How an anti-Maoist French film director ‘hijacked’ a Hong Kong martial arts film
- Can Dialetics Break Bricks? takes kung fu potboiler Crush and positions it as a confrontation between the state and revolutionaries
- René Viénet was inspired by a distaste for authoritarian rule and an appreciation of Chinese-language cinema
“A toast to the exploited: for the termination of the exploiters,” the narrator says, as the camera zooms in on actor Jason Pai Piao. He strikes a pose, then performs a dizzying array of kung fu moves – a thinly veiled allusion to his athletic prowess, unfettered masculinity and action-hero credentials – as he gets set to give some baddies a thrashing.
So far, so predictable for a martial arts flick. Then comes the unexpected. “He looks like a jerk, it’s true,” continues the narrator, as Pai shoots the camera another macho gaze. “But it’s not his fault, it’s the producer’s. He’s alienated and he knows it. He has no control over the use of his life. In short, he’s a proletarian. But things are about to change.”
This is the eccentric opening sequence of Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, the 1973 directorial debut of French sinologist René Viénet. Applying the politically charged approach known as “détournement” – in which mainstream media is appropriated and injected with anti-establishment values contrary to the original material – Viénet “hijacked” Crush, a 1972 Hong Kong kung fu potboiler shot in South Korea, replacing its Mandarin dialogue with a French soundtrack discussing Marxist ideas.
Directed by veteran Hong Kong-based Chinese filmmaker Tu Guangqi, Crush was a story of confrontation between brutal colonialists and taekwondo warriors in Japanese-ruled South Korea, in the early 20th century. With the rebels facing annihilation, Pai’s character – a sort of Chinese lone ranger – arrives to save the day. In Viénet’s version, however, the battle is between swaggering “state bureaucrats” and anarcho-syndicalist revolutionaries.
What was originally a piece of shallow, sensationalist entertainment – albeit with a whiff of anti-imperialist sentiment – was transformed into a dense political tract about class struggle.
When we met recently in Rotterdam, where a restored version of Can Dialectics Break Bricks? was being shown at the Dutch city’s annual international film festival, Viénet said he was inspired by his distaste for authoritarian rule of any stripe, especially despots who dressed up their tyrannical tendencies with a seemingly left-leaning sheen – a lineage stretching from Maximilien Robespierre to Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
Viénet’s aversion to Mao grew out of his first-hand observations of China in the 1960s. A graduate of the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations, in Paris, he volunteered for a teaching position in Nanjing, in October 1964. Disillusioned by the lack of freedom he witnessed there, he left six months into what should have been a two-year tenure.
Back in France, he was continually denounced by French Maoists, who wielded much influence in the country’s left-wing circles in the 60s and 70s. Viénet’s criticism of Mao and the Cultural Revolution persists to this day.
Despite his subversive take on Hong Kong films and grim view of contemporary Chinese history, Viénet says he is an admirer of Chinese-language cinema. He even tried to convince French distributors in the late 60s and early 70s that some Hong Kong films – especially martial arts movies – could sell in Europe and Africa. “I tried to tell them how they could make this guy called Bruce Lee popular in Africa,” he said. No one took the plunge, but Viénet’s view was soon vindicated as African audiences embraced Lee’s films, both in cinemas and on pirated videotapes.
His transformation into a business executive was down to the failure of his filmmaking career after Can Dialectics Break Bricks? and the equally controversial “hijacking” of a Japanese sexploitation film, The Girls of Kamare (1974).
Viénet’s directorial career ended with 1977’s Peking Duck Soup (also known as Chinese People, One More Effort To Be Revolutionaries). A collage of state-produced footage, the documentary debunks the personality cults established by Chinese political leaders and their disastrous legacy. Had that film been given the same treatment as Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, it would be interesting to see viewers’ reactions.
