http://www.thereeler.com/premieres_events/i_owe_it_all_to_jonas_mekas.php
因为有了Jonas Mekas。看来JM除了影评好，荡气回肠，天下独步，提携后辈也很强啊。
放松一下，Michel Gondry 用脚玩魔方
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQXgmVVGNA
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1959年11月25日 (639字)(talich 2006-12-22 13:30 阅读 1779)
原文太好了，翻译只有个大意。他的影评真是要读原文。
1960年1月13日
关于黑泽明和泥醉天使
新的一年从小卡内基影院的黑泽明（罗生门）的泥醉天使开始。
泥醉天使是一首黑色、阴郁的诗。泥醉天使充满了绝望，Bogart式的愤世嫉俗，残酷而痛苦。泥醉天使是给绝望的人的赞美诗——一首愤怒而绝望的诗，关于因人类的希望和恶疾而生出的无可就药的、愤怒的景象。泥醉天使是人的内心深处的一滩冒着泡的污水坑，有疾病还有蚊子的恶心巢穴，有湿气还有垃圾，每况愈下，惨不忍睹。
它讲的是一个医生？一个废物？一个圣人？一个醉汉？一个人？“所有的天使都跟我一样。看着我！”他吼叫着。他愤怒的吼叫着，耐心所剩无几。他已经走到劲头。他已经不再害怕；他已经没得可输。他在和水坑作战，一个人。流着汗，吼叫着，脏兮兮，醉醺醺，胡子拉碴，发着臭气——他知道所剩的只有坚持，继续。水坑就在那里，可能永远都会在那里。但是人也一样。于是他捡起一块石头，愤怒的扔向水坑。石头消失在水坑肮脏的怀抱里，和鲜花和垃圾和蚊子没什么两样。
泥醉天使是一部关于现代日本的电影，是一部关于任何地方的现代人的电影，是一位被爱和关怀推向绝望的艺术家的电影。我们，从每一格画面，每一个动作，都能感到他受了伤。这部电影变成了黑泽明扔向人类脸上的一块愤怒而绝望的石头。灰色的污浊的阴影和闪烁的光颤抖着划过银幕，仿佛预示着，好像潜意识的流露——一首关于人的阴暗黑色的歌。
但是它闪耀着光。即使隔着淤泥和恶疾，黑泽明向人类脸上扔出的石头闪耀出美和爱和真理的光。
On Kurosawa and Drunken Angel
The year begins with Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel at the Little Carnegie.
Drunken Angel is a dark, moody poem. Drunken Angel is full of desperation and Humphrey Bogart cynicism and cruelty and misery. Drunken Angel is a hymn to the desperation of man – an angry hopeless song about a desperate, angry landscape of human hope and sickness. Drunken Angel is a bubbling mud puddle in the very heart of man, with diseases and hideous nests of mosquitoes, oozing gases and garbage, degradation and misery.
It is about a doctor? a bum? a saint? a drunkard? a man? “All angels are like me. Look at me!” he shouts. He shouts his words out angrily, with no more patience left. He has reached the bottom. He is no longer afraid; he has nothing to lose. He is fighting the puddle, alone. Sweating, shouting, dirty, drunk, unshaven, stinking – he knows the only thing left is to persist, to insist. The puddle is there, it will probably always be there. But so will be the man. So he picks up a stone and angrily throws it into the puddle. And it disappears into its ugly womb, as do the flowers and the garbage and the mosquitoes.
Drunken Angel is a film of contemporary Japan and contemporary man anywhere as seen by an artist whose love and compassion have led him to desperation. And we feel, from every image, from every gesture, that it hurts him. The film itself becomes an angry, desperate stone that Kurosawa swings into the very face of man. And gray, muddy shadows and flashes of light run trembling across the screen, forebodingly, like an oozing subconscious – a dark, black song of man.
But it shines. Even through mud and sickness, the beauty and love and truth shines from the stone cast by Kurosawa into the face of man.
