Drunken Master (15.)
Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. 1978
Starring Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu Tien, Hwang Jang Lee and Dean Shek. 111 mins. Released on Dual format Bluray/ DVD as part of the Eureka Masters of Cinema series.
You often get the feeling that the Eureka bouncers are a bit lenient about who they admit into their VIP Master of Cinema section, but you can't argue with Jackie Chan. He is Asia's biggest movie star, a man who has trained rigorously to master his art and has remained at the top of his game for forty gruelling years. On screen he has a balletic grace that makes him the true successor to the great heroes of the silent era. And after forty years of adulation and wealth, he remain implacably likeable. Even if you have never seen his films, have no interest in the arts martial, you warm to him. He is definitely a master of cinema – so why isn't he in good films?
Drunken Master was his great breakthrough, or rather the second half of a two fisted whammy that made him a star, the rapid follow up to Snake In The Eagle's Shadow. In the years after his early death, when everybody in the Hong Kong film industry was looking for the New Bruce Lee, Chan had been among the many who had tried and failed to take on his mantle. In these two films though he came up with his USP – comedy fu. The first film introduced the novelty, the second mastered it. In Drunken Master, Jacky is a cocky martial arts students whose continual impertinence drives his father to distraction until he condemns him to be trained by the drunk hermit Beggar Su. His methods are cruel and extreme but involve plenty of drinking on route to learning the secret of the Eight Drunken Gods fighting styles.
Drunken Master's great virtue is that it is an action film that knows its purpose. It starts with a Kung Fu fight and then goes on fighting pretty much continuously for the best part of two hours – dialogue scenes are the equivalent of the girl circling the ring with the numbered card between rounds. It is though fairly shoddy in many places, with actors being out of focus and the sound effects during the fights are ramped up to absurd levels.
The Chinese tradition of Kung Fu may go back down the centuries, a variety of ancient styles adopted from various animal shapes, but in England Kung Fu is as seventies as flares and chopper bikes. Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon poster is as iconic as the Farrah Fawcett one, or the girl scratching her bare arse playing tennis. The shock of Drunken Master, at least in terms of its comedy, is that 70s Hong Kong humour is almost exactly the same as 70s British humour. Chan is like Robin Asquith in a Confessions film, the cheeky chappy always getting into scrapes – naughty but nice. There's a moment early on when he makes a fool of his instructor and he looks at Chan in a way that is just like Blakey in On The Buses as he's about to deliver his “I'm Going To Get You Butler,” line. There are fart jokes, falling face first into poo jokes, comedy waiters with enormous buck teeth, comedy fatties and men wincing when they get kicked in the cobblers. Chan's winces to camera are run the whole Carry On gamut from Jim Dale to Charles Hawtrey. There's also plenty of jaunty comedy music, delivering the equivalent of wah wah wah waaah.
The only difference is that almost none of the humour is sexual based. Ladies don't really feature, the gentlemen are too busy making moves on each other. Now I don't wish to impune the manliness of martial artist, or enthusiasts of the martial arts, but there is something of the Come Dancing to it. The fight routines are miracles of split-second choreography, the protagonists furiously taking turns firing out limbs that are either blocked or evaded, trading moves with inch perfect coordination. It is extraordinary spectacle but is it really action? Because it is comedic and aimed perhaps at a younger audience (at some point the BBFC had given it a 12A certificate, though they was probably an edited version) nothing here really here struck me as conflict, or excitement. Those cats are fast as lightening, but it is not the least bit frightening.
During the film I dipped into the commentary by a Chan biographer and a Hong Kong action enthusiast, partly to escape the sound of the exaggerated blows that accompany every hit. They were arguing that HK action films were superior to Hollywood action films because they didn't waste energy on characterisation and plot, much of which was paper thin anyway. But even the World Wrestling clowns realise that cleverly choreographed fake violence needs some kind of narrative or emotional context to involve audience. Maybe this aesthetic appreciation of the execution of traditional forms that have evolved over centuries is something we should learn from the East; so call me a philistine but I don't enjoy watching some one getting their block knocked off unless I have some investment in the outcome.
Extras.
The film is backed up by a strong selection of extras.
- Audio commentary by Hong Kong film experts Ric Meyers and Jeff Yang. What I heard alternated between being really informative about the way the film was made, and being a little bit nerdy.
- A new, 20 minute video appreciation by director Gareth Evans (The Raid film series.) A man who knows about action whose insights into Chan and how he had influenced his own film making are worthwhile. I like Evans if only because he always talks about “we” and “us” rather than first person singular.
- A new 40 minute video interview with film scholar Tony Rayns, our man in the East, who outlines Chan's career.
- Definitive transfer from 4K digital restoration
- The original complete Cantonese soundtrack, rarely heard on home video
- Alternate English and Mandarin audio options
- Newly translated English subtitles
- New video interview with director Yuen Woo-ping
- Video interview with Jackie Chan
- Deleted scene
- Original trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by Michael Brooke and archival imagery
Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. 1978
Starring Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu Tien, Hwang Jang Lee and Dean Shek. 111 mins. Released on Dual format Bluray/ DVD as part of the Eureka Masters of Cinema series.
