In 1955, the animation " why the crow is black " by Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio won the award at the Venice Animation Film Festival, but the judges mistakenly thought that the film was a Soviet work. Great influence, Tewei put forward the slogan "Exploring the Way of National Style", and implemented this idea into his own animation creation.
Chinese animation industry practitioners actively practice the goal of "exploring the road of national form and knocking on the door of comedy style". In 1956, the cartoon " Proud General " was filmed under this background. It created a precedent for Chinese "national style" cartoons, and was the pioneering work of the Chinese animation film "Zhongyu School".
"The Proud General" is adapted and produced based on the Chinese fable "grinding the gun before the battle". It tells the story of a general who returned from victory after being praised by civil and military officials at the celebration party, gradually lost his vigilance, began to enjoy a luxurious life and finally failed.
For the audience to truly understand and accept the meaning of the fable, the most important thing is that the characters in the story are vivid and contagious, rather than a conceptual symbol. The
script uses details such as "lifting the tripod", "archery" and "holding the altar to drink heavily" to reveal the character's temperament and psychological state, and pay attention to the historical atmosphere and the characteristics of the times when expressing the characters' thoughts, feelings and lifestyle. General
smugly tossed bronze tripods, shot wind chimes, "wow ah ah ah ah ah" and burst into laughter under everyone's flattery; Flattery reproduces the charm of traditional opera in an exaggerated form unique to cartoons. After General
's victory, he indulged in lavish drinking and was intoxicated. The gun that accompanies him to fight is on the shelf, surrounded by cobwebs. Seeing that he was getting richer and his martial arts was deteriorating day by day, even holding a 200-pound stone shoulder made his face look like a pork liver.
When the enemy forces approached the door, he hurriedly called his men to get weapons. The gun at this time has been rusted into scrap iron, and it will not help to grind it again. The general had no choice but to capture, and he couldn't be proud of himself.
expresses the implication of "pride makes people fall behind" vividly and vividly through the comparison of the realization of the general before and after. In order to highlight the depravity and extravagance of the general,
compares the general with the two supporting characters, the strong man and the young hunter, in terms of strength and archery. More importantly, these two aspects are the general's strengths. Through such a comparison, the level of the general's complete "degeneration" is rendered more abundant and vivid.
The reason why this animation occupies a unique position in the history of Chinese animation creation, the most important thing is that it reflects the precious original spirit, perfectly explains how to truly grasp the essence of traditional culture, how to explore one's own style, and how to create It embodies the real national characteristics and lays an important foundation for the creation of later works.
As we all know, the so-called style is not only limited to art style and action style, but more importantly, the content is supreme. The script of this film fully shows the unique charm of Chinese animation plays.
In the 1950s, in line with the current situation of life and creation in China, the main creator of the film once created an animation era belonging to China with his courage and creativity.
With the development of the times and the changes in people's living environment, new creative dilemmas will continue to appear. How to continuously create brilliance in the Chinese animation industry and create a more attractive Chinese style is an eternal topic for Chinese animators to face.
Therefore, we have reason to pay homage to the older generation of artists.
