When Shanghai Blues was released in 1984, it marked a rebirth for Tsui Hark, the enfant terrible of the Hong Kong New Wave, who was on the verge of quitting filmmaking altogether. The film launched Tsui's now legendary production company Film Workshop, which he co-founded with Nansun Shi, and kicked off the beginning of a new creative chapter of genre experimentation and bold formal invention in his career. Shanghai Blues returns to the big screen 40 years later in a brand new 4K restoration, with a re-dubbing featuring multiple Chinese dialects that match the linguistic diversity of Republic era Shanghai.
I had the privilege of speaking with Tsui about the social textures of 1930s Shanghai, his inspirations from both Hollywood comedies and the Chinese Leftist Film Movement, his long and fruitful collaboration with composer James Wong, and his fascination with stories about mistaken identity. His answers are just as circuitous and paradoxical as his films: whimsical, melancholic, and full of energy. They not only offer us a way to look back at Shanghai Blues, but also a glimpse into the alchemy of an auteur concerned with reimagining the past to speak about the present.
Frank Yan: Shanghai Blues was the first film produced under the banner of the Film Workshop. What made you decide to open your own studio and choose this particular film as its first project?
Tsui Hark: The whole thing came from me thinking about retiring from the film industry. I didn't feel like I was doing the kind of filmmaking that I liked. I thought that maybe it was not the right era for my filmmaking career. I was very nave to think about retiring.
During this period, I heard a lot of very interesting stories from friends. One of the stories was about two girls who have a mistaken identity and make a lot of funny mistakes during a performance. I thought that was a very interesting idea that could be a movie. Then I started writing a script.
FY: Prior to Shanghai Blues you made All the Wrong Clues [1981], which is also set in the Republic era. After Shanghai Blues you made another film set during that same period: Peking Opera Blues [1986]. What is your fascination with this particular era of Chinese history?
But for Shanghai Blues, it was very clear that the background was 1938. It's a year when everybody was thinking about moving around and I thought it could be a very serious topic. That's why the film was set in the 1930s.
FY: You mentioned the influence of Hollywood genres, and I think Shanghai Blues is very much a screwball comedy and a backstage musical. Can you talk about the influence of classic Hollywood on you?
TH: But you see, if you talk about Shanghai Blues, we actually took references from the black-and-white oldie movies from Shanghai. I did research on the situation in Shanghai during that time period in all aspects: arts, characters, and also the social background. I took a lot of material and references from old Chinese movies.
But I think comedy is regarded as a universal [narrative] device. If you use common humor as a base to create entertainment, it becomes something that we can share with people from different cultures. I think it is important that we understand what kind of story we are telling and what specific cultural background we are creating; however, we still need some kind of universal common humor as a base so that we can be entertained by the movie [across cultures].
I definitely think that watching Chaplin, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, George Cukor, and many more good comedy directors for many years gave me a lot of inspiration in terms of how I think of comedy. But when you actually do the comedy, you have to get yourself out of it. Otherwise, you will be stuck with all these inappropriate kinds of arrangements that would not fit your story.
FY: You made a few changes with the new restoration and the most noticeable one is re-dubbing it with Shanghainese, Mandarin, and other dialects. What's the reason for this? How did