The Prodigal Son (1981)
Welcome to the HKL DVD release of Prodigal Son, one of my all-time fav kung fu classics. I always loved to watch this movie. The Chinese Title of the film is Bai Ga Jai, Bai meaning to destroy, Gar meaning family, and Jai meaning boy, so the literal meaning is "The boy who destroys his family" and really what it means is like spoiled son of a rich man, the equivalent is like a youngster who inherits a huge fortune and wastes it away with fast-living or basically a mispent youth. It’s been translated into English Prodigal Son obviously relating to the Biblical story about the rich man’s son, who’s banished from home, makes good and finally returns and is warmly accepted by his father. That’s actually not a bad tranlation, because I think if you literally call the film "The boy who destroys his family" it’s gonna have a different meaning, so Prodigal Son is about as close as close you can get. It was also released int he American market as Pull No Punches which is definitely a kung fu movie title.
Yuen Biao, opera school buddy of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, who is
very much a protegee of Sammo who launched him in Magnificent
Butcher, Knockabout, he was also in one of Yuen Woo-ping’s better
films Dreadnaught.Here we are in the Chinese opera show, of course Sammo Hung, the director, producer and all around creative force behind this movie is very familiar with the traditions and culture of Chinese opera, having been trained in the Chinese Opera School in Hong Kong. He was Big Brother to Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Yuen Kwai and a whole generation of terrific martial arts and movie performers. And so he draws on this for this film and you really get a sense of the time and place of these travelling opera shows. Later we see the real Red Boat, the famous Red Boat, on which the Chinese Opera players would travel through waterways connenting the different towns of Southern China. The interesting thing, even to this day, you do get to see opera shows in Hong Kong and they normally have temproraly big bamboo structures erected on like basketball courts or market places and they always use aluminium foil as like the wrap arounds, it looks like a giant TV dinner. But within it you get to watch the amazing physical feats and extraordinary musicality of the opera, which is a truly unique Chinese artform.
So here we see the introductory scene of the – for me definitely – the most memorable character in the movie, who is Leung Yee-tai, who’s
played by Lam Ching-ying. Lam Ching-ying was a student to the Chinese
Opera, studied under Madam Fan Fok Fa, who was the other main teacher
of opera at that time... Lam Ching-ying in his real opera career was
famous for playing female roles....when they actually came out of the schools as fully qualified opera performers, they then realized that the opera was somewhat a dying artform in Hong Kong, it was not enjoying anything like the popularity it had previously and so there was the sense they had to find some other use for their physical skills, so they went into kung fu movies and I think it’s fair to say that the first two generations of performers of Hong Kong films, Hong Kong action films, were opera performers and it’s probably the loss of action cinema that we don’t have anything similar today as a breeding ground for physical martial arts action performers.
This is a terrific sequence (Leung Yee-tai painting the guy’s face), a classic Sammo Hung fight to establish the physical abilities of Leung Yee-tai and using every inch of the Chinese Opera dressing room, this place had been familiar, as familiar or more familiar to Sammo than his own home, so it makes sense of him to use this as a location and we get our first chance to see the incredible adaptation that Sammo Hung has done in terms of making Wing Chun technique work on film is, take Wing Chun upriver and kind of reintroduce the Shaolin element so we get like a Wing Chun in transition.
The scene coming up is really pushing the boundaries of what you can do with this kind of film. Because we actually break into a musical number and they’re actually performing Opera… We’re going to a little Opera scene within the movie that set in an opera theater. And this sequence was actually cut from Pull No Punches, which is the American edit of Prodigal Son, because it was felt that the American audiences totally could not relate to this little musical number that’s coming up, being in the middle of what appears to be a relatively regular mainstream Chinese martial arts movie. And you see in the background of the shots a few people keep coming back again and again... and this is a thing that happens in Sammo’s movies. It’s because there was really at that time, it was a broader talent based than we have now but
there was still
relatively limited, so if you had a team on the set you had to keep
bringing them back to play supporting roles, to be doubling.
Everybody’s doubling everybody else in the course of this film. Lam
Ching-ying as well as being one of the leads was also a stuntman
actually doubling for some scenes later in the movie. The guy with the spear in the background is Yuen Mo who turns up throughout the film. Another one of the opera school classmates of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. And he’s a terrific gymnast and martial arts performer. He’s most memorable role is the mad monkey fighter in Magnificent Butcher... It must have been interesting for these guys coming back into a film about Chinese Opera as they’d spent so many years training in their youth. And this whole sequence was cut because people were like, why would they be singing to each other on stage? A rare chance to see and hear Yuen Biao and Lam Ching-yin performing opera on film, because once they made the move into doing martial arts movies, that was it for their opera career and there was no crossover, once you’d done film you wouldn’t go back into opera unless it was made for a speciality, variety, charity tv show.
