The Mighty Hero Gan Fengchi

1928

The Mighty Hero Gan Fengchi 大俠甘鳳池 (1928) is a partially-extant silent film released in China by the Great Wall Film Company during a peak in popularity of the wuxia (martial chivalry) genre. The surviving 23 minutes of the film are filled with fight scenes, eye-catching sets, and special effects—notably multiple disappearances into thin air and an airborne clash between three “light sabers” that shoot out of the warriors’ palms. As we pick up the story, Gan Fengchi and his two child disciples are battling against officialdom, represented by the fighters Cloud Ace and Cloud Eternity. What accounts for the children’s defiance of authority? Have they been poisoned and forgotten themselves? Or have the officials they fight betrayed the people? As the two sides spar over the Circuit Intendant’s seal of office and the children right other wrongs, a challenge arrives to settle a decade-old grudge on Crouching Tiger Mountain...