历劫佳人

节奏慢，看得有点累。一般来说不会沉溺于剧情当中，但观影过程中肚里仍攒了一堆火气，觉得男主的角色设定既经典又让人匪夷所思。看到结尾，发觉事情并没有那么简单。为啥警长的老搭档要背叛他？为啥警长会说“这是给你挡下的第二颗子弹”？第一颗我知道，第二颗有什么深意呢？为啥老情人对他的评价是“他是一个男人”？

看了一圈影评，发觉自己完全理解错了。警长并非是纯粹邪恶的一方，他抓捕犯人依靠直觉和严刑逼供，但往往是准的，包括这一次。在面对强调程序正义的理想主义者面前，他破防了。为了避免名声遭到毁坏，他最终选择了诬陷女主。而做了30年的警长的他，收获的只是一条瘸腿，被杀害的妻子，作为全部家当的一个小农场。这一切都是旁敲侧击，并没有大量的正面叙述。

威尔斯扮演的警长一开始就是一副恶狠狠的嘴脸，从一开始就把我给迷惑住了。导演不简单。这也侧面展示了一个很瘆人的现象。先看了影片简介，在观影时默认警长是坏人，只留意到警长其为人败坏的一面，而对于任何可能的、相驳的线索不以为意，最终就造成了彻底的误读。放在现实中，影片就是大众传媒，误读就是误杀。这很严重了。

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想到导演奥逊·威尔斯，影迷中脑海里第一时间复现的可能是他的《公民凯恩》。然而，除了《公民凯恩》，奥逊·威尔斯还指导了很多优秀的影片，其中便包括了1958年的《历劫佳人》。影片《历劫佳人》最让人津津乐道的便是开场那段长约3分20秒的长镜头拍摄。

这组长镜头的镜头组成如下：

• 由定时炸弹作为开头，采用跟镜头的方式，记录了施害者把定时炸弹放在汽车后备箱的过程，为这个长镜头设下了悬念，正好呼应了希区柯克的那句话“炸弹爆炸并不可怕，等待爆炸才可怕”。
• 紧接着，镜头往上升，一对男女（受害者）入画。
• 镜头追随着车，升起，左移。来到马路上后，镜头先下降，然后往后倒退，画面变成全景，可以看到交通警察及行人等。
• 随着汽车走走停停，一对过马路的情侣（主角）也入画了，镜头落到与他们同等的高度，并把焦点转移到了他们身上，开始跟随着他们。期间，汽车时入时出。这无形间将汽车和男女主角建立了联系。
• 直到边检站，汽车和情侣同时出现在同个镜头里。通过边检站人员与两对情侣的分别对话，可以初步了解到人物的背景。在汽车要驶出边检站的时候，车上女子抱怨好像听到了滴答声，但官员却不以为意。这无疑让观众更加揪心。
• 随着车开出去，镜头再次转移到主角情侣上，俩人相互拥抱接吻。此时爆炸声响起，长镜头结束。

一个优秀的长镜头不仅要在技术上让人拍案叫绝，还要在故事叙述上起到举足轻重的作用。而《历劫佳人》的长镜头无疑就实现了这两点。

• 从技术上，镜头的推拉摇移升降，人物的走位以及现场的调度都有很高水平的完成度。这组镜头运用轨道、起重机吊臂等工具的协作实现了纵向和横向的移动，同时在广角镜头和大特写镜头之间的切换十分自然。另外，在场面调度上，汽车的行驶、男女主角的步行，以及最终在边检站的会合，都很好地把握了时间和速度。
• 从故事叙述上，这个镜头交代了事件起因，设置了悬念，激发了观众对爆炸事件的疑问，从影片一开始就渲染了紧张不安的气氛。同时，此部分安排了男女主角的登场，将男女主角与故事联系起来。最后，这组镜头也交代了环境，让观众对美国和墨西哥边界小镇上的混乱和污秽一目了然。

《历劫佳人》如此精彩的长镜头，也使得后来导演纷纷致敬，包括罗伯特·奥尔特曼的《大玩家》、保罗·托马斯·安德森的《不羁夜》以及钮承泽的《爱》，都在影片开端使用了长镜头来交代故事背景和主要角色。正是奥逊·威尔斯如此娴熟的调度，才让电影史多了如此一个精彩的长镜头。

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看完影片再回来看片名，就在想这什么翻译呀，英文名Touch of Evil翻译成《历劫佳人》，且不说就单单片名就不甚符合，影片内容则是丈夫这边黑与白较量的戏更多，还是英文原名更符合原片。

