Analyse Yimou Zhang’s Creative Course Using Psychological Theory

Zhang Yimou’s films always filled with strong individual color. Audience can clearly feel the irresistible life tension in his movies in the aspect of theme choosing, story line, character depiction and language style, the picture composition, music rendering, and the color conditioning. From the early stage of personal style exploration to the operation of international large-scale movie in later, zhang Yimou always try to improving his creative thinking, step by step, in the20years of his career as a director. Viewing from psychology, his movies have the peculiar artistic characteristics just due to his development history and the special time, which contribute to his unique artistic charm.This article attempts to analyzes Zhang’s success with the psychological theory from the following four aspects:creative thinking, artistic work, transmission routes and publicity mode——using the theroy of social psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and so on; finding the perfect binding point between the theme of Zhang Yimou’s movies and the audience psychological needs; providing a new perspective for Zhang Yimou’s film studies.The paper is divided into six parts altogether. The first two chapters focus on the brief introduction of Movie Psychology and Zhang Yimou’s movie works. The third, forth and fifth chapter respectively analyzes the fit process between the Movie Psychology and the creation and spread of movies from three aspects:the director, the films, and the audiences. At last, the epilogue part summarizes Zhang Yimou’s outstanding artistic achievement and his deficiency.The first chapter is a general introduction to the development course of psychology, involving the psychology schools’s research achievements which relate to the artistic creation. Focusing on the psychology theory about the process of film creation, such as "making film is building dream"and Sigmund Freud’s theory of "daydreaming"; the "mirror function" of screen and Lacan’s theory of "Mirror";"Lev Kuleshov effect" and the "law of vision" in Gestalt Psychology; Montage and physiological psychology of "perception memory process"; the theroy of developmental psychology about how the "satisfy of early meet" influence the adult person’s "complex form" and so on.The second chapter is a summary of Zhang Yimou’s personal artistic career. Mainly set about from three aspects:firstly, introduce his personal growth background, from his art sensitive during childhood, to the hard life in his younger years, as well as the difficult process during his adulthood to achieve his dreams as a director. Secondly, introduce the whole era environment and the social background which have affected the creation of the fifth generation directors including Zhang Yimou. Thirdly, a brief account of his works, including the contents of movies and the special artistic techniques.The third chapter, from the point of view of director’s creation psychology, analyzes how the creation complex of Zhang Yimou affect the formation of his film style. Mainly based on the childhood complex, female complex, Oedipus complex and root-seeking complex, through the analysis of the movies main character’s behavior, character, as well as the psychological characteristics, combined with Zhang Yimou’s growth course and creative mind, using the theroy of developmental psychology to reading the causes of how these complex formed with individual style which showed in his movies, and how director using the process of making art dream to fill the lack of early emotional needs, to achieve the emotional satisfaction.The fourth chapter regard the film elements as the key point, to analysis Zhang Yimou’s means of artistic expression, through the following four aspects:environment shape, actor modelling, lens language and voice formation. Combined with the audience’s instinct of " perception experience of gestalt", from physiological psychology perspective to reading how dose Zhang Yimou using the montage to arouse audience’s knowledge reserves, using the different modelling, light, composition and voice to build the film space, grabbing viewers’ attention consciously from three aspects:Vision, hearing, and consciousness, helping them to find emotional common ground with others.The chapter five analyze the narrative strategy and marketing strategy of Zhang Yimou’s movies from the angle of the audience accept psychology. Reading Zhang Yimou how to use the extremely brief narrative with extremely complex modelling to meet the aesthetic psychology of audiences, with the unique publicity means to satisfy the audience’s entertainment demand of pursue the novelty and changes, throbbing with the pulse of the time, to make full use of conformity psychological to create his own brand effect, to keep the balance between art and commerce.The conclusion part mainly discusses the following questions:the author’s thinking of Zhang Yimou’s "China dream" how to bases upon the globalization; the Chinese’s movies how to combained localization with globalization; the movies how to maintain the balance between the business profits and artistic levels, and so on.