In Project A, which he also directed, Chan perfected his comic timing and brought some dangerous and ambitious stunts into the mix. The potent combination of screwball comedy, nerve-racking stunts, and kung fu quickly became Chan’s signature style.

The story, co-written by Chan, is scatterbrained but coherent. Set in colonial times. Chan plays Dragon, a sergeant in the marine police who must work with a regular cop, played by Yuen Biao, to bring a shipload of pirates to justice.

Chan choreographed the fight scenes with Hung, and went for something different. The fights are neither one-against-one or one-against-many, they are many-against-many – everyone fights everybody else at the same time.

The stunts are thrilling and are shown in full frame with no cuts, so that the audience can see that Chan and the stuntmen are not faking them. This was to become a Chan trademark.

The film’s most stunning moment is Chan’s free jump from a 72-foot (22-metre) high foot clock tower. Chan did three takes of the stunt, which used two awnings to break his fall. The first two stunts were successful, but on the third take Chan bounced off the second awning and hit the ground.

In what was to become another hallmark of a Jackie Chan film, an outtake of the failed stunt was shown under the closing credits. Moreover, Chan broke temporal continuity by showing the successful stunt twice in the film, a stylistic technique that became another element of his signature style.  

Chan and Hung not only choreographed the fights, they carefully planned the chase sequences. A scene in which Chan uses a bicycle to escape his pursuers in an alley is particularly memorable. The film’s physical antics remind the viewer of the work of silent-era stars such as Buster Keaton, although – as Chan noted in the interview below – he had not seen Buster Keaton’s films when he made Project A.

In Project A, he shows a remarkable command of all the elements of filmmaking. In this previously unpublished interview from 1998, Chan talked to this writer about the making of the film.

Why do you think Project A was such a big success in Hong Kong?

I had changed my style and I was doing something different, and Hong Kong audiences always like that. It’s why I am always changing what I do. I’d moved from kung fu to comedy kung fu in Drunken Master, I’d mixed sport and kung fu in Dragon Lord, and then we had action and stunt action – and some dangerous stunts! – in Project A.

What were you aiming to achieve with the film?

People would already come to see a film with Jackie Chan in it. My aim for Project A was to give me a stronger appeal. I wanted to make them want to come and see me, Jackie Chan.

How did you keep the action scenes so fresh and original in your movies back then?

Action choreographers used to work on 10 or more movies a year. So of course they would run out of ideas and repeat themselves. They might have been working on one film in the day and another film at night. So things started to look similar. After I signed with Golden Harvest [in 1980] I didn’t work like that. I worked on less films.  

Is the jump from the clock tower one of your favourite stunts?

It’s not really a favourite, but I don’t really have favourite stunts. When you are doing a stunt like that, things are quite easy – you either succeed and survive, or you fail and injure yourself, or even die. To design a stunt is the difficult thing. You are going to jump from a building – but how do you do the jump to make it look interesting? That is the challenging part. You have to work it out.  

What gave you the idea to show both takes of the stunt in the film, one after the other?

I was the first to do that, to use that double cut idea. To be honest, it was just something that I thought of, and I went ahead and did it. I have no knowledge of film theory. I am not a film professor. I just thought it would look good. My movies are the result of my long experience of filmmaking – I’m not a theorist. During my career, I have developed a liking for certain techniques.  

You had tried appearing in films in the US before Project A and that did not go very well. How did that affect your decision to make Project A ?

  But I was the biggest star in Asia, so I decided to come back. I decided to make my own films. I spent two or three years establishing my image again with audiences, with films like Project A. The audience really liked it.

Critics often compare your work in Project A to that of silent film stars like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. I’m guessing you had not actually seen the work of those stars when you made Project A .

Yes, that’s right. I didn’t actually see films by Buster Keaton until later – there were no videos back then. What happened was Western critics would always say that I was like Buster Keaton, and I noticed they seemed to like it if I agreed and said he influenced me. So I said he had.

But really, I had worked out that for myself. I was actually already doing these kind of things in The Young Master. Then one day, new technology comes out – the video – and I had a chance to look at Buster Keaton films. I thought, Wow I really do seem to be like this guy!

In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here.