Remastered: Happy Together - Part I

With the advent of the new 4K restorations of WKW's movies, I've decided to give this neglected blog some attention once again. But where do I start? I can't feel I can comment on the new 4K restorations yet since I haven't watched any of them yet. (However, I'll try to collect some of the information that's available online so far in a post in the near future.)

Very well then. In order to get myself ready for the new 4K versions, I've decided to start by taking another look at the previous remasters of WKW's movies. I've done this before in a rather brief manner, so I will probably update and expand my posts about the HD remasters of Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. For Happy Together, I decided to start from scratch as there are lots of things I neglected or missed when I first wrote about it in 2010.

Let's take a look at what's available first. Here's a list of the official remasters of Happy Together that we've had so far:

1) The first proper remaster made its debut on DVD in 2004, released by Kino International (US).In this incarnation, the film had a 2.0 dual mono soundtrack. Two years later, the same remaster could be found on the 10th Anniversary Edition DVD/CD box set by Kam&Ronson from Hong Kong. There, it was labelled the "International Version" and had a new 5.1 soundmix. Interestingly, the accompanying booklet called it a "high definition remaster"; so I suspect that it was created from an HD scan, although it has only ever been released in standard definition.

2) The second remaster arrived in standard definition in 2009 on DVDs by Kino International (US) and Artificial Eye (US). It got its first release in HD in 2010 on Bluray by Kino International (US). This one was accompanied by a 5.1 soundmix from the start, the mix being different to the one from the first remaster.

3) The third remaster is the one carried out in 4K that will receive its first release on physical media in March by Criterion (US). It has already been reviewed by DVD Beaver.

(Notable mention: A Bluray from Japan by Kadowaka Entertainment contains the original Japanese theatrical version of Happy Together. There are some differences between that and the international version that I've discussed here. Aside from that, the Japanese theatrical is a good opportunity to watch Happy Together in its unaltered, "unremastered"form.)

I'll now take a look at the differences between the first and second remaster. I will write a follow up post once I've received the 4K version.

 

Credit sequences

Originally, the opening credits, title card and end credits were white text on red background. This was kept for the first remaster, although the background for the end credits looks more orangey now. For the second remaster, the text appears in white before a black background.

title card - Japanese theatrical version

tite card - first remaster

title card - second remaster

 

end credits - Japanese theatrical version

end credits - first remaster

end credits - second remaster

Cut

In terms of video, there are no differences in editing between the first and second remaster. Yet there is one missing piece of monologue in the second remaster. By the end of the movie, Chang has a drink at the 3 Amigos bar before he departs for Taiwan. There, he hopes to meet Lai Yiu Fai.

"I want to say goodbye to Fai, but nobody knows where he is. I thought  I'd hear his voice here. Maybe the music's too loud, I can't hear anything."

While this monologue appears in full in the Japanese theatrical version as well as in the first remaster (despite subtitle differences on the two DVDs, see below), the second remaster omits the last two sentences from Chang's narration.

first remaster - DVD by Kino International (2004)

first remaster - DVD by Kam&Ronson (2006)

Japanese theatrical version - BD by Kadowaka Entertainment (2012)

 

second remaster - BD by Kino International (2010)

Picture 

Happy Together's visual appearance changed dramatically with the second remaster. In terms of visual quality, it's clearly the superior version. After all, the first remaster still contained instances of dirt and damage. Contrast was bad, especially in shadowy, darker scenes where details were swallowed by black areas. The standard resolution of 720x480 pixels (NTSC) didn't help either.

All this certainly improved with the second remaster! But one thing was very obvious: The color scheme of the movie had been changed dramatically. It seemed as if the saturation of colors had been increased and the yellows were now much more pronounced than before. Take a look at the shot above of Chan in the bar and you'll see what I mean. (The look reminds me of the desert scenes in Ashes Of Time Redux.) Even less yellow scenes received a yellow tint.

UPDATE (2020-02-07): Contributor Benjamin has shared some very interesting information about the sources for the 2004 DVD (first remaster) and the newer remasters in the comments. With his insights, it can also be explained why the visuals of Happy Together went through such a drastic change:

What you see on the old DVD version was a scan of a POSITIVE PRINT. Doyle – as he had done previously with Fallen Angels & Chungking Express – made use of photochemical processes to achieve the result. I can't remember anymore what he used exactly, but it looks like a combination of push-processing (overdeveloping the film stock that you have underexposed, producing more grain and saturation) with one of the bleach-bypass inspired silver-retention techniques which were very fashionable in the mid-to-late 1990s. […] In addition, Doyle deliberately dragged the film (I'm guessing internegative or interpositive) over the ground to pick up dust and other artifacts. He then printed with certain interpositive/neg approaches, including the scenes shot in colour but printed (converted to) black and white, and the first clip of Iguazu in the film which was printed into a cyan/blue duotone. It also looks like he deliberately made use of "flashing"/fogging during the development process, and I even think he deliberately screwed with the printing lights or something because if you notice in the black & white scenes in the original DVD, there is a reverse vignette effect going on in many of the shots - instead of the luminosity/exposure of the image dropping off at the edges of the frame as you normally encounter with lens vignetting, the center of the image is darker and the edges are lighter. You only get this with a negative-to-positive conversion somewhere.