本片主要讲述了黑色地带警长昆兰与白色地带的瓦格斯之间一场较量，开头长达3分多钟的长镜头迅速地将观众拉入影片，从投放炸弹到汽车行驶一段时间后被炸毁这一段戏着实让观众放松不下来，我也是被这一段迅速吸引，虽然中间大部分的剪辑略显混乱，但整个影片中光与影的运用、或缓和或急速且恰到好处的配乐还是让影片增色不少。

作为恶的代表，昆兰是当地一个颇有威望的警长，就职已经三十多年，在这期间屡破奇案，而他靠的是他所谓的直觉。所以在影片中他栽赃富商女的男友，诬告他是杀人凶手；亲手谋杀毒枭弟弟，并栽赃给男主的妻子。在随后的剧情中男主更是发现历年来他所破的案件都是有问题的，证据不足或者证据不妥，但是那些案件的嫌疑人都被他逮捕了。如果仅仅是这样，那么昆兰这个角色就会单薄的多，事实上他有一个忠实粉丝，这个忠实粉丝因为尊敬他而当上了警察，多年来更是协助他办案，不管对错。他还有一个美丽的情人，从他第一次与情人交谈中可看出当年他也是个潇洒少年，或许多年前他也是个正直的警察。那么他怎么会变成现在的一个仅靠直觉与栽赃来办案的呢？也许是因为他的妻子，他的妻子当年被杀害，而凶手逃之夭夭，挚爱的人离他而去，身为警察的他却又无能为力，也许这就导致了他后面不讲法律制度只讲究结果的极端办案手法。虽然影片最后杀害富商的确实是那个富商女男友，他所杀害的毒枭弟弟也确实罪大恶极，但作为黑暗执法的代表，他的结局不可能是好的，所以他被忠实粉丝所杀，倒在污秽的河流中肥胖的身躯激不起半点涟漪。

作为善的代表，瓦格斯长相英俊潇洒，有一位美丽动人的妻子，事业有成刚捉获了一个毒枭。他坚持正义，坚持秉公执法，所以当他亲眼看到昆兰栽赃富商女男友的时候不能置之不理；面对毒枭家族的多次恐吓或谋害，泼硫酸、栽赃妻子吸毒杀人，种种刁难他都不为所惧；面对昆兰滥用私刑执法，顶头上司的层层压力、昆兰的重重压迫他亦要找寻真相。也许他就像多年前的昆兰，如果他的妻子真的被人注射毒品、侮辱侵害，他会不会变成第二个昆兰呢？幸运的是，影片中他的妻子没有吸毒、没有被侵害、亦没有留下不利证据。最后瓦格斯胜利了，昆兰倒下了。

邪恶与正义的较量，虚拟的世界里总是正义获胜。

摘自特吕弗于1974年出版的影评集《我生命中的电影》，英文翻译：Leonard Mayhew Da Capo Press在美国出版的版本。当年特吕弗看到的本片并非如今广泛流传的1998年重建版，而是当年环球公司剪辑的，不受威尔斯认可的版本。如今我们发现1998年重建版做的第一件事，就是去掉了开场的字幕，完成了特吕弗在本文第一句话中的设想。

You could remove Orson Welles's name from the credits and it wouldn't make any difference, because from the first shot, beginning with the credits themselves, it's obvious that Citizen Kane is behind the camera.

Touch of Evil opens on a shot of the clock of a time bomb as a man places it in the trunk of a white car. A couple have just gotten into the car and started off, and we follow then through the city. All this happens before the film starts. The camera perched on a motorized crane loses the car, finds it again as it passes behind some buildings, precedes it or cataches up with it, right up to the moment when the explosion we have been waiting for happens.

The image is deliberately distorted by the use of a wide-angle lens that gives an unnatural clarity to the backgrounds and poeticizes reality as a man walking toward the camera appears to advance ten yards in five strides. We're in a fantasy world all through this film, the characters appearing to walk with seven-league boots when they're not gliding on a moving rug.

There are movies made by incompetent cynics, like The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Young Lions, movies that are merely bluff, designed to flatter a public which is supposed to leave the movie house feeling better or thinking it has learned something. There are movies that are profound and lofty, made without compromise by a few sincere and intelligent artists who would rather distrub than reassure, rather wake an audience up than put it to sleep. When you come out the Alain Resnais' Nuit et Brouillard, you don't feel better, you feel worse. When you come out of White Nights or Touch of Evil, you feel less intelligent then before but gratifies anyhow by the poetry and art. These are films that call cinema to order, and make us ashamed to have been so indulgent with cliche-ridden movies made by small talents.

