Animation / The Magic Brush

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The Magic Brush (神笔, Shén Bǐ) is a 20-minute Stop Motion animated film produced by China's Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1955 and directed by Jin Xi. It is based on the popular Chinese folktale "Ma Liang and The Magic Paintbrush".

The film follows a young aspiring artist named Ma Liang. But because Ma Liang is a simple peasant boy, his family can't afford art supplies, despite his love of painting and drawing. One day though, Ma Liang is visited by an immortal, who gives him a magical paintbrush that causes anything it draws to come to life! The kind and talented Ma Liang begins using his new tool to help his neighbors, but word of his skills soon comes to the ears of the local government official, a cruel, corrupt, and thoroughly greedy man. Eager to use Ma Liang's brush to make himself even richer, the official orders Ma Liang to be captured. Now Ma Liang must find a way to escape the official's clutches and make sure his fellow peasants never have to suffer because of him again.

Tropes

• Art Initiates Life: Ma Liang's magic paintbrush causes anything painted by it to become real. However, it only works in his hands; one of the official's servants tries to use it without any effect.
• Bad Boss: The official is so greedy that when several of his servants board the ship Ma Liang painted for everyone to go to the gold island, he pushes them off the boat so he can get all the gold entirely for himself.
• Big Bad: The corrupt official. He's responsible for much of the local peasants' poverty and misery, and his greed drives the story's conflict.
• Bitch Slap: The official gives Ma Liang a few of these when he refuses to paint gold ingots for him.
• Bring Him to Me: After witnessing the powers of Ma Liang's brush, the official orders him captured. Ma Liang escapes after getting Locked in the Dungeon, but the official's men manage to capture him again.
• Central Theme: Owing to the fact it's a product of Maoist China, the film emphasizes the heroism of the peasantry against a corrupt and oppressive upper class.
• Death by Materialism: The official meets his end this way. When Ma Liang paints him an island of gold in the middle of the ocean (plus a boat), the official heads for it, only for Ma Liang to paint a storm that capsizes the official's boat and drowns him.
• Establishing Character Moment: The film's opening scene has the official commissioning a good fortune painting that will grant him wealth and longevity before Ma Liang, accompanied by an ox, interrupts to ask for a brush from the painter, prompting the official to ridicule him. Immediately, the official's greed and indifference to the peasants is established, alongside Ma Liang's dream of being an artist despite his background.
• Evil Debt Collector: The official is served by a number of these, who constantly confiscate the peasants' livestock and whatnot. Ma Liang helps thwart them by painting anything the peasants get taken from them.
• Farm Boy: Ma Liang is one. He seeks to help his fellow farmers using his magic paintbrush, painting them things that make their lives easier and wanting to someday liberate them all from the official oppressing them.
• Greed: The official's defining trait. He's constantly confiscating things from the peasants to accumulate wealth and wants Ma Liang's paintbrush to give him even more money.
• Grows on Trees: The official orders a servant to paint a money tree with Ma Liang's brush. Since Ma Liang's not the one using it though, nothing happens.
• Introductory Opening Credits: A variation. The film begins with a roundabout rotating to show off the characters appearing in the story.
• Locked in the Dungeon: When Ma Liang refuses to paint anything for the official, he gets thrown into a dungeon with several peasants who had nothing to pay their debts off with. Ma Liang escapes with them by painting a door on the dungeon's wall.
• The Narrator: A woman provides some exposition for a few scenes, such as in the introduction and when Ma Liang escapes from the dungeon.
• No Name Given: With the exception of Ma Liang himself, nobody is named.
• Off with His Head!: Almost happens to Ma Liang when he's recaptured. He only survives because the official discovers the magic paintbrush won't work out of Ma Liang's hands and quickly sends a servant to call off the execution.
• Polka-Dot Paint: Ma Liang's magic's brush is able to fill in an entire spectrum of colors. When he first receives, it he uses it to paint a rooster and gets the colors for the comb, beak, eyes, feet, and different kinds of feathers all down in one go. Justified as it's a magic paintbrush.
• Small-Town Tyrant: The official is one, the corrupt and self-centered civil servant in charge of Ma Liang's village and some of the others nearby.
• Stop Motion: The film is done in this style, using puppets (although some water for a waterwheel is animated using traditional animation, as is the ocean painted by Ma Liang in the ending).
• Time-Passes Montage: We get a short one over some narration in the form of a peach tree branch producing flowers in spring that become fruit in summer that wither away in fall that get covered in snow in winter.
• Working-Class Hero: True to the communist themes of the film, Ma Liang is a humble farmboy whose magic brush allows him to better the lives of his fellow peasants and get one over the wealthy and corrupt official who causes all the problems in the peasants' lives.