谁翻译的呢？塔哥？也很优美～
关于商业诱惑
借着种种宣传和其它渠道，地下电影正在集聚力量，而那些钱袋子也开始瞧上了其中有利可图的机会。所有的诱惑和商业喧哗开始把我们罩住了。各种各样的精明的商人开始用承诺，合同，甜言蜜语来诱惑我们上钩。是该发出警报的时候了。前卫电影正处于一个充满诱惑的关键的时期。我们应该比以前更加紧密的团结在一起。我们不能对商业诱惑有哪怕一丁点的屈从。我们的指导方向应该是内在的和回归的。以个人电影对抗大众电影。以个人表达对抗“大众”表达。以导演电影对抗制片人电影。以合作发行对抗私人发行。以多重发行对抗“独家”垄断发行。以沉默对抗噪声。
On the commercial temptations
With the underground cinema gaining in strength, with all the publicity and all, the moneybags are beginning to see profitable possibilities in it. All the temptations and the commercial bustle is beginning to surround us. All kinds of clever commercial fisherman are beginning to temp us with promises, contracts, sweet tongues. It’s time to sound a warning. The film avant-garde is going through a very tempting and crucial period. We should stick together more than ever. And we shouldn’t give in even an inch to the commercial temptations. Our direction should remain inward, and homeward. Personal cinema as against public cinema. Self-expression as against “public” expression. Director’s cinema as against producer cinema. Cooperative distribution as against private distribution. Multiple distribution as against “exclusive” monopolistic distribution. Silence as against noise.
这篇文章比《泥醉天使》那篇早三个星期。
关于用丑陋对付丑陋
我带着郁闷的心情坐下来写这个专栏。现在是圣诞节时间；空气中弥漫着某种东西，某种美好的东西。可是我被丑陋包围住了，那些丑陋的电影！通过窗户我都能看到女子监狱的一角。
但是，我还得写。
你可以去让完全没有想象力的Black Orpheus来折磨你，让你的生活更加凄惨。或者可以选择Aromarama，一部发送香味的中国游记电影。你能闻到橘子，你能闻到松树，你能闻到港口。你沾着各种的浓缩气味走出来，然后可以大口呼吸一把新鲜空气；或者赶快去洗个头再把衣服送到洗衣店。尽管如此，还是很好玩：你花钱自找的嘛。这些东西到头来除了给你平舔一则笑话，什么都不会剩下。可是发行商非要为影片加上一个反-共的旁白，把它弄成了一个反-共宣传片。这就是丑陋，丑陋，丑陋，是用什么香料也盖不住的。
Kramer的影片On the Beach和小林正树的《人间条件》，与其说是电影更像史料。前者让我们想起我们自己的军国主义者（今天的头条新闻是：“美国通报北约它对苏联保持优势核武，并会维持下去”……“监狱里的年青人接受军事训练”）；后者让我们记起日本人在满洲国的残暴。从这点上说，这两部片子都很到位。
但是我想：
那又怎么样？我们的丑陋之处还不够多么？难道我们还不知道这些玩意么？为什么总是要用丑陋来对付丑陋，用愚蠢来对付愚蠢，弄出越来越多的一样的东西来看？为什么不创造出一些美好的东西来对付丑陋？我并不是一个逃避主义者（尽管逃避主义本身没有任何错误）。Rene Clair在A Nous la Liberte里不是逃避主义者。Chaplin从来都不是。诗人从来都不是。郁金香，柳树，Louise Brooks，和仙鹤，也都不是。但是它们，只要存在，放射出美丽，和平，真理，一样可以和丑陋作战。
对这些电影，陈腐的电影，现实主义的电影，我突然感到疲倦。我想去华盛顿广场上看看树。光是那些树就洋溢着生命力。
Crowther在他对《人间条件》的影评里写道：“另外，日语对白对于不习惯的人来说显得很刺耳……”
On Fighting Ugliness with Ugliness
I sat down to write this column in a gloomy mood. It is Christmastime; there is something in the air, some kind of ideal. And all this ugliness around me, all these ugly films! And through my window I can see a corner of the Women’s Prison.
Still, I have to write.
