"Heroic Grace" catalog - UCLA Film & Television Archive

ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN [DUBI DAO]
Hong Kong 1967 Director: Zhang Che
Zhang Che’s riveting revenge thriller is often identified as the key transitional film between the “old school” wuxia (swordplay) picture and what we
now think of as the kung fu movie. And indeed, all the standard kung fu plot features are already firmly in place. The eponymous hero, Fang Gang,
played with sullen charisma by Jimmy Wang Yu, is an orphaned “scholarship student” at a ritzy martial arts academy, a resentful commoner persecuted
by the sneering gentry. He endures their bullying stoically, until his sifu’s spoiled daughter (Qiao Qiao) happens to spy on him as he chops
wood, shirtless and gleaming. Infuriated by her own desire, she takes out her Lawrencian frustration upon its object by chopping off one of his
arms. (You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to parse the symbolism.) During a sojourn in the wilderness Fang masters the unfamiliar art of fighting
left-handed with his broken blade, and returns home to trounce his astonished enemies—who in the meantime have perfected an unsportsmanlike
“sword clamp” device that turns out to be useless against Fang’s stubby weapon.
ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN created a revolution in the genre with its innovative emphasis on match-ups among various fighting styles and the warrior’s
training process. Even in its visual details the film announces the arrival of a new kind of hero: Wang Yu wears simple, functional clothing
modeled on the dusty homespun of the ronin samurai (especially Zatoichi) that inspired director Zhang and screenwriter Ni Kuang, while his snooty
persecutors sport layered sword-dude outfits trimmed with animal fur, like those worn by the stalwart prigs in conventional wuxia B pictures.
—David Chute
Studio: Shaw Brothers. Producer: Runme Shaw (Shao Renmei). Screenplay: Ni Kuang, Zhang Che. Cinematography: Yuan Zengshan, Guan Hanle. Martial
Arts Directors: Tong Kai (Tang Jia), Lau Kar-leung (Liu Jialiang). Art Director: Chen Qingshen. Editor: Jiang Xinglong. Sound: Wang Yonghua. Music: Wang
Fuling. Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Ban Yinze, Qiao Qiao, Zhang Beishan, Huang Zongxun.
35mm, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 111 min.
Print Source: Celestial Pictures Ltd.
© Licensed by Celestial Pictures Ltd. (a company incorporated in Hong Kong SAR).
All rights reserved.
N I K UA N G (Ngai Hong)
Prolific novelist and screenwriter Ni Kuang is estimated to
have churned out over 400 scripts and 300 pulp adventure
novels over the course of a 50-year career. Ni Kuang emigrated
to Hong Kong from Shanghai in 1957 and initially made his
living writing wuxia serials for daily newspapers. When several
of these were successfully filmed (including THE SIX-FIN-
GERED LORD OF THE LUTE, 1965), he was recruited by Shaw
Brothers to be a screenwriter. His first produced script for
Shaw was ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN (1967).
In the late ’70s Ni Kuang wrote the majority of scripts
directed by Zhang Che, Lau Kar-leung and Chu Yuan (Chor
Yuen). He also penned the first two Bruce Lee vehicles THE BIG
BOSS (1971) and FIST OF FURY (a.k.a. THE CHINESE CONNECTION,
1972). In the 1980s Ni Kuang returned to fiction writing. His
most popular pulp hero, the globetrotting occult investigator
Wai Shut-lee (“Wisely”), has been portrayed onscreen by
Chow Yun-fat and Andy Lau, among others.
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ZHANG CHE (Chang Cheh, 1923-2002)
The celebrated “Godfather” of the Hong Kong action cinema
began as a screenwriter in the late ‘40s in Shanghai. He directed
his first film in Taiwan in 1949 before moving to Hong Kong in
1957. Zhang joined MP & GI (Cathay studio’s predecessor) as a
screenwriter in 1960 but departed two years later for Shaw
Brothers. The success of TIGER BOY (1964) propelled Zhang into
a decade-long career zenith during which he directed some of
the martial arts genre’s best-known classics: ONE-ARMED
SWORDSMAN (1967), GOLDEN SWALLOW (1968), VENGEANCE! (1970),
THE BOXER FROM SHANDONG (1972), BLOOD BROTHERS (1973), and
DISCIPLES OF SHAOLIN (1975).
Zhang claimed to have overturned the primacy of female
stars in the Hong Kong film industry with his aesthetics of masculine
violence and his grooming of male stars, including Jimmy
Wang Yu, David Jiang Dawei (David Chiang), Di Long (Ti Lung), and
Alexander Fu Sheng. Among his protégés behind the camera is
director John Woo. For a short spell in the late ’70s, Zhang went
independent with his own production company, culminating with
the late-career highpoint, THE FIVE VENOMS (1978). He worked
sporadically in the ‘80s and made his last film in 1993.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 12