Tsui Hark’s Peking Opera Blues is part of the Hong Kong Cinema Classics collection mentioned in this month’s intro, and is set for release on North American streaming services in July. But—perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not—another distributor, Film Movement, preempts that release this month with its restoration of another Hark film, Shanghai Blues. Shanghai is the lesser known of the two movies, at least in the West; as Schratzi writes, “[in] its home country… it’s rightfully revered as a beloved classic.” Set in the early days of the second Sino-Japanese War, it’s a bright and lively pseudo-musical that, despite its wartime setting, is “light as air and fast as a rocket,” as Schratzi puts it.
A pivot from his angrier, more pointedly political early work into mainstream escapism, Shanghai Blues birthed the version of Tsui Hark who produced and/or directed some of the most commercially successful films in Hong Kong cinema. More than anything, however, Shanghai Blues is recommended for fans of previous Shelf Life selections One from the Heart and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, who will swoon for this film’s bright, saturated fruit-candy palette, hazy neon lighting and heightened romantic artificiality. Filipe writes that it has “some of the most inviting colors of any major 1980s film,” noting a nostalgia for “Chinese cinema past” that gives the movie a bittersweet edge.
Combined with some good old-fashioned Hong Kong slapstick comedy, this is a capital-M Movie, one that hasn’t aged well in every aspect—one scene parallels an infamous moment in Revenge of the Nerds—but remains an airy confection that Kyle describes as “all I’ve ever wanted in a movie.” Overseen by Hark and completed at Italy’s L’Immagine Ritrovata, Film Movement’s new 4K restoration premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and begins its North American theatrical tour on June 20.