You can go and suffer through the heavy unimaginativeness of Black Orpheus and make your life still more miserable. Or you can go to Aromarama, a travelogue through China, accompanied with smells. You can smell the orange, you can smell the pine tree, you can smell the harbor. You walk out full of concentrated smalls, and you gasp for fresh air; or you rush to wash out your hair and take your suit to the cleaner. Still, all this is fun: you pay your money for it. All this would leave nothing but a memory of a practical joke, if the distributor hadn’t added to the film an anti-Chinese commentary to make it anti-China propaganda. Which is ugly, ugly, ugly, and cannot be killed with any smells.
Kramer’s On the Beach and Kobayashi’s The Human Condition are more documents than films. The first reminds us of the absurdities of our own militarists (today’s headlines: “U.S. Informs NATO It Leads Russians in Nuclear Arms, Will Keep Edge”…. “Youths in Jail Get Military Classes”); the second reminds us of the atrocities of the Japanese in Manchuria. As such, both pictures make their points.
But then I thought:
So what? Don’t we have enough ugliness already? And don’t we know these things already? Why always fight ugliness with ugliness, stupidity with stupidity, displaying still more and more of it? Why not create something beautiful to fight the ugliness? Not that I am for escapism (although there is nothing wrong with it). Rene Clair was not an escapist in A Nous la Liberte. And Chaplin never was. No poet ever is. Neither are tulips, willow trees, Louise Brooks, or cranes. But they fight ugliness just by being there, by emanating beauty, peace, truth.
Suddenly I am all tired of it, of all these films, banal films, realistic films. I want to go out into Washington Square and look at trees. Even the hanging tree emanates life.
Crowther, in his review of The Human Condition: “What’s more, the Japanese dialogue is abrasive on unaccustomed ears…”
能否给个连接，让俺去拜一拜？
http://www.jonasmekas.com/
http://www.efn.org/~valdas/mekas.html
无论是英文还是中文，都有诗歌般阴郁韵律的美。
1959年8月12日
地狱里的魔鬼将会怎么处置Lola Montes的发行商
我肯出大价钱，如果能知道我们的电影发行商们会掉到地狱的第几层，尤其是Max Orphuls的封顶杰作，Lola Montes，的发行商。不管怎样，路西法肯定会勒令这个发行商，在地狱盛夏的灼人热浪中，一遍又一遍的，抄写他的新片名，Sins of Lola Montes，一个从平庸的灵感瞬间中冒出来的名字。这还没完。我估计他还要被勒令，一个又一格的，吃下他剪掉的全部六十五分钟的影片，而且我打赌他吃不到最后一格就会吐出来。所以他还得从头再来。
但是这还不够——同时他还得把影片恢复成原来的样子——一部被他，在自己没几天的尘世生命里，给配了音动了剪刀搅和的乱七八糟，就跟H.G. Weinberg所说的，“把屁股扭到前面去了”，的影片。但是因为这个发行商瞎得跟蝙蝠一样，他根本就不会知道该恢复成什么样，因为他这辈子都不会明白Lola Montes这部片子讲的到底是啥。所以那些小妖就会跑出来，把他身上的肉整块整块的撕下，整整六十五分钟的肉，再把他扭上一圈，让他可怜的后半拉转到前面去。
Sanders兄弟——在他们的电影Crime and Punishmen, U.S.A.里屠戮了陀思妥耶夫斯基——不过，因为年青也没有经验，就不至于到这种地步。至少他们试图把陀思妥耶夫斯基移植到现代美国的企图是出于好意。但是，还是要说，我们都知道，地狱也可以是用美好的愿望铺成的。又说，或许这本来就不是他们自己的想法，而是其他人的。
尽管如此，这两个年轻而有才华的兄弟所拥有的视觉新鲜感和导演想象力屡屡超出了当下一般的好莱坞水准。它的主要缺点是在对白上，这个，翻译过来后，听上去像糟糕的配音，或者说是Sammy Davis Jr.在用Chaliapin的嗓音唱歌。你不可能毫不修改对白和情节就把陀思妥耶夫斯基给移植到美国来。只有中心思想应该保留。
这就是为什么Anouilh或者Cocteau能把古希腊神话搬进自己的话剧却不被人骂。在Orpheus或者Antigone里，虽然剧情元素还约莫能看出来，中心思想已经被从完全不同的，现代的，和个人的视角进行了开拓。所以与其说是把神话再转述一遍，古神话是被Anouilh或者Cocteau加了新东西，进行了扩充，获得了新生，又变得有意义了。Sanders的影片里做的则恰恰相反：它把陀思妥耶夫斯基给缩成了一个侏儒。
但是，正如我所说，年青可以原谅也值得原谅。但是对Lola Montes有预谋的屠杀是不可原谅的。
What the devils will do to the distributor of Lola Montes in Hell
I’d give much to know which circle of Hell our film-distributors will go to, especially the distributor of Max Orphuls’ masterpiece and crowning achievement, Lola Montes. In all probability, Lucifer will force this distributor to write, again and again, in the blazing heat of Hell’s midsummer, his new title, Sins of Lola Montes, invented in a moment of mundane inspiration. That will not be all. I think he will also be forced to eat, frame by frame, all the sixty-five minutes of the film that he cut out, and I bet he will vomit it out before he finishes the last frame. So that he will have to start from the beginning again.