You often get the feeling that the Eureka bouncers are a bit lenient about who they admit into their VIP Master of Cinema section, but you can't argue with Jackie Chan. He is Asia's biggest movie star, a man who has trained rigorously to master his art and has remained at the top of his game for forty gruelling years. On screen he has a balletic grace that makes him the true successor to the great heroes of the silent era. And after forty years of adulation and wealth, he remain implacably likeable. Even if you have never seen his films, have no interest in the arts martial, you warm to him. He is definitely a master of cinema – so why isn't he in good films?
Drunken Master was his great breakthrough, or rather the second half of a two fisted whammy that made him a star, the rapid follow up to Snake In The Eagle's Shadow. In the years after his early death, when everybody in the Hong Kong film industry was looking for the New Bruce Lee, Chan had been among the many who had tried and failed to take on his mantle. In these two films though he came up with his USP – comedy fu. The first film introduced the novelty, the second mastered it. In Drunken Master, Jacky is a cocky martial arts students whose continual impertinence drives his father to distraction until he condemns him to be trained by the drunk hermit Beggar Su. His methods are cruel and extreme but involve plenty of drinking on route to learning the secret of the Eight Drunken Gods fighting styles.
Drunken Master's great virtue is that it is an action film that knows its purpose. It starts with a Kung Fu fight and then goes on fighting pretty much continuously for the best part of two hours – dialogue scenes are the equivalent of the girl circling the ring with the numbered card between rounds. It is though fairly shoddy in many places, with actors being out of focus and the sound effects during the fights are ramped up to absurd levels.
The Chinese tradition of Kung Fu may go back down the centuries, a variety of ancient styles adopted from various animal shapes, but in England Kung Fu is as seventies as flares and chopper bikes. Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon poster is as iconic as the Farrah Fawcett one, or the girl scratching her bare arse playing tennis. The shock of Drunken Master, at least in terms of its comedy, is that 70s Hong Kong humour is almost exactly the same as 70s British humour. Chan is like Robin Asquith in a Confessions film, the cheeky chappy always getting into scrapes – naughty but nice. There's a moment early on when he makes a fool of his instructor and he looks at Chan in a way that is just like Blakey in On The Buses as he's about to deliver his “I'm Going To Get You Butler,” line. There are fart jokes, falling face first into poo jokes, comedy waiters with enormous buck teeth, comedy fatties and men wincing when they get kicked in the cobblers. Chan's winces to camera are run the whole Carry On gamut from Jim Dale to Charles Hawtrey. There's also plenty of jaunty comedy music, delivering the equivalent of wah wah wah waaah.
The only difference is that almost none of the humour is sexual based. Ladies don't really feature, the gentlemen are too busy making moves on each other. Now I don't wish to impune the manliness of martial artist, or enthusiasts of the martial arts, but there is something of the Come Dancing to it. The fight routines are miracles of split-second choreography, the protagonists furiously taking turns firing out limbs that are either blocked or evaded, trading moves with inch perfect coordination. It is extraordinary spectacle but is it really action? Because it is comedic and aimed perhaps at a younger audience (at some point the BBFC had given it a 12A certificate, though they was probably an edited version) nothing here really here struck me as conflict, or excitement. Those cats are fast as lightening, but it is not the least bit frightening.
During the film I dipped into the commentary by a Chan biographer and a Hong Kong action enthusiast, partly to escape the sound of the exaggerated blows that accompany every hit. They were arguing that HK action films were superior to Hollywood action films because they didn't waste energy on characterisation and plot, much of which was paper thin anyway. But even the World Wrestling clowns realise that cleverly choreographed fake violence needs some kind of narrative or emotional context to involve audience. Maybe this aesthetic appreciation of the execution of traditional forms that have evolved over centuries is something we should learn from the East; so call me a philistine but I don't enjoy watching some one getting their block knocked off unless I have some investment in the outcome.
Extras.
The film is backed up by a strong selection of extras.
- Audio commentary by Hong Kong film experts Ric Meyers and Jeff Yang. What I heard alternated between being really informative about the way the film was made, and being a little bit nerdy.
- A new, 20 minute video appreciation by director Gareth Evans (The Raid film series.) A man who knows about action whose insights into Chan and how he had influenced his own film making are worthwhile. I like Evans if only because he always talks about “we” and “us” rather than first person singular.
- A new 40 minute video interview with film scholar Tony Rayns, our man in the East, who outlines Chan's career.
- Definitive transfer from 4K digital restoration
- The original complete Cantonese soundtrack, rarely heard on home video
- Alternate English and Mandarin audio options
- Newly translated English subtitles
- New video interview with director Yuen Woo-ping
- Video interview with Jackie Chan
- Deleted scene
- Original trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by Michael Brooke and archival imagery
