Stanley Kwan’s lost ‘Center Stage’ has finally come back
The filmmaker's unconventional portrait of two actresses across two decades returns to theaters in a restored director’s cut
Stanley Kwan speaks for MCL Cinemas
Film Movement
Words by Andy Crump
In 1935, Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu took her own life at just 24 years old. Her choice was the culmination of tabloid frenzies regarding her personal as well as her professional life—a permanent choice, of course, but a choice nonetheless. Such was her fame and influence, though, that Lingyu’s name remained in memory in Chinese cinema over the coming decades, right into the 1990s—when Hong Kong filmmaker and producer Stanley Kwan shot Center Stage (1991).
One part biography of Lingyu’s life, one part documentary exploration of her character via interviews conducted with her friends and peers, the film remains an enigma among other biopics as a hybrid project. It’s also an absentee in U.S. theaters, having never received a proper commercial release in this country; rather, it’s screened at film festivals, and for that matter, the cut that attendees at these events saw was the studio’s cut, and not Kwan’s.
Fortunately, 35 years after its premiere in Taiwan, Center Stage has been restored, and is currently in theaters stateside, for new generations of moviegoers unacquainted with not only Lingyu, but with the film’s star, Maggie Cheung. Cheung, like Lingyu, is an icon of her era. She’s also retired as of 2004, and presently lives outside the public eye as of the mid-2010s. In a way, this feels like a great shame for the movies—Cheung is one of the true greats of the big screen, from any nation, period—but, as Kwan and I recently discussed, she has her reasons. Besides: they add to her legend, just as surely as Center Stage’s new presentation will add to its esteem.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Andy Crump: I'm curious how you feel about Center Stage being 35 years old, and what your relationship to the movie is three-plus decades (since its premiere). What role do you see it playing in your career at this point in time?
Stanley Kwan: Actually, as a director, I haven't thought too much about my film having a good or bad box office total, or reviews, or anything. At the time, I wanted to make a film about this character, telling the story the way that I did, so I just went for it. Certainly I'm glad that after 35 years, Center Stage will be released (in 4K) in the United States, and that a much bigger audience will be able to see the film. It’s made me think that time is so fast, that it’s already been 35 years.
When I made the film, after I’d made Rouge (1987), Golden Harvest wanted to work with Anita Mui again. But for personal reasons, Anita refused to go to Shanghai to make (Center Stage). So that's why I cast Maggie. Before Center Stage, we worked together on a film called Full Moon in New York. That was the first time I worked with her; she was great. But at the same time, when I cast Maggie instead of Anita, I had already finished the research about Ruan Lingyu’s character.
When I was in middle school, there was a film academy in Hong Kong where we got the chance to watch most of the 1930s and 1940s era Shanghai films, including some silent movies starring Ruan Lingyu. I appreciated the way they made those films, and most of them were very good. But Maggie doesn't look like Ruan Lingyu that much—the face, the feeling. Anita looked like Ruan Lingyu much more than Maggie did, so that led me to the new structure of the film. In terms of how to tell the story, I wanted to tell not only the traditional biography of Ruan Lingyu, but also the story of Maggie Cheung. While we were preparing (for production), Maggie, because of the love letter to her boyfriend that was published by tabloids, suffered a lot. (Author’s note: JoySauce reached out to Kwan after the interview for verification; Cheung was indeed subject to tabloid attention in the 1990s over a private letter to her boyfriend, but the story wasn’t reported on in U.S. media.) So because of that, I understood Maggie much more than before.
That's why the structure helped me tell the story of not only Ruan Lingyu, but two women in two decades: Maggie and Ruan Lingyu. So the film isn’t a traditional film biography of an actress. It’s quite abstract.
AC: I'm smiling because I’m thinking about what the movie would be like, and what we would have lost, had Anita starred in it. As is, (Center Stage) is much more about you and the cast doing anthropological work, sitting and talking about Ruan, watching the interviews, watching her movies. In the film, you ask Maggie, "Do you want to be remembered half a century later?" And she says, "That's not so important to me, but if people do remember me, it'll be in a different light than Ruan."