But more than that – at the same time he will have to restore the film to its original shape –the film which he, in his short earthly life, has dubbed and cut and mixed all up and, as H. G. Weinberg put it, “twisted ass-frontwards.” But since this distributor is blind as bat, he will never know how to do it, as he never knew in his life what Lola Montes was all about. So the little devils will come around and they will tear out chunks of his flesh, exactly sixty-five minutes of it, and will twist him all around, with his poor back part frontwards.
The brothers Sanders, however, may get away with all that, being young and inexperienced – for massacring Feodor Dostoevski in their film Crime and Punishmen, U.S.A. At least their attempt to transfer Dostoevski to modern America was well-intentioned. But, again, as we all know, Hell is pave with good intentions too. And then, maybe it was not even their idea, but someone else’s.
Still, the first film of these two young and talented brothers has a visual freshness and directorial imagination that often goes beyond the grasp of the usual contemporary Hollywood. Its main failure is in its dialogue, which, when translated, sounds like bad dubbing or Sammy Davis, Jr., singing Chaliapin’s voice. You can not transplant Dostoevski to modern America without changing his dialogue and his plot completely. Only the central idea should be left.
This is why Anouilh or Cocteau get away with the old Greek myths in their plays. In Orpheus or Antigone, although recognizable elements of the plot are retained, the central ideas are explored from completely different, contemporary, and personal angles. So instead of just repeating them, Anouilh or Cocteau add to the old myths, expand them, revitalize them, and make them meaningful again. The Sanders film does almost the opposite: It shrinks Dostoevski to the size of a midget.
As I said, however, youth forgives and is forgivable. But no the premeditated massacre of Lola Montes.
1959年2月25日
Maya Deren和电影诗
Maya Deren的新作，The Very Eye of Night，前不久在Living剧院举办的个人回顾展上首映，并随即在Cherry Lane应邀放映了两场。
在这么狭小的版面上，即使是试图去评论这部电影也显得有失公允。对于常见的戏剧性的电影，你可以讲讲剧情以及个别情景。但是要用语言来把握这部电影却是不可能的。这部电影，基本上，是一首诗，不是靠故事而是视觉联想和符号来打动我们。
当我们接触文学作品的时候，因为过长时间都浸淫在诸如小说这样“清醒的”史诗形式里，某些感觉已经被挤到了不重要的地方。诗歌需要更多的敏感度。所以清醒者会说：Maya Deren的电影到底有啥啊？Brakhage，Maas，还有Richter有啥啊，值得大惊小怪的？
但是对于我，The Very Eye of Night是一部深思熟虑的作品，清晰，晶莹剔透。Maya Deren和其他大部分实验艺术家的区别在于她清晰的目的，清晰的画面，共通的符号。每位诗人都会着力于某一种感觉，Maya Deren下功夫的地方并非是完全要把她个人的潜意识当作共通的潜意识。穿越了她个人气质后，画面和符号变得如冬日天空般的清澈，一柄祭献之刀正从血月中刺出闪亮的刀锋（with the shining blade of a ceremonial knife sticking out of the moon’s blood，10月的满月好像叫blood moon，是献祭的时刻）。
透过Deren女士的全部作品才能最好的理解The Very Eye of Night，这样我们就能跟随她的心路历程经过空间－时间的断面，经过现代神话影像，黑与白的仪式。她影片中的运动和张力都仿佛是命中注定的。Meshes of the Afternoon里的呈示，发展，和高潮，现在又得益于Teiji Ito的音乐，当悬念在刀锋上颤抖时，有一种类似希腊悲剧味道的凄惨宿命。尽管The Very Eye of Night没有绷这么紧，它和星辰有着一样的凄惨宿命。
