Shanghai Blues (1984) - Tsui Hark

Set largely in Shanghai after the war with Japan, Tsai Hark's Shanghai Blues exists in an epoch plagued with mass change and disruption, the city serving as a place of refuge for the masses who arrive in the city seeking work. A sweeping romance at its core, the presumptive treatment of Shanghai Blues would be one of struggle and triumph and while Hark’s film showcases these traits, his tonal treatment has more in common with old Hollywood slapstick comedies than pensive social drama, employing comedy to create an infectious and endearing portrait of the working class. A largely plotless exercise which is structurally held together by a missed-connection romantic motif that spans 10 years in the making, Shanghai Blues’s comedic sensibilities and extraordinary use of space for physical comedy elicit a consistent, infectious charm while managing to never obfuscate the underlying drama and thematic sensibilities of Tsui’s portrait of post-war Shanghai. The physical comedy set-pieces and their inventive use of space arguably heighten the film’s thematic impact, being coupled by truly endearing performances of struggle and triumph which are light in tone but pointed in how they portray the day-to-day of those seeking to improve their lives. The inventive comedic set-pieces, sharp dialogue, and use of movement and staging draw obvious parallels with everyone from Buster Keaton to an assortment of screwball comedies from the 1940-50s, vibrantly using the space to create dynamic comedy. Sally Yeh in particular gives such an infectious and expressive performance in this I started day-dreaming about a world in which she and Jerry Lewis could have shared the same screen. Textually an absolutely endearing post-war comedy, Shanghai Blues’ subtextually says a lot about diaspora, inequality, and misogyny embedded into society, doing so with a thick comedic veneer which makes this film quite frankly one of Hark’s very best films.