Lalo Schifrin – Operation Dragon: “Bruce Lee was a fan of the music from Mission Impossible”

50 years after his premature death, Arte is devoting its evening to the star, by rebroadcasting Robert Clouse’s classic followed by the documentary Be Water.

Bruce Lee will be in the spotlight this evening on Arte. For the 50th anniversary ofOperation Dragonwhich coincides with that of the actor’s early death, at only 32 years old, from cerebral edema, the film is being released on 4K blu-ray.

First devotes a file to this Warner Bros reissue in No. 544 (with Napoleon In front page). Here is an extract, while waiting to watch the cult film at 8:50 p.m. on Channel 7. We also share a passage from our interview with Lalo Schifrinthe film’s composer, who shared his favorite soundtracks in 2016 in our magazine.

“Bruce Lee was a fan of the music of Mission Impossible, he tells us about what led him to agree to work on Operation Dragon. I discovered that, in Hong Kong, he practiced this music every day. The main theme obsessed him. In short, he knew my work and when it was necessary to find a composer for his first American film, he gave my name. I had worked on ethnomusicology during my years of study so I knew a little about Far Eastern music and as with Luke, I wanted to mix genres, mixing Asian elements with jazz in a very orchestral score. I loved working with Bruce Lee. I remember that during a recording, he turned to me and asked me if I played sports. I replied “a bit of tennis”. And Bruce then told me that I should take up martial arts. He was my teacher and I am a black belt!”

Operation Dragona film inhabited by the death drive

Presenting the reissue of this classic martial arts film, François Grelet writes:

“Like all Bruce Lee films, Operation Dragon is above all a vehicle, but this one is a little more chrome than the others. It is symptomatic of a certain Hollywood know-how of the 70s which knew how to express itself even when the technical team did not only bring together big names (there is still Lalo Schifrin here, whose oriental-funky-lounge soundtrack has become a classic). Released a few weeks after the death of its star, the film has always mourned it and no spectator in the world has ever been able to watch it other than as a totally mortifying experience. Fifty years later, Operation Dragon is always a film inhabited by the death drive, and this much more than the three feature films which precede it in the film of its headliner.

(…)

In Operation Dragon, for its big world premiere, the paradigm suddenly changed: Bruce Lee played a Hong Kong imitation James Bond, but above all a rather ghostly presence. Sent by the government to a lost island in the middle of international waters, he was supposed to put an end to the actions of his owner, a man named Han, an improbable mix between Jeffrey Epstein, Pablo Escobar and a defrocked Shaolin monk.

If Lee (that’s the name of the hero of the film) was not asked, it was not only out of the goodness of his heart, but because the henchman of the big bad was responsible for the death of his sister. As in all his films, Bruce Lee was guided by a certain thirst for revenge, but in Operation Dragon, it did not lead to any cathartic or liberating feeling. From the first moments of the film, Lee (the hero as well as the actor) appears a little defeated, constrained, without illusion in the face of the mission entrusted to him and his destiny. Unlike the two other protagonists of the film, played by the very cheeky Jim Kelly and John Saxon, he refuses to taste the pleasures of the flesh and kindly rejects the prostitutes offered to him – he prefers to studiously write his diary. He also seems to have absolutely no ties of friendship or empathy with his American comrades (united by the Vietnam War), nor with anyone else in the film, for that matter. When he has the opportunity to deliver a few cameo and caged young girls, he will prefer to chart his course, and not burn his undercover status…

This is the whole specificity of the film and its great power of attraction: something here seems to have died out in Bruce Lee, who has become a sort of angel of vengeance undermined by a certain melancholy, that is to say the opposite of not only James Bond, but also Bruce Lee.”

The rest of our special report Bruce Lee focuses on the particularly chaotic production ofOperation Dragonas well as the release of an English box set published by Arrow dedicated to his short filmography: Bruce Lee at the Golden Harvest. Recommended to all fans, even if it doesn’t exist in French.

Bruce Lee, died after drinking too much water?

Finally note thatOperation Dragon will be followed by Be Water – the story of Bruce Lee. This documentary, which traces the difficult rise of the Chinese star in the United States, and his attempt to break racist prejudices, is already visible for free on the channel’s website. For this portrait, Bao Nguyen collected testimonies from his widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, and their daughter Sharon, interspersed with archival and personal images.

Operation Dragon is also to see on Arte.TV, but only from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., as it is prohibited for under 16s. To access it, you must specify your age and log in to the site. This evening, the broadcast of the film in the first part of the evening will be accompanied by a stamp “-16”, because the channels only have the right to very few adult films in prime time per year: four in total. It is for this reason that Django Unchainedby Quentin Tarantino, is “softened” in its TV versionwith its bloodiest shots cut, or thatOnce Upon a Time… in Hollywood was revealed for the first time in the clear cut into two partswith a notice warning that its ending (broadcast after 10 p.m.) contained graphic violence.

Chad Stahelski pays tribute to Bruce Lee for the 50th anniversary of The Fury to Conquer