La princesse à l'éventail de fer

As the DVD jacket states, this is the first full length animated film produced in China. That alone gives it historical significance, while the quality of the film is pretty good. The story has a lot of things going on. It concerns three travelers, a monkey, a pig face (thats the best I can do) and a human male as they try to travel west. They stumble onto the fiery mountain, where the fires can only be quelled if they obtain the iron fan from the local princess (hence the title). She is beautiful, of course, and does not wish to part with it. There are many great images here, but the story itself is not that compelling. Still, it is not very long, and the film, again, is a pioneering one, so I feel it should be watched.

The master and his three disciples are halted in their journey to the west to seek the scriptures. The Great Burning Mountain makes their route impassible. The only way to extinguish it is the Palm Leaf Fan. That is held by Princess Iron Fan, wife of the Great Bull King. While the master stays to preach to the locals, his disciples journey on to get the Great Palm Leaf.

The first Chinese animated feature is a piece of the Journey West legend. Although nominally a tale of deities, the film makers insist it is a parable about humanity, filled with magic, wonder and humor. They have constructed this movie in a variety of animation styles that I find confusing: sometimes graceful, sometimes humorous, sometimes exciting. The images are dimmed not only by the clouds that float through the frame, but also by the poor condition of the print. Although I lack familiarity with the underlying story, it is consistently interesting. Why are some of the background characters portrayed in a recognizably "realistic" style, while others are clearly caricatures? That's up to someone more familiar with Chinese animation to say.

This was the first Chinese animated feature film and I must say the animation itself is impressive. The use of rotorscoping added more than it detracted from the movie, and lent a surreal quality to the atmosphere. The story was handled well enough that it makes me wish to seek out the picture's source material, Journey to the West, since the plot here only covers a fraction of the heroes' adventure.

My problem with Princess Iron Fan is that it feels more like an overlong short subject rather than a feature. While the slapstick routines are charming at first, they go on for much too long, making the eighty minute running time feel like an eternity. This one is more for animation geeks and fans of Chinese cinema than anybody else.

I seriously think this is the only Chinese movie I've ever seen that wasn't a martial arts film. Why do I keep seeing Chinese films recently? Anyway, it's the first animated Chinese film. Then again, I can't think of any others at all. This was based on "Journey To The West" which I've heard of a lot, but don't really know what it's about. I was surprised at how surreal the story was.

It features a shapeshifting monkey, pig, and man who try to get a magic fan from the title princess. It's always great to learn about other cultures. This is another animated film debut made during World War II, but unlike "Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors", it wasn't a propaganda film. The Japanese certainly saw it though. The animation does look weak many times, but that can be forgiven. With over a billion people, you should know about them. ***

I had to watch this because a) it was the first ever animated film made in China, and b) it's an adaptation of part of the classic JOURNEY TO THE WEST series of stories featuring the lovable 'Monkey' and his companions. PRINCESS IRON FAN is short and action packed, and surprisingly well animated for its time. You have to remember that in 1941 China was in the middle of being occupied by Japan, so it's amazing that they managed to make any films during those turbulent times.

The free-flowing animation in this film is one of the things that makes it so easy to watch. The source material is also delightful and the characters instantly recognisable. I was intrigued to see how the animation of the characters is clearly inspired by the look and feel of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons. Some of it is quite juvenile, but the most off-putting thing I found was the way that 90% of the dialogue is shouted, which makes this become tiresome very quickly.