King Hu’s Come Drink with Me and Chang Cheh’s One-Armed Swordsman are generally credited with launching the New School wuxia films that showed more realistic action, violence and faster fight scenes. But the almost forgotten 1966 movie The Jade Bow , which predated those classics by four months, was often mentioned in the 1970s as an innovative work which foreshadowed a boom in martial arts films shot in Mandarin (as opposed to the Cantonese, spoken in Hong Kong, in which many popular martial arts films produced in the city at the time were shot). “ The Jade Bow is an intricate network of relationships,” wrote a local critic in 1980. “With its synthesis of melodrama and vigorous fight sequences, The Jade Bow helped to lead the rise of the new-style wuxia (sword-and-sorcery films) of the 1960s.” The film’s lack of visibility is probably because The Jade Bow was produced outside the Shaw Brothers/Golden Harvest Studio system – it was made by the left-wing studio Great Wall – and is therefore difficult to see today. It was released on DVD by Mei-Ah in the early 2000s but is not currently available and, if a usable print still exists, it has not been screened outside festivals in Hong Kong, where it last showed in 1997. The sword-fighting scenes in The Jade Bow are strikingly modern compared to much of what had gone before, and feature action more grounded in realistic styles than the poised choreography favoured by Beijing Opera stylists. Jackie Chan on his early days as a stuntman and learning fast It’s no surprise to learn that the choreography is an early work of legendary choreographers Lau Kar-leung and Tong Kai , who went on to revolutionise martial arts films with their work for Chang Cheh at Shaw Brothers . The duo’s division of labour is much in evidence, with the one-to-one combat that was a speciality of Lau, an expert in grounded southern martial arts styles like hung gar , and the one-against-many fights favoured by Tong Kai, who had trained in the acrobatic northern styles, given roughly equal screen time. The two also use some wirework to simulate “weightless leaping”, and the techniques again look relatively refined for the time. Lau and Tong had previously choreographed 1963’s South Dragon, North Phoenix , which pitted authentic southern and northern styles of martial arts against each other. The Jade Bow brought the two choreographers to the attention of Chang Cheh, who persuaded them to sign with Shaw Brothers studio, which was then in the throes of developing the “New Wuxia Colour Century” in which the two would play a major part. Interestingly, Great Wall was not a studio that specialised in martial arts movies. The studio, which was founded by émigrés from Shanghai, produced didactic left-wing pro-China films alongside typical commercial fare like melodramas. What’s more, the Mandarin-language film’s stars – Fu Chi, who also co-directed (with Zhang Xinyan), Chen Si-si and Wong Pao-cheng – were dramatic performers rather than martial artists. But all acquit themselves well in the fights, although stunt doubles are much in evidence. The story is based on a bestselling novel by Liang Yusheng (real name Chen Wentong) , the first of the “new wave of martial arts novelists” of the 1950s. Liang debuted with the book Feuds in the Capital in 1952, four years before his more famous contemporary Louis Cha Leung-yung made his debut. As with the latter’s works, Liang’s stories were often adapted by the Cantonese-language filmmakers of the 1950s. Liang’s novels were noted for their focus on romance, and this is not downplayed in the movie adaptation of The Jade Bow , despite the action. “Liang Yusheng’s qualities as a writer in this idiom are particularly notable in his description of emotional relationships,” wrote Liu Damu in From Chivalric Fiction to Martial Arts Film . “This possibly derives from his experience as a ‘lonely hearts’ columnist in his youth. “The script for The Jade Bow concerns a tragic love affair … in common with most of Liang Yusheng’s other narratives, this film describes a situation of several women competing for the same man,” writes Liu. The Jade Bow begins in a convoluted fashion, in the manner of a martial arts novel, but the story thins out to become easier to follow as it unspools. How Tsui Hark refreshed the wuxia genre with his 1979 debut The central storyline revolves around the young martial artist King Shi-yu (played by Fu) who becomes involved with two female fighters as he searches for an evil killer Meng (Ping Fan) at the behest of his ageing master. One of the women, Ku (played by Wong), is the daughter of the killer, and was brought up to be righteous by the two heroes who once saved her. The second heroine is Li (played Chen), whose mother was murdered by Meng while he was trying to steal two cosmic martial arts manuals from her husband. Both girls are plotting against Meng, but an unbreakable vow, and their mutual love for the hero, brings them into conflict. The cross-currents of the plot are well-handled, as is the romantic ménage-a-trois, which culminates in a tear-jerking finale which reflects the melodramas of the time. At the heart of the story is a typical conflict between two martial arts schools, one benevolent, the other cruel. Films like The Jade Bow did not appear in a vacuum. As Stephen Teo notes, the Mandarin-language The Jade Bow was influenced by the prolific and popular Cantonese films of the 1960s, like the box-office smash Mythical Crane Magic Needle , and The Yin Yang Blade . Meanwhile, films like 1963’s two-part Story of Sword and Sabre – which also featured dramatic performers rather than martial artists – had already started to elevate the genre. Chor Yuen’s intricately plotted films gave wuxia genre new life “Though a harbinger of a Mandarin genre fad in Hong Kong cinema, [ The Jade Bow ] evokes more Cantonese cinema’s martial arts serials like The Golden Hairpin (1963) and Buddha’s Palm (1964) and may have actually been inspired by them,” Teo wrote in 1997. “This film inherits a well-established strand of Hong Kong cinema’s martial arts genre that impresses with multi-episodic structures, action choreography, and special effects.” The plot of The Jade Bow is also “remarkably similar” to Star Wars , Teo noted. In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here . Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook