After the New Year, Red Dresses Are All the Rage on the Street was released.
Director Qi Xing was in his fifties, but he knew his trade.
When they shot the original, he even sent the wardrobe crew down to Shekou in Shenzhen to buy clothes popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan, had the actresses put them on and stroll through a Shanghai park to see how many heads would turn.
If the turn-back rate was low, they’d go back to Shekou again.
They did that three times and still weren’t satisfied.
In the end, the red dress the heroine wore was custom-made at the Shanghai Institute of Clothing — the turn-back rate shot through the roof.
Because so much was spent on costumes, after the film came out he was criticized for lacking any sense of thrift.
These were just little quirks of the era.
The film was adapted from a stage play that had three important female roles; the lead’s character in the original wasn’t very distinct.
Chen Qi made some simple edits to highlight his own wife, concentrating the plot points around her.
Gong Xue played a country-born female factory worker at a cotton mill in Shanghai.
Her family was poor, with many siblings; her parents only wanted money from her; a few colleagues often mocked her, and she was usually very insecure.