Wen 丨 Liu Qing
The 4k restored version of "Tianshu Qitan" was re-screened, and the "Chinese school" of the animation became a hot word to talk about. Looking at the framed names on the poster of the restored version of "Tianshu Qitan" and recalling the old animators who passed away, I am a little confused: "The "Concept" of the "Chinese School", which was added to the creators and works by researchers with hindsight, has been repeatedly mentioned after the passage of time, is it a still life sealed in the Film Museum, or a creative concept that can survive in the contemporary era?
Being able to relive this classic of the US film studio on the big screen is a beautiful movie-watching experience for many viewers after the 70s and 80s. The restored image quality, color, and large-screen format expand its aesthetic advantages.
Director Qian Yunda studied in the Czech Republic, the "smart and silly, stupid and clever" momentum of "Good Soldier Shuaike" learned to the bone, screenwriter Wang Shuchen is a typical Shanghainese to describe the "cold face funny", the duo in "Tianshu Qitan" fully implemented the creative principles of the Us Film Studio at that time: strange, interesting, beautiful. Odd and funny is very intuitive, reflected in the character modeling, in the plot twists, in the details of the lines. And "beauty", more often than not, is silent.
When a small audience watched the movie repeatedly on the TV screen more than 30 years ago, they were immersed in the battle of wits between Egg Sheng and the three foxes, or in order to comically order the details of a dozen dads, and they may not consciously pay attention to the perfection outside the plot.
The scenery and human feelings presented in the film are influenced by the "Wumen School". Yuan Gong's "Yunmeng Mountain" is worthy of the name, and the fog cover of Yunshan Mountain is like a dream. From the mountains to the towns, the smoke and rain between the countryside are hazy. Foxes mixed in the world, saw the bustling bustle of the city, greedy green fox sneaked into the small bridge flowing street market, tried to steal chickens, and was frightened by the butcher shop owner's posture of chopping meat to fly, the body sneaked into the traffic, this set of neat clips how quickly and provincially explained the temperament of the fat fox, but also let the fireworks of jiangnan rich land come to the face. The worldly magnates enjoy the pleasures of the garden, the mansion of Lord Yin of the house has a pink wall moon gate, a pavilion and a water pavilion, a cut of plum in the window, and indoor utensils such as incense sticks, lacquer cabinets and ice crack vases, one by one exquisite, a Sven scum clown, creating a spiritual paradise for himself.
Over the years, there have been numerous articles introducing the excellence of "Tianshu Qitan" in all aspects of modeling, art, and original painting. Sitting in the theater now, seeing the clean and bright picture after the 4K restoration, facing the "greater than life" frame, it is true that the impact of that kind of blood-soaked "beauty" is powerful.
But is this kind of "beauty" with the imprint of the times and the rendering of time equal to the impact on different generational audiences? Not necessarily. Many post-millennial-born audiences reacted to the film far less excitedly than their parents. When reviewing the restoration process of "Tianshu Qitan", the current director of the Mei film studio, Suda mentioned that in the specific color grading and soundtrack details, he tried to make some balance, neutralize its sense of the times, and conform to the viewing habits of the current audience. But are these fine-tuning and balancing necessary? This is reminiscent of the previous restoration of "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", modifying the format, adding the original painting, changing it to a widescreen, and making a 3D effect. That attempt was criticized, and both old and new audiences did not want an old movie disguised as a new film.
"The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace"
The same is true of the Book of Heavenly Wonders. This is an animated film born 38 years ago, its sense of the times and transcendence are the same, do not avoid the traces of the times in its creation, it is possible to talk about its transcendence at the aesthetic level.
The use of the concept of "Chinese school" to define and evaluate Chinese animation occurred roughly in the late 1980s. In 1988, the first Shanghai International Animation Film Festival was held, and after watching "Landscape and Water", animation master John Harrah said: "I came to Shanghai like an explorer and discovered the new continent of Chinese animation films." He used the term "New World" to describe the uniqueness and recognition of Chinese animation. Soon, researchers and scholars used the expression "Chinese school" when discussing Chinese animation.