Terrific chance to show off the principle techniques of Wing Chun, the close-range combat trappling and grappling the really precise use of distance between two people and the art has never had a better on screen performer than Lam Ching-ying who himself was not by any means a master of the Wing Chun style but is somebody with extraordinary physical skills, and you have Sammo who’s somebody who knows an enormous amount about Chinese kung fu… Bruce Lee said "knowing is not enough, you must apply" and Sammo Hung knows a huge amount of Chinese martial arts systems. What makes him different from some of the other people working in the field is, he knows how to apply those elements of that specific technique, or that specific style which will look good on film and he can transmit that to a third party. And if you’ve got somebody as physically capable as Lam Ching-ying, it really makes that part of the job a lot easier, but you really need those elements to be a really gifted choreographer if you’re working in this kind of period movie, you have to know the style, you have to be able to communicate the elements that are necessary for the style to work on film and then you need a team of people around you who’re physically capable of performing the movements that you’ve come up with…
During this golden era of Hong Kong martial arts films, for my taste, specifically at the Golden Harvest Studios, this time you had the greatest line up of talent in front and behind the camera that has ever existed for this particular kind of film and the whole run of movies Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo-ping and other people were doing, Jackie Chan of course was doing his films at Golden Harvest at this time was about as good as it’s ever gonna get for this particular genre. In doing this movie Sammo really wanted to communicate as well as a great story and as well as the physicality of the Wing Chun style. He’s actually bringing forward the philosophical side of Chinese martial arts. I had the honour, the privilage of working with Sammo on the film Highbinders and we had a gathering in Dublin when some of his fans from Europe came over and the conversation came to this film and to Wing Chun in general. And somebody was asking Sammo if he still trained, if he still practiced the principles of Wing Chun and he took me as his dummy and he did some close-range movements and I think my arm is still numb. He still has it, definitely, and the kung fu skills don’t seem to atrify whatsoever with the years, he’s still as powerful in terms of his physical technique.
This is the blue set. Earlier we had red background, now we have all
the blue background and it’s another example of the thought that’s gone
into the actual texture of the film. Would that every martial arts
picture in the 80s, would receive the same amount of detail, but it
didn’t, this is why in my mind… I would say, moment for moment, I
personally believe Prodigal Son is the finest Hong Kong martial arts
picture of that era. Maybe the finest one ever, if you add the
filmmaking in general, and the awesome choreography that we see scene
by scene building up to the two stand out duels which probably – in my
mind anyway – are the finest ever captured on film in Hong Kong cinema.
And believe me, there’s been a few kung fu duels shot in Hong Kong over
the last fourty years. This film was produced in 1982 and the following
year it won best choreography in Hong Kong Film Awards.Lee Man-tai actually could do basic martial arts techniques but in the little sequence that’s coming up he’s d
oubled by Sammo and Sammo’s
somebody never worried to jump in front of the camera if need be, and
obviously very smart int he way he’s doubling. It’s only because I’ve
seen the film too many times that I actually recognize Sammo ont he
receiving end of the blows from Leung Yee-tai.A great performance here from Lam Ching-ying. I really greatly admire the range that he had as an actor. He was, became synonymous with Mr. Vampire, and so after that he was doing all these variants of the Mr. Vampire role but if you look at him here or in Painted Faces where he plays this kind of failed opera star, who’s become a stuntman, then substaines his injury and has to do this scene when he’s in a delirium and if you look at him in the Ringo Lam film School of Fire where he plays this kind of no-nonsense cop, he was actually capable of a very good range of roles and it was a great loss when he passed away at such a young age from cancer, and actually it was one of the very few times I’ve seen Sammo Hung cry in public.
If I was asked to show somebody the finest scene of Hong Kong Action Cinema, Hong Kong martial arts movies, I’d actually show the fight
we’re about to see (Lam Ching-ying vs Frankie Chan) and believe me,
I’ve seen a few. I have to say that this sequence is the best
choreographed and executed that has ever been in the history of the
genre. And again, look at the detail on the uniforms, the costumes
here. They really are exquisite… Sammo has a perfect sense of pacing of
a scene, not just a mixed change of techniques, but of the shots, the
editing of the shots, the reaction of the people around the combat
that’s happening. So you get this wonderful synthesis of physicality,
of performance, of film art, and it makes what was being done at the
time in America or elsewhere in martial arts movies, it’s like a
fingerpainting next to a Picasso, when you see this. The colours, this
one set, this is probably the most intricate set built for the
whole movie and the reason is that Sammo knows this is the fight
sequence that’s really going to make the break in the movie.In this film Sammo gets to show basically every side of his abilities, as a choreographer of martial arts action, also a director of comedy, also a director of drama, but also somebody very good with suspence. Because he builds up this whole horrible sequence here (massacre). And here you get another chance to see the way that Sammo’s adapted the Wing Chun for the screen and really has payed a tribute to it’s roots as a Shaolin fighting style. Because now we really get to see kind of a refined version of Wing Chun, with very limited footworks and upper body movement. But for film that wouldn’t necessarily look as good as what we’re seeing here, so what Sammo’s done is, posited the theory that in it’s earlier stages which is where we’re at here, that Wing Chun would still look a lot like Shaolin, would look a lot more like wuxia fighting. What a wonderful shot this is. Look at the number of movements and the number of people who have to come in from frame in the exact right time for Lam Ching-ying to be able to execute. Look at the amount of action in a specific shot. There’s a story actually that van Damme came to Hong Kong on one of his several visits back int he 80s and he met Frankie Chan and said "I wanna do a HK-style martial arts picture". And
Frankie gave him the laserdisc of Prodigal Son and
van Damme came back with it the next day and said "This isn’t quite
what I had in mind". Which I can totally see why. Because it’s
difficult for most American martial artist to do 5 movements in a shot,
let alone 30, as Lam Ching-ying could do in his hayday, normally in a
martial arts picture.
