![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll(The seed was a desire for a timeline where Pacte des Loups was part of a long-standing genre of martial arts western films)
FISTS OF THE WEST (1938)
This was the first film in the American martial arts western genre, which has so recently seen a rebirth. In it a white man going by the name "Empty Hand Smith", accompanied by two Indian friends named Goyuasuta and Degataga (both supposedly of some unnamed Plains tribe, although the first is an Iroquois name and the second is Cherokee) travels from town to town, looking for his younger sister Juliet, who was kidnapped by person or persons unknown. He eventually tracks her kidnappers down, vanquishes the criminal O'Bannon Gang and rescues Juliet (whose virtue, we need not say, is untouched, the rascally Irish preferring rascally posturing rather action).
FISTS stands out in several ways:
Empty Hand never uses a pistol or a knife. In part this was because Price, the first actor who played Empty Hand, was severely shell-shocked in the Great War and could not abide loud sounds. After the war, Price had become interested in the Asian martial arts (apparently inspired by Sherlock Homes) and loved to show off what he had learned. According to his 1958 biography, Price was the one who suggested that his character avoid the use of guns. This was disputed by the director, who claimed to have come up with the idea when he was told his western couldn't have any dance numbers.
Goyuasuta and Degataga were treated with more respect than was typical for movies at the time. We learn that the never-named tribe had taken "counting coup" to an extreme, believing that any use of weapons was unmanly [1]. Inspired by a coolie who was adopted into the tribe, this mysterious tribe had developed a style of martial arts that was "uniquely American". Unfortunately their dislike of weapons seems to have led to the tribe's extinction: we are told that Goyuasuta and Degataga are the last full-blooded members of their tribe (Over the course of the Empty Hand movies, some sixty-two other "last" survivors would turn up).
Like Leatherstockings, who was a model for Empty Hand, Empty Hand learned his skills from the natives, having spent his teen years living with them. In later movies we learn that his sister Juliet has similar skills, although hers do not seem to be good enough to keep her from being kidnapped time and time again.
Degataga is in love with Juliet but in keeping with the times, was never allowed to go beyond a platonic devotion to Juliet. In later remakes, this was changed and the two are often a couple.
Many people think that John Woo's version of ROMEO AND JULIET was inspired by 1968s GOLDEN SAGE, in which the couple's romance is doomed by the racist society around them.
The Empty Hand movies used highly stylized martial arts, the idea being to produce something with the grace and style of a Broadway Musical that a red-blooded man could go to without being embarrassed. The style is beautiful without being particularly effect and may have set back true martial arts in the US by decades.
1: In a later movie, we learn that the women in the tribe are crack-shots, although many fans do not that movie to be in continuity.
.
FISTS OF THE WEST (1938)
This was the first film in the American martial arts western genre, which has so recently seen a rebirth. In it a white man going by the name "Empty Hand Smith", accompanied by two Indian friends named Goyuasuta and Degataga (both supposedly of some unnamed Plains tribe, although the first is an Iroquois name and the second is Cherokee) travels from town to town, looking for his younger sister Juliet, who was kidnapped by person or persons unknown. He eventually tracks her kidnappers down, vanquishes the criminal O'Bannon Gang and rescues Juliet (whose virtue, we need not say, is untouched, the rascally Irish preferring rascally posturing rather action).
FISTS stands out in several ways:
Empty Hand never uses a pistol or a knife. In part this was because Price, the first actor who played Empty Hand, was severely shell-shocked in the Great War and could not abide loud sounds. After the war, Price had become interested in the Asian martial arts (apparently inspired by Sherlock Homes) and loved to show off what he had learned. According to his 1958 biography, Price was the one who suggested that his character avoid the use of guns. This was disputed by the director, who claimed to have come up with the idea when he was told his western couldn't have any dance numbers.
Goyuasuta and Degataga were treated with more respect than was typical for movies at the time. We learn that the never-named tribe had taken "counting coup" to an extreme, believing that any use of weapons was unmanly [1]. Inspired by a coolie who was adopted into the tribe, this mysterious tribe had developed a style of martial arts that was "uniquely American". Unfortunately their dislike of weapons seems to have led to the tribe's extinction: we are told that Goyuasuta and Degataga are the last full-blooded members of their tribe (Over the course of the Empty Hand movies, some sixty-two other "last" survivors would turn up).
Like Leatherstockings, who was a model for Empty Hand, Empty Hand learned his skills from the natives, having spent his teen years living with them. In later movies we learn that his sister Juliet has similar skills, although hers do not seem to be good enough to keep her from being kidnapped time and time again.
Degataga is in love with Juliet but in keeping with the times, was never allowed to go beyond a platonic devotion to Juliet. In later remakes, this was changed and the two are often a couple.
Many people think that John Woo's version of ROMEO AND JULIET was inspired by 1968s GOLDEN SAGE, in which the couple's romance is doomed by the racist society around them.
The Empty Hand movies used highly stylized martial arts, the idea being to produce something with the grace and style of a Broadway Musical that a red-blooded man could go to without being embarrassed. The style is beautiful without being particularly effect and may have set back true martial arts in the US by decades.
1: In a later movie, we learn that the women in the tribe are crack-shots, although many fans do not that movie to be in continuity.
.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-05-26 03:53 am (UTC)Who would play these guys in the 1930s? Iron Eyes Cody and who else?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-26 04:43 am (UTC)Or, more likely, some white guy who's barely even trying (as opposed to Cody, who tried pretty hard).