Cinema
Princess Iron Fan
鐵扇公主
Wan Brothers · 1941
Synopsis
The monk Tripitaka and his three disciples, a monkey, a pig and a monk, find their road to the West blocked by a mountain in flames. Only a princess's iron fan can put out the blaze, and the monkey king sets off to borrow it. She refuses, because he once subdued her son, the Red Boy; unable to defeat her head-on, he turns into an insect, enters her belly and forces her to yield, before her husband, the Bull King, joins the struggle.
Context
The film was released on 19 November 1941 in Shanghai, a few weeks before the Japanese army occupied the concessions. The Wans had seen Snow White in 1939 and wanted to equal it: it took three years and two hundred and thirty-seven artists, at the Xinhua animation department, with extensive use of rotoscoping and a line borrowed from ink painting. Depending on the prints, it runs seventy-two or seventy-three minutes. Exported to Japan in 1942, it inspired wartime animated films there. A restored French print was shown by the Hong Kong film archive, and the Annecy festival presented it in 2017.
Who it is for
A black-and-white animated film of a little over an hour, between comedy, opera and Chinese painting.
Prizes and reception
The young Osamu Tezuka saw it in Japan and later said that this film had decided him to take up comics.
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