Well, you might say, what a fuss over a simple little detective story that Welles wrote in eight days, over which he didn't even have the right to supervise the final editing, and to which was later added a half-dozen explanatory shots he'd refused to make, a film he made "to order" and which he violently disavowed.

I'm well aware of that, as well as that the slave who one night breaks his chains is worth more than the one who doesn't even know he's chained; and also that Touch of Evil is the most liberated film you can see. In Barrage contre le Pacifique , Rene Clement had complete control; he edited the film himself, chose the music, did the mixing, cut it up a hundred times. But Clement is a slave nonetheless, and Welles is a poet. I warmly recommend to you the films of poets.

Welles adapted for the screen a woefully poor little detective novel and simplified the criminal intrigue to the point where he could match it to his favorite canvas------the portrait of a paradoxical monster, which he plays himself------under cover of which he designed the simplest of moralities: that of the absolute and the purity of absolutists.

A capricious genius, Welles preaches to his parishioners and seems to be clearly telling us: I'm sorry I'm slovenly; it's not my fault if I'm a genius: I'm dying: love me.

As in Citizen Kane, The Stranger, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Confidential Report (即《阿卡丁先生》), two characters confront each other------the monster and the sympathetic young lead. It's a matter of making the monster more and more monstrous, and the young protagonist more and more likable, until we are brought somehow to shed real tears over the corpse of the magnificent monster. The world doesn't want anything to do with the exceptional, but the exception, if he is an unfortunate, is the ultimate refuge of purity. Fortunately, Welles's physique would seem to preclude his playing Hitler, but who's to say that one day he will not force us to weep over the fate of Hermann Goering?

Here Welles has given himself the role of a brutal and greedy policeman, an ace investigator, very well known. Since he works only by intuition, he uncovers murders without bothering about proof. But the court system, which is made up of mediocre men, cannot condemn a man without evidence. Thus, Inspector Quinlan/Welles develops the habit of fabricating evidence and eliciting false testimony in order to win his case, to see that justice will triumph.

After the bomb explodes in the car, all that necessary for everything to go awry is for an American policeman（本片主角是墨西哥人，此处疑为特吕弗笔误）on his honeymoon (Charlton Heston) to meddle in Quinlan's investigation. There is a fierce battle between the two men. Heston finds proff against Welles while Welles manufactures evidence against him. After a frantic sequence in which Welles demonstrates that he could doubtless adapt de Sade's novels like nobody else, Heston's wife is found in a hotel, nude and drugged, and apperently responsible for the murder of Akim Tamiroff, who in reality has been kiledd by Quinlan------whom Tamiroff had naively helped set this demonic stage.

As in Confidential Report, the sympathetic character is led to commit an underhanded act in order to undo the monster: Heston records the few decisive sentences on a tape recorder, sufficient proof to destroy Welles. The film's idea is summed up neatly in thie epilogue: Sneakiness and mediocrity have triumphed over intuition and absolute justice. The world is horrifyingly relative, everything is pretty much the same------dishonest in its morality, impure in its conception of fairness.

If I've used the word monster a number of times, it's merely to stress the fantastical spirit of this film and of all Welles's movies. All moviemakers who are not poets have recourse to psychology to put the spectator on the wrong scent, and the commercial success of psychological films might seem a good enough reason of them to do this. "All great art is abstract," Jean Renoir said, and one doesn't arrive at an abstraction through psychology------just the opposite. On the other hand, abstraction spills over sooner or later onto the moral, and onto the onlt morality that preoccupies us: the morality that is invented and reinvented by artists.

All this blends very well with Welles's supposition that mediocre men need facts, while others need only intuition. There lies that source of enormous misunderstanding. If the Cannes Film Festival had had the wisdom to invite Touch of Evil to be shown rather than Martin Ritt's The Long Hot Summer (in which Welles is only an actor), would the jury had the wisdom to see in it all the wisdom of the world?

Touch of Evil wakes us up and reminds us that among the pioneers of cinema there was Melies and there was Feuillade. It's a magical film that makes us think of fairy tales: "Beauty and the Beast," "Tom Thumb," La Fontaine's fables. It's a film which humbles us a bit because it's by a man who thinks more swiftly than we do, and much better, and who throws another marvelous film at us when we're still feeling under the last one. Where does this quickness come from, this madness, this speed, this intoxication?

May we always have enough taste, senstivity, and intuition to admit that this talent is large and beautiful. If the brotherhood of critics finds it expedient to look for arguments against this film, which is a witness and a testimony to art and nothing else, we will have to watch the grotesque spectacle of the Lilliputians attacking Gulliver.

-- 1958