wuxia genre, which he helped revitalize with his second film, “Come Drink With Me” (1966), made under the banner of the Shaw Brothers studio, where he had been an apprentice.“Dragon Inn” was made the following year under completely different circumstances. Hu had left the Shaw Brothers Studio and Hong Kong, arriving in Taiwan, where he would make most of his films over the next decade. “Dragon Inn” was the first film he made independent of the Shaw Brothers, and it pushes some of the stylistic tendencies he had displayed in “Come Drink With Me” to further extremes. His interest in opera is apparent in the highly choreographed set pieces, especially at the inn, where most of the action takes place, and his framing of the action through movement and kinetic jump cuts. (David Bordwell has written intelligently, as usual, on the editing of Hu’s films, especially during the action sequences.)Hu’s influence can be seen in in direct homages to the wuxia genre, such as Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” (2000), Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “The Assassin,” and as the centerpiece, despite it existing more as a presence than anything else, in Tsai Ming-liang’s “Goodbye Dragon Inn” (2003). But you can see traces of his work in other films as well: a significant scene in “Dragon Inn” — when the character Hsiao arrives at the titular set piece that is under watch by a group waiting to ambush the children of a political rival — unfolds in a tense series of looks from table to table before the action occurs and appears to be almost lifted by Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (2009).“Belladonna of Sadness” (1973), directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, Metrograph, opens May 6Produced by famed manga artist Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Productions animation studio, “Belladonna of Sadness” was the third part of the Animerama trilogy (the studio aimed to make anime films for an adult audience a few years before the trend caught on in America, with 1972’s X-rated “Fritz the Cat”). Yamamoto served as the director on the Animerama projects, which were all based on preexisting material (the first two films were based on “Arabian Nights” and “Cleopatra,” respectively). Though highly in demand for many years, these films were hard to find — I first saw them on YouTube, in badly subtitled, muddy versions. “Belladonna of Sadness,” the best of the trilogy — an erotically charged and psychedelically enhanced story about a young woman under satanic abduction — is finally available in a restored version, and the theatrical release will feature eight minutes of footage not included in the original.“Masculin Féminin” (1966), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Brooklyn Academy of Music, May 6The filmography of Jean-Luc Godard can be seen as a series of transitions, of movements. There were never clear breaks, though. Even today, his work continues to be in response to, or a critique of, what came before, no matter how obliquely at times. By 1966, Godard had already made 10 films in half as many years, and was starting to move away from his earlier work. While making “Pierrot le fou” (1965), he stated that he felt as if it were his first film. It wasn’t that he was discarding what had come before. Rather, he was acknowledging that, for him, the strategies he once used were no longer beneficial. The times had changed, and so had his thinking — there was no way his work could not reflect this. Traces of this movement can be found in “Masculin Féminin,” which stars Jean-Pierre Leaud, until then primarily known for his work with Francois Truffaut, and the burgeoning yé-yé girl Chantal Goya. Placing fragments from real conversations with the actors within fictionalized situations, not to mention increasingly political texts and recordings on the soundtrack, Godard was extending the spontaneity that marked his earliest films into work that was more self-consciously embracing of hybridity. But as the critic Adrian Martin has noted, the film, which came after his divorce from the actress Anna Karina — who had been at the center of much of his previous work — “expressed a suspicious wariness on Godard’s part toward the young.” This wariness gives the film its tension and its life.“Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach” (1967), directed by Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, Museum of Modern Art, May 6, 9The perfect kickoff to the massive and massively essential Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (more on that soon), especially if you’re not familiar with their sometimes difficult work. “Bach” tells the story of Johann Sebastian through the words of his second wife, who narrates the film, and sometimes appears. But under her words, the film moves on Bach’s music. This is perhaps the duo’s most immediate and accessible film, and something of an introduction to their methods.“Eva Hesse” (2016), directed by Marcie Begleiter, Film Forum, running through May 10I wrote about the film, which offers a nice counterpoint to some of the consistent problems with artist documentaries I’ve been noticing recently, in a full review last week. When you’re done watching, go pick up Hesse’s recently published diaries. They expand on some of the film’s preoccupations and illuminate some of its omissions.
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