“The good thing about working for big studios was that you got classy, quality support. Even if you asked for the moon, they could get the moon for you, which was amazing” raved Chor Yuen about Shaws. Drawing on a huge shared pool of human talent, sets, props, costumes, and equipment, all Shaws’ movies share an aesthetic, but Chor Yuen was especially good at exploiting this aesthetic – and Shaws’ extraordinary resources – to make his wuxia pian into gorgeous looking films.
Shaw Brothers Studios were purpose built to supply its filmmakers with state of the art resources for the time and place in which their films were made. Roving Swordsman has Yuen’s trademark look: prettily coloured and exquisitely detailed art direction, moody atmosphere, and a complicated plot. What I find interesting about this film, dazzling in appearance for the viewer, is that appearances, and especially whether or not they are trustworthy, are a theme of the film.
“I was almost fooled!” ripostes Feng Rusung (played by Kwan Fung), one of the good guys in Chor Yuen’s Roving Swordsman, when confronted by one of many sleights of hand that take place during the course of this film’s plot. While it is a throwaway line in one of the early scenes, it is also apt, for Roving Swordsman is full of trickery and deceit as its protagonists and antagonists try to outwit each other.