Celebrating his 75th birthday this year after working in the industry for nearly a half-century, Tsui Hark is one of the great entertainers in Hong Kong filmmaking. While his latest feature recently arrived in theaters, one of his restored classics will now be getting a summer bow. His 1984 rom-com Shanghai Blues, starring Sylvia Chang, Kenny Bee, and Sally Yeh, has been restored in 4K and will now open in theaters beginning June 20. Ahead of the release, Film Movement have debuted the new trailer and poster.
The 4K restoration of SHANGHAI BLUES was supervised from the original negative by Tsui Hark with L’Immagine Ritrovata and the soundtrack remixed by One Cool Sound.
Here’s the synopsis: “In 1937, after The Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out, a soldier and a young woman have an awkward meet cute in darkness under a bridge as they seek refuge during a bomb raid. Although they can’t see each other’s faces they promise to meet again after the dust settles. Ten years later the soldier, now a burgeoning songwriter and tuba-player in a marching band, is back in town desperately searching for his would-be soulmate. As fate would have it they end up living in the same building unbeknownst to each other. Through a series of mishaps he mistakes her new ingénue roommate for his love interest and wacky love triangle hijinks ensue.”
“That was 1984, the year I decided to retire. I felt like I’d done the same story so many times that I shouldn’t make films anymore. There were still a couple of stories I overheard or that friends passed around. I offered Shanghai Blues to Yonfan [director of A Certain Romance and other films], but the investors made me switch from producer to director,” Tsui Hark recently told us. “I wanted to do something different, but I faced a lot of challenges. There’s no fighting, for example. It’s my first romantic comedy, the first time I could deal with how I viewed women. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I tried. Maybe that’s why it’s the most important work in my career. It’s a romance with Sylvia and Sally, but it’s really a story about leaving a place, departing from a city. 1957 was a dark time––no one knew whether to stay or leave for Hong Kong––but we had to make a marketable comedy, which is why we focused on the romantic triangle.”
See the trailer and poster below.
