Produced by Zhang Qingpu of the
Huaju Film Company,
The Valiant Girl White Rose was directed by Zhang Huimin based on a screenplay by Gu Jianchen.
Wu Suxin served as assistant director; she also assumed the starring role of Bai Suyin. Sheng Xiaotian portrayed the bandit leader, Shi Juefei took the role of the Bai family patriarch, and Ruan Shengduo played the wandering warrior Wu Zhiyuan. Other roles were taken by Shen Lixia, You San, Zhou Juanhong, and Ding Huashi. The title of the film,
The Valiant Girl White Rose, drew both on the name of its star and on contemporary vernacular. Wu Suxin was also active under the name White Rose Woo, though in the film the name is associated with Bai Suyin's propensity for wearing roses. In contemporary Chinese vernacular, the rose was used as a metaphor for Western beauty, and a commonly used symbol in both literature and film. The film included
intertitles in both Chinese and English.
The Valiant Girl White Rose was produced at a time when
wuxia (martial arts) films with female protagonists was experiencing a surge in popularity. Following the
Tianyi Film Company's success with
Heroine Li Feifei (1925), companies such as
Mingxing, Youlian, and Huaju began producing films in the genre. Unlike other companies, Huaju focused primarily on films set in modern settings. The martial arts costume in the film was reported to have been influenced by
The Three Musketeers, which had found popularity in China, and the moustache donned by Suyin resembled that of Hollywood star
Douglas Fairbanks. The character wielded a bow, a sword, and was adorned with both a headscarf and a
cowboy hat.
The Valiant Girl White Rose featured extensive acts of acrobatics, with its heroine chasing bandits and "flying" on a swinging rope. It also used
masquerade as a plot device, with the protagonist in her male disguise attracting the romantic attentions of two sisters; this misunderstanding results in her temporarily losing an ally. Regarding such depictions of
gender performance, the film scholar Zhang Zhen describes the masquerade as sending a "mixed message" wherein the heroine only becomes a free and socially mobile woman by assuming a male identity, thereby continuing "to subordinate female power to a patriarchal order". ==Release and reception==