SK: From the very beginning of the film. I want to ask, have you seen Maggie in Wong Kar-wai’s first film, As Tears Go By?
Stanley Kwan
Film Movement
AC: I’ve seen most of her movies! I’m a great admirer of her work.
SK: Certainly, Maggie was recognized as a good actress, starting with that film. But before Center Stage, we worked on Full Moon in New York, and Maggie worked with Sylvia Chang and Siqin Gaowa from mainland China. I noticed that Maggie, as an actress, loved performing, she loved to understand different characters, and she loved to share the feelings of the character and herself. So, that's why Center Stage is not a film that’s only about Ruan Lingyu. It’s talking about two actors in two decades.
AC: I like that quality. I imagine I’d have liked the straightforward biography, too, had that happened, but the thing (Center Stage) wound up being is appealing to me. The movie will change over time, the further that people get away from it, the more the years go by. It's certainly interesting to think about now that Maggie’s retired.
SK: I have to tell you a story: Right after the Berlin International Film Festival (in 1992), Maggie won the Best Actress award. When the film came back to Hong Kong, Jackie Chan was the executive producer of the film, and he had a charity fund. She arranged a premiere of the film for the charity fund in a very big cinema in 1992, in Hong Kong. It was a full house because of Jackie, and maybe not because of the film, right? And by the end of the film, just half of the audience had stayed in the cinema. The other half had left in the middle of the film. So Golden Harvest insisted I cut the final scene, and just go for the funeral scene and not include a documentary about how we made that funeral scene. So when the film was released in Hong Kong in 1992, that was not a director's cut. It's a shortened cut, especially the final scene.
AC: You spoke about the opportunity for people to see this movie again after 35 years, and it's not just that people are getting the chance to see this movie again, but to see the movie in its entirety. How does that make you feel? Because in the '90s, I feel like this was routine: films from Asian countries would be cut to pieces, especially for American audiences.
SK: Especially about the cut version that Golden Harvest insisted on. At that time, I understood that Golden Harvest was a very commercial-thinking film company. They insisted I just had to cut the ending. Not the whole film—the interviews and all that—but the final scene. Maybe they had their reason. With Golden Harvest, and especially with Jackie Chan as executive producer, all that I can do, according to their requirements, is just cut it. And fortunately, before I did, we sent the director’s cut to the Sydney Film Festival, and they kept the copy. So they sent me back the copy, and we finally got the director’s cut version again. Every single film has its fate.
AC: This a non-traditional way to tell a story about a real-life figure. It feels like a vessel of memory. You and the rest of the cast members put your hopes for how you’ll be remembered into it. What does a film like this say to an audience today? We're in such a different time. Everything’s easily preserved on phones, for instance. I wonder if (the film’s) restoration and re-release is an opportunity for people to appreciate what it meant to live in a time where we didn't have access to instant information.
SK: I think, especially after 35 years, young audiences today don’t know who Ruan Lingyu is. In the 1980s and 1990s, certainly people who loved movies remembered her. But now, instead of Ruan Lingyu, I'm quite sure they remember Maggie Cheung. Younger audiences can still remember images of Maggie—in In the Mood for Love, As Tears Go By, all of Wong Kar-wai’s films with her, and Full Moon in New York and Center Stage, and Peter Chan’s film with Leon Lai (Comrades: Almost a Love Story). But now Maggie has quit acting. So maybe the way that I treat Maggie in Center Stage, for the young audiences today, will make her another legend for them to remember.
Published on August 14, 2026
Words by Andy Crump
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers movies, beer, music, fatherhood, and way too many other subjects for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours: Paste Magazine, Inverse, The New York Times, Hop Culture, Polygon, and Men's Health, plus more. You can follow him on Bluesky and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer.