A Touch of Zen (1970)

King Hu's masterpiece takes its time: a scholar and painter drifts into the affairs of a fugitive woman warrior, and the story slowly widens into ghost tale, political thriller and Buddhist parable. The bamboo forest sword fight, built from leaps cut into fragments of motion and light, is the clearest ancestor of Crouching Tiger's treetop duel. It won the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes in 1975, and Hsu Feng's Yang Huizhen remains one of the genre's most commanding heroines. Expect a journey of about three hours, first released in Taiwan in two parts, with mist and mountains that look painted rather than photographed.