‘I dedicated this film to a good friend. Although he was a roughneck and I don't know how he ended up, I happened to have known such a person in my life. He helped me a lot. He is the best and most interesting person I'd ever known. A school that I loved so much; a city that I loved so much. I recorded the atmosphere of the time. I recorded the New York I knew, the Chinatown I knew, the roughneck I knew, all the gangster friends I knew. For me, that was part of growing up.'—Mabel Cheung

This is a fairy tale, on screen and off. And D & B made it real. The film, a romance set in New York, between a working-class loudmouth and a nurtured college beauty, is a tale of coming together, a confluence of classes, upbringings and personalities. Director Mabel Cheung and writer Alex Law, whose work has exuded a fondness for immigration, skillfully animate the ventures of displacement into a portrait of bridging differences. Chow Yun-fat's colourful rendition of the sailor-turned Chinatown restaurant waiter is so memorable it has become not only one of the legendary actor's signature performances but also an idealised projection of 1980s Hong Kong spirit. A low-budget drama with no genre appeal, An Autumn's Tale was initially turned down by studios and producers until John Sham, the founder of D & B embraced it. The film went on to become a huge hit, years later making the list of the Archive's ‘100 Must-see Hong Kong Movies'.

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