Abstract: In 1956, Weihui Bao published a series of critical articles that center on the topic of why good films were so rare, among which Zhong Dianfei's Drum of Motion Picture is most striking. All these articles concerned about the artistic nature of films. This essay, by looking back on the discussion, tries to probe into the above issue and makes some suggestion about the current film criticism.

Key words: nature of film, Zhong Dianfei
, discussion