Tsui Hark on 41 years of ‘Shanghai Blues’ and the state of Hong Kong cinema

That Hark went through this existential confrontation with his career at such an early stage is remarkable enough for being so shockingly premature. He was 33 at the time, not new to the industry or to his craft, but certainly junior, in the grand scheme of things. This is not the age when people look at themselves in the mirror and wonder if they’re in the right field. The miracle of Hark’s inner conflict, though, is its eventual outcome: the 1984 screwball romantic comedy Shanghai Blues, directed from a screenplay co-written by Chan Koon-Chung, Szeto Cheuk-Hon, and Raymond To. Authors aside, the film was actually Hark’s idea, a narrative born out of his personal dissatisfaction and uncertainty about continuing his art.

“That's how I came up with the story of Shanghai Blues,” Hark says. “It originated from the stories of performers in real life, and about how they're losing their diamond ring (as part of a performance) on the stage. In that period of time, because it was the 80s, Hong Kong was going back to mainland China, and people were thinking about whether to go or stay—that sort of thing. I think that mentality created energy in society that gave birth to Shanghai Blues.”

Such indecision drives the film’s plot, which focuses primarily on Kwok-man (Kenny Bee), who performs at a Shanghai nightclub as a clown alongside his uncle; Shu-Shu (Sylvia Chang), whom he collides with, and falls for (and vice versa), under Suzhou  Bridge, just as Japanese fighter planes bomb the city, marking the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, typically cited as the moment World War II arrived in Asia; and Stool (Sally Yeh), a bright-eyed goof who enters Kwok-man and Shu-Shu’s lives 10 years later, when Kwok-man’s returned from his voluntary service in China’s army, and Shu-Shu’s earned a reputation for herself working at the old nightclub as a dance hostess.

Shanghai Blues combines mistaken identities with will they/won’t they romantic tension. Sheltered by the bridge as the city goes up in flames in the distance in the film’s opening, Kwok-man and Shu-Shu promise to meet again at the same spot once the war is over. Arriving in Shanghai post-war, he hoofs it to Suzhou. Shu-Shu isn’t there. If the absence is felt, it’s also painfully trivial, as neither recognizes the other at first when they do inevitably reunite, even when he moves into the flat above hers. They’re two ships passing in the night, steered by folks suffering from prosopagnosia. When Stool wanders into the picture, happy-go-lucky and without much of a plan for getting by in post-war Shanghai, she latches onto Shu-Shu like a remora to a shark, moves into her flat, and develops an infatuation with Kwok-man.

Slapstick humor and acrobatic comic set pieces, choreographed like a martial arts fight sequence, define Shanghai Blues’ character, notably one staged in Kwok-man’s apartment, where he hides Shu-Shu from Stool, and both from a visiting frenemy, while a sneaky pickpocket attempts to rob the place without anyone noticing. But the movie’s prevailing atmosphere is bittersweet melancholy. Hark begins in Shanghai’s vibrant age, when people called it the “Paris of the East,” before Japan’s occupation in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The bulk of the action occurs during Shanghai’s post-war recovery, marked by economic instability, inflation, and relocation. The question of whether to remain in the city, or depart for Hong Kong, looms over people like Kwok-man and Shu-Shu, who do indeed leave Shanghai in the movie’s ending.

It’s a cutting irony that the 1990s, years after Shanghai Blues’ debuted, saw an opposite dynamic put into effect, in which China’s movie business left Hong Kong, a creative and artistic hub despite political resistance to both. “It's actually the aftermath of this trend of the people who have money moving out of Hong Kong,” Hark says. “That's why the movie industry got affected, because the major investors were not in Hong Kong.” That’s a marked change from the environment Hark made Shanghai Blues in: the 1980s were a golden age for film in Hong Kong, and Shanghai Blues is one of its crown jewels, which is saying quite a lot, with a filmography that includes masterpieces like Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind from that decade alone. (Another irony: Hark knocked out several more classics, like Once Upon a Time in China, in the 1990s, despite the era’s industrial shifts.)

