Hsu Tseng-hung was born in Shanghai on 19 November 1935, the son of a sound recordist at the Great China Film Company. He came to Hong Kong in 1949 and worked as an assistant to the cameraman Lo Kwan-hung at Nanguo Studio, joining Hsin Hwa in 1951 as a cinematographer; he was only formally credited in 1956 for The Melon-Picking Girl. In 1957 he went to Japan to shoot Hsin Hwa's earliest colour productions, including the musicals Love Like a Spring Breeze (1957) and Phoenix in Flight (1958), then The Love at First Sight (1958), The Nineteen Heroes of Qingcheng (1960) and The Tomb Companions (1961). In 1964 he joined Shaw Brothers as a cinematographer, shooting The Warlord and the Actress (1964) while beginning to work as assistant director for Chang Cheh on The Butterfly Chalice (co-directed with Yuan Qiufeng, 1965) and Tiger Boy (1966). Promoted to director in 1965, he made The Twin Swords with a hard-edged realism that marked him as a figure of Shaw's colour martial-arts era, followed by the same year's temple-cycle swordplay. He went on to specialise in period sword and fist films such as The Sword and the Lute (1967), The Seven Knights (1967) and The Twelve Gold Medallions (1969). Shaw reportedly sent him to Japan to study more efficient shooting methods, after which he set a record of more than sixty shots in a single day on 1967's The Sword That Was Not Sharpened. In 1971 he moved to Golden Harvest and directed the Hong Kong version of Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman, and with the studio's backing founded Kugan Films in Taiwan, producing The Two Cavaliers (1971) and others. He returned to Hong Kong in 1980 as manager of a processing laboratory and later moved to Taiwan.
Moving from cameraman to director, Hsu was an early architect of Shaw Brothers' colour martial-arts era. His period swordplay films stressed the physicality of combat, and his study trip to Japan on shooting efficiency brought a cinematographer's eye for image and pace to the genre.
Achievements
- 1956 · Formally credited as cinematographer on The Melon-Picking Girl
- 1964 · Joined Shaw Brothers, shooting The Warlord and the Actress and serving as assistant director
- 1965 · Promoted to director with The Twin Swords