We have real people lying around where the fire is at. And this is
always a tricky scenario but again, by the time this film was made,
Sammo and the rest of the stunt team had worked with probably every
physical kind of stunt scenario known to man. So the safety record of
Hong Kon film was and is very good and it’s not that the films are not
dangerous, it’s just that the director and the actors know their own
capability and they know where the lines are drawn that they must not
cross. So sometimes I think in the West where I believe the accident
record is not as good it’s because people do get overconfident and
maybe believe too much int he paratechnology, whereas in these days
they basically believed in what a human could do. Wonderful use of slow
motion sequence here (flag). Look at the use of fire. Again, a very tricky
sequence to work on, because you’ve got lot of people moving in frame
any given moment with the fire, which is one of the most unpredictable
elements known to man.Wonderful character Wong Wah Bo. A great name for Sammo Hung. It’s a perfect character name for him. So he comes here and he’s a kung
fu brother of Leung Yee-tai and he’s gonna demonstrate
calligraphy. And earlier I was saying I would pick out the fight
between Lam Ching-ying and Frankie Chan as like arguably the greatest
Chinese martial arts fight in a movie, this would be probably my
favourite non-action physical comedy sequence from a Hong Kong movie. I
love this sequence and it works, even if you’re not familiar with
calligraphy. Sammo’s character voice I believe is dubbed by Karl Maka.
Karl Maka denies that, but I wonder if that’s because at the time he
was not a contract guy at Golden Harvest, he was working for other
studios buti f you hear his voice, at the time the film was made there
was no recording of sound on the set of a Hong Kong movie, so it was
somebody else’s voice in post-production, normally just an anonymous
dubber, but this voice really sounds like Maka’s voice in the Aces Go
Places film. At the same time he and Sammo had their own production
company, so I think it might be his voice and he’s just being shy… The
more acrobatic stunts here you see from Sammo was actually performed by
Yuen Biao. There’s actually a lady writing emails to me who is a huge
Yuen Biao fan and is been listing a number of Yuen Biao appearances
where he’s doubling for other people.
Here’s a wonderful moment (painting the tree) and again, from a martial
arts picture, a Hong Kong kung fu movie, this beautiful artistic thing,
and Frankie picked just the right music to accompany it and then we get
the final burst of physicality from Sammo. Of course Sammo is amazing
in physical but there’s a point that his body being the built that he
is, cannot go beyond, so it’s clever I think that he knows how to
double himself in such a way that you would not be able to tell.
I was actually at the set when they shot this sequence (teaching
Twiggy) and no idea what I was looking at. And I remember watching
Sammo, first time I set eyes on Sammo Hung. He was actually doing the
Dan Chi Sau, the single handed Chi Sau on that unique contraption,
which incidentally a very good device… I’ve never seen that specific
kind of apparatus used outside Prodigal Son so maybe it’s an
invention of the ever agile mind of Sammo Hung.Beautiful cinematography by Ricky Lau. And again
you get that
wonderful synthesis of Sammo as a director working with his action
team, calling the shots but working with the cinematographer who he can
trust, who’ll get the shots he needs, the focus that he needs and will
also will be able to take over the production when Sammo himself is in
front of the camera, because it’s quite a challenge to be directing
yourself.A nice little touch just then, a rabbit running across int he beginning of the shot, and always Sammo looking at ways in which he can bring something new and fresh to shooting martial arts training sequences and martil arts action scenes, because he was obviously very aware that at the time this movie was made there’d been like a good 10-15 years of martial arts filmmaking in Hong Kong, so there’s a lot of ideas that’d already been used so a constant challange was and is to find new ways to do stuff.
I’m very impressed with the behind the camera action team. Sammo Hung himself, Yuen Biao, Chen Hai and Lam Ching-ying himself who plays the master on camera and off camera also was instructing people how to perform both opera and different kung fu fighting techniques. It’s probably as good a team has ever been assembled behind the camera for any Chinese martial arts movie and so when you’ve got that kind of line up behind the camera, then no wonder the on screen fight is gonna be examplery as they are.