Wow, so cool.

A breathtaking silent-era epic from the dawn of Chinese cinema, The Bandit and the Rose (originally Romance of the Western Chamber, Way Down West, or Xi Xiang Ji) blends whirlwind romance, high-stakes adventure, and groundbreaking martial-arts spectacle. Shot with stunning hand-tinted nitrate beauty, elaborate costumes, and pioneering action sequences that helped birth the wuxia genre, this is one of the earliest surviving feature films from Shanghai’s golden age.

That last bit about the wuxia genre rings true. The fighting scenes were impressive for the 1920s. Thanks!