‘We need emotional content … not anger!” Bruce Lee’s unique screen presence is even more arresting in non-fight mode in this martial arts classic, now re-released for its 50th anniversary. The quote above comes from a scene in which Lee schools a quivering young teen novitiate (Sammo Hung) in kung fu, and his gnomic instructions are delivered with that dreamy-insinuating half-smile that Lee’s face always gravitated towards. While discussing his vocation with a Shaolin master earlier in the movie, Lee says that his technique is “to have no technique” and that approaching an opponent is to “have no opponent”, a Zen transcendence through physical discipline and combat to a purified state in which what he has learned is not needed.
Lee’s absolute conviction in selling these lines is what earned him his army of fans: no martial arts star does anything like it today. Jackie Chan approximates the ingredient of playfulness, although Lee is never joking – and it’s what still infuriates fans when they think about Lee not being allowed to play the lead in the 70s TV show Kung Fu that wound up starring David Carradine. Lee undoubtedly created the conditions in which Asian American stars could succeed in Hollywood, although recently he has been the subject of a slightly tiresome culture-war contest in which people have taken offence on his behalf about the way he was portrayed in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
