Shanghai Blues

Official Selection, Cannes Classics, 2024 Cannes Film Festival

New 4K restoration and re-edit of the original negative supervised by Tsui Hark and Nansun Shi, in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, with soundtrack and newly recorded dialogue remixed by One Cool Sound.

Joyous and swooning, SHANGHAI BLUES bursts at the seams with the best of Tsui Hark – its harlequin soul glowing with sunnily optimistic showtunes, its everyman characters clutching their hearts dreamily, its masses of rickshaw drivers, pickpockets, jobseekers, and charlatans careening through Shanghai’s streets with Hark’s acrobatic maximalism. But mostly, this is a love triangle for the ages. On the eve of Japan’s invasion beneath an exploding sky, a soldier and young woman vow to meet again under a bridge, a pledge that later goes comically awry with mistaken identities, new loyalties, and fortunes that swing as wildly as the film’s Chaplin-esque somersaults into closets and under beds.

One of the finest visual comedies in cinema history, Tsui Hark’s intricate stagecraft whirligigs with delights. But it’s the open-hearted alchemy of three iconic Hong Kong actors in their prime that makes SHANGHAI BLUES a timeless favorite. The incomparable Sylvia Chang as a jaded nightclub singer with one last chance at love. The screwball comedic gold of Sally Yeh as a wide-eyed, can-do girl new to the city. The earnest charm of Kenny Bee as a street hawker with songwriting dreams, clutching his masterpiece: a ballad to a girl under a bridge and a city rebuilding from war. SHANGHAI BLUES might also be Tsui Hark’s most affectionate love song – an ode to hardworking folks in the midst of social upheaval who keep each other’s dreams vigorously and hilariously alive.

– Christina Ree