《Landscape and Water》
In fact, the "Chinese school" is a general term in the field of animation, referring to the characteristics of traditional art, opera and legendary scripts integrated into the expression of Chinese animation. Subdivided into specific works of specific eras, the concept of "Chinese school" is not targeted, and it is difficult to completely cover works with different periods and creative characteristics. Chinese animation is recognized as having had two golden ages, namely the 1950s-60s and around 1980s, the differences in creative concepts, art forms and expression methods are huge and cannot be confused.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the pinnacle of Chinese animation, such as "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "The Little Tadpole Finds Mother", and "The Proud General", was related to the strong national consciousness from top to bottom at that time. In 1955, before the Shanghai Meiyi Film Factory had been established, Chen Huangmei, then director of the Film Bureau, told the art film team of the Shanghai Film Factory: "Fine art films should engage in fairy tales, myths, and folk tales, draw nourishment from national culture, and do not respect national heritage is a lack of patriotism." This remark had a huge impact on Chinese animation production.
The Proud General
Selected Screenplays for Fine Arts Films 1949-1979 contains 30 plays, 27 adapted from ancient Chinese mythology and folk tales. In the 1950s, the industry underwent a process of aesthetic nationalization, with three forms of animation, paper-cutting, origami and ink painting, gaining overwhelming advantages. Many arts and crafts artists were involved in the styling of Chinese animated films, looking for prototypes in large quantities from bronzes, lacquerware, murals and New Year paintings. In terms of "moving" painting, a large number of stylized performances of Peking Opera and various local operas were borrowed, including gong and drum percussion with the introduction of opera.
"Tianshu Qitan" was completed in 1983, when the creative atmosphere of Chinese animation was very different from that of the 1950s. Although "Tianshu Qitan" and the contemporaneous "Nezha Noisy Sea" and "Landscape and Water" are still regarded as with the recognition of "nationalization", in the specific creation, there are changes in the silent place. For example, the same deal with the fierce action scenes, "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" Sun Wukong vs Erlang God paragraph, the editing uses a set of shots with an average duration of more than 7 seconds to retain a fight scene similar to Peking Opera martial arts, which was a consensus in that era, and the first consideration was not the technique of the film itself, but the maintenance of the performance charm of the opera.
In "Nezha Noisy Sea", the climax of the whole film is Nezha's self-execution paragraph, the rapid editing of the picture repeatedly switches between Nezha, the Dragon King and Li Jing, and the parallel editing of the flooded Chen Tangguan scene, this high-intensity editing that breaks the continuity of the dramatic action, the impact is very large. The styling and art of "Nezha Noisy Sea" still bear a lot of traces of opera, but the "drama" flavor has become less important in the film, and at the image level, the creators no longer care about using classic Hollywood, expressionism and part of the film noir.
"Tianshu Qitan" carries such a distinct atmosphere of the 1980s: the creators continue the industry tradition and still absorb a large amount of materials from the preservation of traditional culture, but the sense of the times of the play and audiovisual expression is also very strong. It is not a "national heritage" inherited from the 1950s or earlier, it is based on the creation of the 1980s.
The story of "Heavenly Book Qitan" comes from Luo Guanzhong's "Biography of ping demon", the bright line is that Egg Sheng prevents three fox spirits who have stolen the secrets of the Heavenly Book from harming the human world, but the root of the conflict in this play is in the dark line, which is the difference between Yuan Gong, who guards the Heavenly Book, and the supreme ruler of the Heavenly Court, Yuan Gong questions the Heavenly Garden's monopoly of the Heavenly Book, allowing the world to suffer, and he firmly believes that the Heavenly Book should be used by people and benefit the human world.
