Magic Brush
6 /10 1 Votes
Duration | Director Jin Xi (??) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 1954, 1955 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The magic brush trailer
The Magic Brush is a Chinese animated stop-motion film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. There were two versions of the film. In 1954 the first film was called "Ma Liang and his Magic Brush" (Chinese: 神筆馬良). In 1955 the second film was called "Magic Brush" (Chinese: 神筆). They are also interchangeably referred to as the "Magic Pen" or "Magical Pen".
Contents
Story
Ma Liang is a young and very kind peasant boy who helped a rich man to tend cattle. He liked drawing and drew pictures everywhere and had the greatest dream to be an artist. He works very hard to achieve this dream even though he doesn't own a paintbrush.
As Ma Liang gets ready for bed one night, he looks at all his drawings. An old wizard and magician appears to him and says that he has earned a brush. He tells Ma Liang to use this brush wisely because it has great power. Before Ma Liang can thank him, the magician vanished.
To test the power, Ma Liang uses the brush to paint a rooster. When he paints the last feather, the rooster comes alive and flies off. Ma Liang realizes the power of the brush and remembers the words of the old wizard. He promises to use the brush wisely and help other people.
From that day on, he used the paintbrush whenever people needed help. When he saw that people had no water to use in the fields, he drew a river and the river came to life. People could bring water from the river to the field and save a lot of time and energy.
When he saw it was difficult for people to till lands, he drew a cow and the cow came to life. People could use the cow to till lands very easily.
So when he saw the peoples' troubles, he would use his magic paintbrush to help. Then many people knew about the magic paintbrush.
When a mandarin discovers the magic brush, he pays a visit to Ma Liang and invites him to his home. The mandarin was a selfish and arrogant bad man who had an idea to steal the paint brush from the young man. He knew that he could make a lot of money by turning things to life and keeping them. He commands Ma Liang to paint a pile of silver and gold coins for him. Ma Lien refuses due to his promise to the magician to use he brush wisely. The mandarin ordered him imprisoned in a dungeon.
Ma Liang finds out that the other men in the dungeon were innocent and were unjustly imprisoned because the mandarin wanted their lands. That night, after the prison guards and their captain were asleep, Ma Liang uses his magic brush to paint a door which later opens, allowing him and the other innocent people to escape silently. The guards awaken only to fail as Ma Liang painted a horse to escape quickly.
Ma Liang continues to use his magic brush to help people. He paints toys for children, paints a water wheel to help more farmers, and more useful tools to ease people's work.
The mandarin finds Ma Lien and takes away his brush. After ordering that Ma Liang be imprisoned once more, he invites a lot of his friends to come to his home and shows them the magic paintbrush. He drew a lot of pictures, but none of them became real. The mandarin then orders the court painter to paint a tree with leaves of gold. But when he tries to shake the tree, he only bumped his head since the tree was nothing but a painting on the wall. The mandarin angrily realizes that the pictures would become real when Ma Liang paints. He orders his men to send for the boy. The mandarin offers Ma Liang his freedom if he paints a mountain of gold, to which the latter agrees if the former obeys his words.
Ma Liang discovers his deception and came up with a plan to trick him. He paints a sea first. The mandarin was shocked but Ma Liang tells him that he tries to make his work impressive. The boy then paints a golden mountain which was far away from the sea. The mandarin happily appreciates his work and asks him to paint a ship for him to gather the gold.
After the ship painting was completed, the mandarin and his men hurry aboard. When they are at the middle of the sea, the mandarin tells Ma Liang to give him wind to speed the ship along. Ma Liang paints a wind cloud and then continues to paint storm clouds. A horrified mandarin calls out to Ma Liang to ease the weather saying that he and his men and friends would die. But Ma Liang discovered his deception and continued to paint more storm clouds. Giants waves crash the ship and the vessel breaks then sinks, drowning the mandarin and his friends.
Ma Lien goes back to his simple life and lived happily with his family. He always becomes ready to help everyone in need. And not even one dared him to use his magic brush for their greedy wishes. So the magic paintbrush was known by everyone.
Adaptations
The story has been readapted a number of times by Chinese authors, common versions include the story of the same name from author Han Xing as well as Hong Xuntao. There are also American versions in "Tye May and the Magic Brush" by Molly Bang.