The movies recovered in Hong Kong, of course, but the apparatus that brought the city prestige 40 years ago nonetheless wants for improvements. “I would not say (the situation now) is not worse than (the 1990s), but it's not good,” Hark says. “The market of Hong Kong is very limited to Hong Kong audiences, and similarly, it's difficult to find audiences that can actually appreciate films from mainland China or Taiwan. Obviously, I think Taiwan’s audience would like to watch movies made in Taiwan, and Hong Kong people would like to watch movies made in Hong Kong, and mainland China would like to watch movies made in mainland China. So the market is quite differentiated. That’s why we try to find ways to amalgamate the three markets together, to make a good perspective for the film industry in these three places.”

Netflix, and streaming in general, Hark notes, add to these problems. Paying the price of admission to a movie theater, knowing that the titles playing there will eventually end up on a streaming service, is a hard sell for these audiences. “Quite a big portion of the theaters are closing down, or doing something else, because the movie business is not as good as before,” Hark says. It’s common for Westerners to hold up a movie like, say, Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, and lament that such a production couldn’t possibly get made today because of the realignment of our cultural values—they don’t make ‘em like they used to, now that our movie industry is too woke. Imagine, though, not being able to make a movie because there simply isn’t the economic will or financial incentive to fund one. Forget whether or not Shanghai Blues would receive a greenlight in regards to its material. You’d have to convince someone to give you resources first.

Hark actually does believe Shanghai Blues, or a movie like it, could get made today, though not without vaulting a few hurdles along the way; a film rooted in nostalgia, as Shanghai Blues is, would face challenges in the market and from investors. “It’s quite difficult to convince the people who give you money to make a film that has the risk of the market,” Hark says. “Even now, you have a lot of investors who have a brainstorming group committee in their company to screen all these features, and screen all these scripts, and they come up with all these problems. ‘Your script has this problem, your story has that problem.’” In his estimation, the resistance he describes is really a resistance to newness: a fear, maybe, of adapting to the times and to modern sensibilities, while clinging to bygone traditions of Hong Kong’s movie industry, to the detriment of that very industry.

The way Hark talks about these groups gives the impression of a shadowy cabal hidden from the view of the public and the directors pitching their scripts and their movies. What’s depressing is that he isn’t exaggerating. “(The investors) always see the problem. They don't see the good thing about the new direction or new idea,” Hark points out. “They always see the problems of new ideas. They don't see the promise, the prospect, of the new idea. Whenever you say, ‘Can I talk to these people?’ they never come up and talk to you face to face.” It is, in his words, a “bad vibe” for the industry.

But bad vibes have good solutions. Hark, a maverick of his time, and frankly any time, understands well that good ideas, good scripts, and good aesthetics make good movies—but also that good movies get made with good bottom lines. “One major factor that would revive the industry: we have to make movies on a reasonable budget,” Hark says. “That's how Hong Kong movies came about. Before, Hong Kong movies were for a little market. That’s why they usually didn't have enough budget to work on seemingly big projects. But they can cheat around to find a way to do that, and in bad times, (filmmakers) have to develop that kind of instinct and power, in order to make their films.”

They have to meet audiences where they are, too, though the reverse is literally true. Directors, moviegoers, and financiers each make up the industry’s ecosystem; they each play different roles in sustaining its wellbeing, of course, but none can thrive without the others. Hark sees that relationship as key. “These three aspects of the industry should sit together, and find out the meaning of entertainment, and the meaning of movies,” he says. This is a radical idea that, frankly, shouldn’t feel radical at all. The reality is that, just as Kwok-man and Shu-Shu quit Shanghai, moviegoers have quit the movies. If the art form is to survive, then maybe it’s on new directors, with the new ideas Hark speaks of, to bring those viewers back.