New! Martial Arts Movie Pioneer Yam Yu-tin (1894-1982)

A couple of years ago, if you had asked me to name the first kung fu film ever made, I would have said it was THE STORY OF WONG FEI-HUNG in 1949. And I would have felt pretty smug about knowing that obscure bit of history. But now, after digging through scholarly books and online databases, and tracking down obscure videos, I’ve realized it’s not that simple. Even if you separate wuxia from kung fu films, even if you specify that “kung fu” means Southern Chinese boxing styles, it’s still not that simple. Most of the martial arts films made between 1919 and 1949 have vanished. Only a handful of kung fu or wuxia films from the early 1950s have survived the decades of neglect. Archives of promotional material and contemporary reviews confirm that Southerners and Northerners, martial artists and opera performers and filmmakers, have worked together (and in competition with each other) from almost the beginning. I’m continuing my look back at the veterans of the pre-World War II Chinese film industry, the ones who laid the groundwork for the resurgence of the genre in the early 1950s, with this appreciation of one of the first martial artists to move into the director’s chair.

Left: Yam Yu-tin. Right: Flyer for A SWORD AGAINST FIVE DRAGONS (aka COURAGEOUS SWORDSMAN, 1952).

When the craze for martial arts movies swept Shanghai in the 1920s, the studios were hungry for talent. Choreographers and stunt performers were recruited from opera troupes and martial arts schools. They labored in anonymity until 1927. RED BUTTERFLY, a wuxia film made that year, carried the first-ever credit for a “martial arts director.” The honor went to Yam Yu-tin (Ren Yutian).

Not much information is available in English on Yam’s career. He specialized in Northern style martial arts (like many of Shanghai’s wushu experts). Besides RED BUTTERFLY, Yam made at least seven or eight other films in Shanghai. He directed titles like BURNING THE GREEN DRAGON TEMPLE, DEVIL INCARNATE, and IRON-BLOODED HERO in 1929, and TRAVEL-WEARY SWORDSMAN in 1930. He was an actor too, in his own films and occasionally for other directors. He also directed one of a trilogy of films made in 1927 and 1928, and released under the combined title of THE PICTURE OF THE EIGHT BEAUTIES OF JIAXING – one of his fellow directors on this project was the groundbreaking action filmmaker Ren Pengnian.

After he directed his last Shanghai movie, AMAZING MONK OF THE WILD MOUNTAINS, in 1931, Yam Yu-tin’s whereabouts are unknown until he turns up in Hong Kong almost 20 years later, with a daughter and two young sons. In 1950, he directed the Hong Kong production LAU SHU-CHUN, THE FAMOUS HERO, starring Walter Tso Tat-wah, the prolific martial arts actor from the Wong Fei-hung series (he played Wong’s student Leung Foon). Yam also produced and co-wrote the film, and presumably designed the choreography too. His daughter and oldest son were in the cast, Whatever he had been doing during the interval between AMAZING MONK and LAU SHU-CHUN, Yam hadn’t forgotten how to make action films. The early 1950s saw a second wave of popularity for martial arts films, and Yam Yu-tin was well-respected in the genre. He founded his own company – the Yu Tin Film Company – and directed about a half dozen films which do not seem to have survived.

The flyer reproduced above is from Yam Yu-tin’s 1952 production A SWORD AGAINST FIVE DRAGONS, aka COURAGEOUS SWORDSMAN. Yam is credited as director, scriptwriter, and martial arts director, and it was produced through his Yu Tin Film Company. All three of his children are in the cast, along with Walter Tso Tat-wah and Law Yim-hing, pictured in the flyer, and Shek Kin. Yam Yu-tin himself makes a Hitchcock-like appearance in the film. According to the HKFA data on the film, “a song number was featured” and “several martial artists were employed to put their northern and southern styles on display.” The page includes a plot synopsis, but nowhere is there any mention of the oddest feature of the publicity photos. The actors are in American-style cowboy costumes, and Law is holding a European rapier. From their expressions, you could almost believe COURAGEOUS SWORDSMAN to be a comedy, and maybe it was.

Yam is not credited with any films after 1953’s THE DOGS SAVE THE DAY, which was probably not a martial arts film. It was a contemporary drama which told the story of a police K9 team. The trend had changed. Kung fu and wuxia films were not being bankrolled as readily, although the genre never completely shut down. In fact, Yam Yu-tin’s legacy was carried on through the following decades by the careers of his children, daughter Yam Yin and sons Yam Tai-koon and Yam Sai-koon.

Yam Yin was a leading martial arts actress in the 1950s, making over 150 films. Until I began researching this article, I had never heard of her. She appeared in many of the early wuxia films of director Wong Tin-lam (currently the subject of a retrospective at the Hong Kong Film Archive, see here), and of course in her father’s films as well. She co-starred in the 1950 film FONG KONG HEROINE with Jackie Chan’s “big sister” Yu So-chau, directed by Sammo Hung’s grandfather Hung Chung-ho and produced by his grandmother Chin Tse-ang. Both Yam Yin and her brother Yam Tai-koon, whose career in the 1950s parallels his sister’s, worked extensively during the peak of the 1950s boom. When production slowed down mid-decade, the two found steady employment in the Wong Fei-hung franchise under the direction of kung fu filmmaker Wu Pang. In 1959, Yam Yin appeared in some of the last films directed by the legendary Shanghai filmmaker Ren Pengnian, the “Heroine Wong Ang” series, which also co-starred Ren’s wife Wu Lizhu and Yu So-chau. One of these films, THE STORY OF WONG ANG THE HEROINE (1960), is about to be screened as part of the “Jane Bond” series at the HKFA (see here) and damn, I wish I lived in Hong Kong. I want to see Wong Tin-lam’s HOW WONG FEI-HUNG VANQUISHED THE FEROCIOUS DOG IN SHAMIAN (see here) too.

In this publicity photo from the flyer for COURAGEOUS SWORDSMAN, I have a hunch that the three figures on the right are, top to bottom, Yam Yu-tin, Yam Tai-koon, and Yam Sai-koon. And I suspect that’s Yam Yin in the photo on the upper right corner of the flyer (reproduced above), standing third from left, as well as in the bottom left photo. If anyone can confirm the identifications, I’d appreciate it.

Youngest brother Yam Sai-koon (aka Yen Shi-Kwan or Yang Yee-Kwan) joined his siblings in the film industry and grew up on film sets. He’s known today for his portrayals of villainy in classic films like ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA (1991), IRON MONKEY (1993), and THE HEROIC TRIO (1993). All boast mesmerizing performances by Yam Sai-koon in key roles. So the next time you kick back and enjoy the warehouse fight between Yam and Jet Li in ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, give a thought to his father Yam Yu-tin and the beginning of the art of action direction.

And here’s one more photo from the flyer. Maybe it can give us a little of the flavor of Yam Yu-tin’s choreography. There’s a nice visual line that flows through the tableau. He has a good sense of how the stances and torque of energy through the fighters’ bodies contribute to the characterization. The carefully posed photos don’t reveal anything of the actual choreography, unfortunately. Yam had a talented cast, including his own family, and he had a reputation to uphold. It’s too bad we’ll never know what his work looked like, unless some of these lost old films turn up in an attic somewhere. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.