Yuan Gong, as a supporting role, is the soul of "Heavenly Book Qitan". When designing the image of Yuan Gong, the stylist referred to the face of The Red Sheng of Peking Opera, that is, the appearance of Guan Yu, and the Red Sheng on the opera stage, which clearly symbolized integrity and justice, which matched Yuan Gong's personality. But what Yuan Gong really conjures up is not the localization of Guan Yu, he is more like the Chinese version of Prometheus, a fire stealer. The shaping of Yuan Gong, as well as the theme of the dark line of "the conflict between man and God, the challenge of man to God", makes the drama pattern of "Heavenly Book Strange Tan" transcend the script legend.
The bright line part of the story is not limited to a simple adaptation of the legendary story, and the egg and fox spirits see the world in the process of fighting wits and courage - the blind bottom, the greedy monk, the official who drills the camp, and the heavy behind the comedy are all kinds of people who take advantage of suffering and endure suffering. People who have an impression of the literary environment in Shanghai in the early 1980s can easily realize that the plays of "Tianshu Qitan" are obviously influenced by the comedy creation and satirical novels of the time, and the bold and spicy sense of the times is very strong.
A large number of characters in "Tianshu Qitan" come from the Peking Opera face, the fox girl is Xiaohua Dan, the egg is a doll, Yuan Gong is a red student, and most of the remaining characters are all kinds of small flower faces, and the group is ugly into a play. Stylist Ke Ming loves folk art, is familiar with the elements of opera and Chinese painting, and he is also a naughty boy who likes toys. For example, The appearance of the county order is the ugly robe in the face of the Peking Opera flower, but his entire image design refers to the popular toy, the body and the head are connected by springs, and the sharpened head is supported and shaken around, which has a vivid indecency, and it is also very reminiscent of the small audience to think of their own toys.
The shape of the little emperor is also from the hot selling toy, a very cheap, cardboard doll, the body is fixed, the head can be freely rotated, the little emperor is designed to have no independent action ability but extraordinarily arrogant look, permeated with a very connotative sense of fashion.
This is a very important point in the creation of "Tianshu Qitan", that is, while the creators from the stylist to the painter refer to paintings, murals, cultural relics and operas, the images and pictures they create are still based on the daily experience of the audience. It is necessary for us to realize that traditional opera was not marginalized in the cultural consumption environment of the 1980s, recall that the serial drama "Journey to the West" is basically a large-scale stage play, and the structure of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is also similar to the whole performance of the folding drama.
Therefore, the creators extracted a set of animation expressions from the opera because such a set of aesthetic symbols could be generally recognized and accepted by the public at that time, and "culture" and "aesthetics" were based on the mass foundation. When praising "Heavenly Book" in the sky, don't forget the 120,000 original paintings in the film, which are copied from the painters everywhere and copied from the real reality. That is to say, many of the dragon and lion dances, shadow puppet performances, lively markets, and even fishing boat families that appeared in the film still existed in daily life at that time.
"Tianshu Qitan" has become a classic, not the triumph of abstract aesthetics, it is precisely its "sense of the times" that has created it, from spiritual temperament to empirical details, it is a response to the era in which it was born.
In the last few years of the planned economic system, all links and types of talents in the Shanghai Film Studio were neatly organized, and the creators were guaranteed to be able to complete the work without distraction, which was indeed a topic that hurt the current animation industry. But in order to alleviate the trauma caused by this issue, "wanting to do the same animation as in the past" is probably a more incompetent escape. It is believed that the appropriation of elements of opera, Chinese painting, and national heritage can revitalize the "Chinese school" or create "national characteristics" of artistic animation, which is the idea of giving up the roots. The rigid reproduction of the details, which is detached from the static fragments of contemporary life experience and the demands of the times, does not constitute culture at all.
In this regard, "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "The Strange Tan of the Heavenly Book" and the "Nezha Noisy Sea" that are being restored cannot reproduce the scene of the crowded alley when it is re-screened, and it does not need to be difficult to calm down.
Even if it is a classic, it still has the attribute of the times. There is a generation of expressions, and people's experience, intellect and aesthetic habits are always inevitably dialectically reorganized in the passage of time.