Fist of Fury

Fist of Fury (精武門, Jingwu Men) is a 1972 Hong Kong action film that director Lo Wei made for Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest studio. Bruce Lee plays the lead role of Chen Zhen. In the USA the film was released as The Chinese Connection. The story begins in Shanghai in 1908. Chen Zhen returns to the Jingwu school and learns that his master Huo Yuanjia has died. A Japanese dojo in the Hongkou district mocks the students with a sign reading Sick Man of East Asia, and Chen answers by breaking into the dojo. Chen Zhen is a character invented for the film; Huo Yuanjia and the Jingwu association he founded are real. The fights pit Chen against the students and the master of the Japanese dojo. Bruce Lee, a Wing Chun practitioner and the founder of Jeet Kune Do, is also credited as the author of the action choreography. A verbal quarrel broke out between Lee and Lo Wei which, according to Wikipedia, led Lee to direct his next film himself. Because of the anti-Japanese content, Raymond Chow had the Japanese version censored. The film was followed by sequels and new adaptations: New Fist of Fury (1976) with Jackie Chan, Fist of Fury II (1977), Fist of Fury III and Last Fist of Fury (both 1979), Fist of Fury 1991, the loose remake Fist of Legend (1994) with Jet Li, the television series Fist of Fury (1995) with Donnie Yen, and Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2010).

Martial arts in this work

Fight choreography

Sources disagree on who authored the fight scenes: English-language ones name Bruce Lee as the author of the action choreography, while Chinese-language ones name Han Ying-chieh as head of the fight scenes, who also plays the steward Feng in the film. These may be different conceptions of the same roles; we have not been able to document how they divided the work. According to Wikipedia, the fights are fairly realistic for their time and use slow motion only sparingly. The film was shot without synchronous sound, and the dialogue and sound effects were added by dubbing. In the final fight Jackie Chan stood in for Chikara Hashimoto in the jumping kick; Lam Ching-ying, Yuen Biao and Corey Yuen appear in minor roles as students.

Fact and fiction

Huo Yuanjia (1868–1910) came from Jinghai near Tianjin and learned Mizongyi from his father Huo Endi. In 1909–1910 he founded the Jingwu (Chin Woo) association in Shanghai with Nong Jinsun, which according to Wikipedia was the first civic martial arts organisation in China not tied to a single style. He died in Shanghai on 14 September 1910. The cause of his death is disputed: the historian Chen Gongzhe reports vomiting of blood, while part of the Jingwu leadership speculated that the Japanese had poisoned him. Remains exhumed in 1989 contained arsenic, which traditional Chinese medicine used as a remedy, so deliberate poisoning cannot be proven. Chen's revenge was added only by the film. Wikipedia regards the sign forbidding dogs and Chinese from entering a Shanghai park as historically documented, but its exact wording is debated by scholars; the scene at the park entrance was shot in the Luís de Camões garden in Macau.

People and martial arts

• Huo Yuanjiathe real person the work is about· Mizongyi (Lost Track Boxing) (real practitioner)
• Lo WeiDirector
• Han Ying-chiehAction director
• Bruce LeeFight choreographer· Jeet Kune Do (real practitioner)
• Bruce LeeActor — as Chen Zhen· Jeet Kune Do (real practitioner)