The "remaster" is clearly a scan from the negative, and digital colour correction applied to approximate the original look (and in some cases, "revise"). […] It's not possibe for a digital telecine, irrespective of what resolution it is capable of scanning in, to replicate photochemical looks. You can approximate, or you can go in a different direction (as they clearly did in a lot of shots), but you cannot properly replicate it. Being a scan from negative, this is why, unsurprisingly, there is no dust and the image is sharper. But, as I have explained above, the softness and dirt/dust specks you see on the "old dvd" weren't an accident or mistake, they were an intentional aesthetic choice and look.

(For more information, please read his full words in the comment section.)

first remaster

second remaster

first remaster

second remaster

Japanese theatrical version

first remaster

second remaster

 

Additionally, the scenes of Lai Yu Fai and Chan playing football in the street were changed to appear in yellow light now, whereas they had been drenched in blue light before. 

Japanese theatrical version

first remaster

second remaster

As a sidenote, the shot you see below appears in black and white in the first remaster while it appears in color in the other versions. If this was an accident or intentional, I don't know.

Japanese theatrical version

 

first remaster

second remaster

 

Sound and soundmix

I'm more prone to notice changes in the visuals of a movie than I do notice changes in the sound mix but I'll say a few words anyway. The 5.1 mix of the second remaster sounds fuller than the previous mixes. The 5.1 mix on the Kam&Ronson DVD (first remaster) sounds similar in quality to the dual mono soundtrack of the Kino DVD (first remaster as well), so maybe it is just an upmix.

I suspect that the 5.1 soundmix for the second remaster was done from scratch, as it was done for Chungking Express and Fallen Angels around the same time. For those two, I think the changes were more obvious than for Happy Together. One thing I noticed upon comparing the scene with Chang in the bar is how different his voice sounds in the second remaster. It is much deeper there. I don't have an explanation as to why that is. (The one thing I realised as I heard Chang's voice in the other versions is that the way it sounded originally resonated with me much more as that's the way I first heard it.)

Happy Together - International Version vs. Japanese Version (updated)

I recently acquired the Japanese Collector's Edition BluRay of Happy Together, which was released in 2012 but has since gone out of print. There's a new 2 disc edition which now also includes Buenos Aires Zero Degree but - as far as I know - lacks the Japanese Theatrical version of the main feature which was sourced from a 35mm print. I will provide a thorough review soon.

Upon comparing lengths, I discovered that the Japanese theatrical version runs longer than the current remaster which I have already talked about here. So I did a side-by-side comparison of both versions and discovered differences between the two, which you will find below. (In this article, I will not talk about the differences in the color scheme nor about the differing titles between old and new versions, as I already have done that in the old article).

In fact, the differences I talk about here are found the between Japanese version and all the other versions I have, including the remasters from the early 2000s and later 2000s as well as the German DVD which is sourced from a (German?) theatrical print. I call these other versions the "International cut", as this is how this cut is labeled in the 10th Anniversary Edition from Hongkong.

International Cut

In the International Cut, the shot of Tony Leung standing outside of the Bar Sur and watching Leslie and his friends is directly followed by Tony standing on the opposite side of the street, eating a sandwich and eventually noticing that Leslie and his company leave the bar. [This happens around the 9 minute mark in the current remastered version, available on BluRay from Kino International.]

 

 

Shortly after, Tony is in his bathroom at home, pondering about what he has witnessed earlier that night and eventually punches his mirror. During that scene, we get a voice-over containing his thoughts. [Begins 10:07 on said source.]

 

Japanese Cut

In the Japanese version, there's a bunch of additional stuff between the shot of Tony outside of Bar Sur and him eating the sandwich.

First, we see him entering a shop, talking to the vender in Spanish. Then he grabs a beer, but goes back to the fridge, puts back the beer and goes for a pineapple juice instead [Pineapples? Chungking Express?], while we get a voice-over which ends with "I just wanted to return to Hong Kong". This part of the voice-over is identical to the one in the international version (see above), but the beginning is different, unfortunately, I don't speak Cantonese, so I don't have a clue what he says.

 

UPDATE (2021-02-02): A very kind member of the forum at bluray.com has translated Lai Yu Fai's monologue for me: "When I first got here, I thought Argentina was really big. But it's actually really small. I ran into him again that night. But I didn't even think about starting over with him. I just wanted to go back to Hong Kong." Thank you very much, Dylan!

 

After that, there is one shot of him eating his sandwich.

 

  

Then we cut back to the bar, where the couple is still dancing and Leslie and his friends cheer for them. What follows afterwards is identical to the International version, it's the same shot of Tony eating and watching Leslie and his friends leave. 

 

 

The scene with Tony in the bathroom doesn't contain a voice over, it remains completely silent.

 

 

Conclusion

While the extra material we get in the Japanese version isn't all that essential, it's been great fun to discover these differences in the two cuts. I would really like to know what Tony says in the Japanese version. If anyone reads this who is capable of speaking Cantonese, please comment and I will provide you with a sound sample or video of that scene!