Shanghai Blues

Two romantic prospects meet on the eve of World War II under the Japanese-bombed sky of Shanghai. Sheltering under a bridge, they can’t see one another through the bomb-fogged night light, but they hear each other and kiss each other’s foreheads after trauma bonding as the man, Tung (Kenny Bee), decides to enlist. The romance of their kiss ties their romance with national destiny, and they promise to find one another after the war. “We’ll win. We’ll definitely win,” he reassures her, after giving her all of his cash. His money will serve her better than him should he die in combat. The interwar period of WWII and the Chinese Civil War is where legendary Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s Shanghai Blues (1984) spends most of its time. The tempestuous political timing reflects in the romantic timing for Tung and Shu (Sylvia Chang). Their paths keep crossing. They even live in the same building, and they struggle to recognize one another until Shu’s new roommate, Stool (Sally Yeh), becomes infatuated with Tung.

Shanghai Blues will always be a brilliant romantic comedy. The 40th anniversary restoration from Film Workshop further lionizes the film’s comic genius in beautiful 4k. The best of Hark’s classic is its blocking and staging. No number of decades could pass and no overton widows could reform that would dampen the effect of expert comic staging — that is, comedy dependent on the interplay and movement of characters within a set and in relation to one another. 

The best scene in the film is a complicated sequence involving several different characters in one apartment: Tung, Shu, Stool, and a burglar. Tung and Shu don’t recognize one another at this point, though after getting drenched together in the rain, he invites her to his apartment to dry and clean up. When they arrive, the opening of his unlocked door sends the burglar into hiding. The three move around the cramped apartment — indicative of a growing China, and perhaps even more reflective of the China of the 1980s than the 1940s — in a hilarious and perfectly timed ballet as the burglar avoids the other two. Stool, not recognizing her new love is unrequited, invites herself into the apartment, which sends Shu into hiding. Tung knows of two of the three others in his home, and the burglar knows of all three; everyone else paces around with less information than the next. Blocking doesn’t get much better, or effective, than this. 

Tsui Hark’s style has changed so much through the years that it’s difficult to speak in absolutes of “Harkian.” One thing that is consistent through his filmography is that his style is always heavily pronounced. That’s no difference in this earlier entry in his several-decade long filmography. Freeze frames and wipes move viewers between scenes. Every set utilizes such an involved production design that he seems to add an extra layer of visual material to his disposal. The scene of the lost lovers hiding from the bombs under the bridge foreshadows the occasionally intense stylization, though it’s easily the most embellished scene in the film. The reds and oranges are so hot and intense and the silhouette of the city is so strong that the bombs turn Shanghai into a forsaken and painterly red Gotham. 

Other things do age poorly. Some of the 1980s gender-specific humor ages seamlessly into what we now recognize as misogyny. The worst of this is an extended attempted date-rape scene where an older businessman attempts to violate Stool, which is played just like any other comic gag in the film. It too, from a technical standpoint, is expertly blocked and staged even though the jokes aren’t funny. 

There is one scene in the original cut of Tung in blackface for an advertising gig for the incredibly racist Darkie (now Darlie) toothpaste company that is almost entirely removed in the restoration. From what I can observe, it’s the only significant alteration to the two cuts, though I haven’t seen the original in full. The only glimpse of the racist costume preserved is of Stool looking down from the street of the “painted man,” as her roommate comments, from his back. The removal certainly made the film more tasteful for this first-time viewer.

The new restoration of Shanghai Blues does beg the question once again: at one point does restoration become revision? Does the difference matter? Does Tsui Hark’s approval and impetus for the changes change the overall evaluation? They aren’t new questions. They are as old as restorations themselves. George Lucas’s constant tweaking of Star Wars also shows that, at a certain point, a successful revision can erase cultural memory of the original. Maybe Tsui’s minor change here — the erasure of an insignificant and incredibly racist scene involving one of its biggest attractions, the huge Cantonese pop-star and actor Kenny Bee —  doesn’t even reach revisionist territory, but it’s certainly a step in that direction. It’s also a reminder that those overseeing such revisions will and do alter films based on the political current, and just because this change goes in a positive direction, away from overt racism (that was ill-intendedly meant as comedy), other changes may erase more important things like civil disobedience and political autonomy and re-present the “classic” films in their new, politically cleansed form.