Text/Meng Shen Mu Mu
As we all know, the golden age of Hong Kong martial arts films, are relying on real kung fu to fight, only to get the praise and recognition of the world, so speaking of martial arts films, we have to mention those martial arts in the sixties and seventies, so far, a total of three periods, one is the earliest Yu Zhanyuan, Yuan Xiaotian's generation, trained the first batch of martial arts actors, and then Tang Jia, Han Yingjie, trained the second batch of action superstars, including Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Yuan Biao, Hong Jinbao, Lin Zhengying, etc., today we want to talk about it, This indispensable figure in the golden age of Hong Kong martial arts, and even in the entire history of development, is Han Yingjie, who co-created a golden age of kung fu films with Bruce Lee.
Han Yingjie was born in 1927 in Shanghai, China.
When he was just 3 years old, he moved to the capital Beijing with his parents, because the whole era was turbulent at that time, everyone thought that learning a craft could survive, so after Han Yingjie arrived in Beijing, he joined the Beijing Repertory Theatre to learn art, which was a whole decade, and he learned a lot of real kung fu in a down-to-earth manner.
When he was 18 years old, he returned to Shanghai and recruited himself as a film stuntman. At that time, mainland films were still very traditional and conservative, I heard that Hong Kong's film development was good, Han Yingjie moved to Hong Kong and Singapore in the 50s to seek development, he first carried out martial arts and special arts exhibitions and other extras work, and did not have much breakthrough.
It was not until the 60s that he returned to Hong Kong to join shaw's company, which opened the golden age of martial arts movies, bringing out many martial arts superstars, you know, at that time, many martial arts actors dreamed of joining Shaw, why did Hong Jinbao join? In fact, it is also very simple, Hong Jinbao studied under Yu Zhanyuan, and Han Yingjie is Yu Zhanyuan's son-in-law, so his father-in-law's apprentice, Han Yingjie, naturally took good care of him, so he became popular with Hong Jinbao and led Jackie Chan, Yuan Biao, Lin Zhengying and other division brothers into the debut.
In addition to leading a group of martial arts actors at Shaw, Han Yingjie was also Bruce Lee's film martial arts instructor, which brought his group of excellent martial artists to Bruce Lee. Later, Chen Huiyi, Lin Zhengying and others became Bruce Lee's love generals, and they and Bruce Lee cooperated tacitly, and Bruce Lee filmed the action scenes if these people were not present or even willing not to shoot.
In 1971, Han Yingjie began to cooperate with superstar Bruce Lee.
It is said that as an action director in the movie "Big Brother Tangshan", he also starred in a role. Han Yingjie later recalled that Bruce Lee's leg punches were quite amazing, and although he had some control during the filming, any actor was afraid to cross the line with him, but this would give people a sense of fist-to-flesh realism. Han Yingjie was kicked in the cheek by Bruce Lee, but he was slightly injured.
The realism in this kind of fight is something that previous Hong Kong films did not have. This time the misfire incident, the media expanded it into many legendary stories, including Bruce Lee as deliberately kicking Han Yingjie, because there were more conflicts between the two during the filming process, Bruce Lee took this communiqué to take revenge, in fact, Bruce Lee would never be so narrow-minded. Han Yingjie was mistakenly injured by Bruce Lee, but became a friend of Bruce Lee.
Han Yingjie became one of the famous Hong Kong film actors and directors in a short period of time.
However, after Bruce Lee's death, hong Kong Wuxing suddenly had no leader, at this time Hong Jinbao decided to form his own team, so he found his brother-in-law Han Yingjie. At that time, Han Yingjie had been resting for many years and no longer did martial arts instruction, but many martial artists came out from under his hands and respected him very much. Therefore, with the help of Han Yingjie, Hong Jinbao quickly formed his own team, which was the later Hong family class.
Soon after, Han Yingjie completely quit the film industry, and in 1990, he was invited by the big director Hu Jinquan to play the role of Feng Qingyang in the film "Smiling Proud of the Jianghu". And this role has also become the last role in Han Yingjie's life.
In 1991, Han Yingjie suffered from terminal cancer, and his condition deteriorated sharply, and he eventually died at the age of 64. The most influential kung fu hero in the history of Hong Kong action movies has left the fans forever.