On the Distinguishing Characteristics of Puppet Films

A new type of film has appeared in the category of cinema arts in recent years—the puppet film.¹ Puppet films have gradually emerged in keeping with the needs of the people, in particular the needs of children. Now our nation has also begun producing puppet films.² Looking at puppet films from the point of view of their formal characteristics, there's no reason to doubt that one day they will grow to become an enjoyable artistic form. But how to employ this form, how to put into play the specific strengths of this form to enable the independent aspects of puppet animation to emerge, deserves our further research and enquiry.

In my opinion, it goes without saying that puppet films are like other forms of literary and artistic creation: their characteristic mode of thinking is "imagistic thinking." However, this doesn't mean that every art form that employs imagistic thinking is exactly the same. Just as the laws of natural and social development are revealed through logical thinking, when historians and astronomers reflect social and natural phenomena they each employ their own unique laws and methods. In the field of literature and art, although music and painting both are, in a similar way, imagistic thinking, when they observe and reflect reality they each employ their own specific laws and methods, and these are precisely their own distinguishing characteristics. Of course, puppet films cannot be discussed separately from their inherent qualities; since they are films, they first of all must hold to the distinguishing characteristics of film. Like live-action fictional films, [puppet films] must employ the particular techniques of montage to express something. Within ten or twenty minutes [the puppet film] has to bring to completion whatever it has to express. It needs to cleanly and clearly bring the important aspects to the fore, and to get rid of miscellaneous and inconsequential matters. It requires a series of movements to portray the characters. It doesn't permit tediously long soliloquies and difficult-to-follow "interior performances." However, in addition to this, [puppet films] also have their own particularities, that is, they have more of the particular characteristics of the plastic arts [zaoxing yishu, 造型艺术], or it might be better to say [puppet films] are animated and dramatized plastic arts that utilize the particular characteristics of film.³ In the context of the plastic arts, [puppet films] are closer to caricature and sculpture. At the same time, [puppet films] must obey the rules of composition and the principles of color commonly employed in drawing and painting. In addition, in the context of performance, [puppet films] share some features of puppet theater in their creative methods.⁴ That is to say, the movements of the characters in puppet films should possess the savor of puppets;⁵ they should not mechanically imitate human movement. This is not to say puppet movement should distance itself from the distinguishing characteristics of human movement to create an incomprehensible form of movement. Quite the contrary, [puppet movement] must be the most apt art to express human (animal) movement. Because it is only when [an animator] captures the most important characteristics of a person that a character's personality can be portrayed with very few movements.⁶ Characteristic puppet movement must abstract from human movement those movements with the most personality and express them, just as a good sculpture clearly expresses the essence of a character's complete personality in a single gesture. Of course, in addition to capturing the distinguishing characteristics of a personality, puppet movement must render these distinguishing characteristics through exaggeration. Without exaggeration, there would not be special characteristics of puppet movement. But the special characteristics of puppet movement are not confined to exaggeration, because each art form demands a different degree of exaggeration. And the exaggeration of puppet animation must be built upon a foundation suited to the "savor of puppets." Without the savor of puppets, without paying attention to the savor of puppets, no matter how much the character's personality is emphasized, it will not necessarily be suited to the particular characteristics of puppet...