虽然Maya Deren的内容有如此的深度，我们，一开始，并非被她影片的智慧所吸引，而是被其中视觉节奏的强度，因为她是一位把电影用到最纯粹的地步的艺术家。她的想法在不同层次上的细腻之处，还有电影里暗藏的结构，只有Maya Deren自己才清楚。对于我们，这些都隐藏在晶莹剔透的充满张力的黑白影像下面——这是她的想象力在电影的灵魂中布下的一张隐藏的陷网，以在正确的时间用正确的方式把我们捕获——慢慢的在我们身上起反应。
因为我们现在都完全被史诗片给淹没了，我从来没有幻想过电影诗能被多少人理解和体验。大部分时候诗意的感觉都会被认为不够劲和没有男人味。我们“清醒的”观众能接受的诗歌最多就是在叙事性的诗意电影里，比如波兰片Two Men and a Wardrobe，因为“它还有个故事要说”，或者因为“它是一部直通通的电影”。
但是在Living剧院放映Maya Deren的影片时，影院里挤得到处是人——地板上坐满了，墙边上站着，楼梯上也有——对于一个电影诗人，这是她在这个清醒的世界能够经历的最不寻常的令人狂喜的时刻了。
Maya Deren and the Film Poem
The Very Eye of Night, Maya Deren’s latest film, was premiered at a recent retrospective show of her films at the Living Theatre, then given two further command performances at the Cherry Lane.
It would be unjust even to attempt to review the film in this narrow space. One can describe the plot and a few situations of the usual dramatic motion picture. But it is impossible to capture in words a film which is, basically, a poem, and which affects us not by its story but through its visual associations and symbols.
As in our contacts with literature, certain areas of feelings are often pushed into the background by too long an exposure to “sober,” epic forms like the novel. Poetry asks for more sensitivity. So the sober ones say: What is all this about Maya Deren’s films? What is all this fuss about Brakhage, Maas, and Richter?
But to me, The Very Eye of Night is a very thought-out film, clear and crystalline. Maya Deren differs from most of the other experimentalists through her clarity of purpose, clarity of images, universality of symbols. Every poet works in a specific area of feeling, and the area in which Maya Deren digs is not so much her own personal subconscious as a universal subconscious. Passed through her own temperament, the images and symbols acquire a midwinter-sky clarity, with the shining blade of a ceremonial knife sticking out of the moon’s blood.
The Very Eye of Night is best understood in the context of Miss Deren’s whole work, as we trace her inner journey through the space-time breakings, through the modern myths imagery, black-white rituals. The movements and tensions of her films seem to be predestined. The unfolding, growth, and climax of Meshes of the Afternoon, now reinforced by Teiji Ito’s score, have something of the tragic predestination of Greek tragedy, while the suspense is trembling on that blade of a knife. Although The Very Eye of Night is less tense, it has the same tragic predestination of the stars.
With all the depth of Maya Deren’s content, we are caught, first, not by the intellect of her films, but by the intensity of their visual rhythms, since she is an artist using cinema in its purest sense. The intricacy of the various levels of her thoughts and the under-structures of the movies are consciously known only to Maya Deren herself. To us they are hidden beyond these crystal tense black-white images—a hidden snare of her imagination waiting there in the film’s psyche to catch at the right moment in the right way and work slowly into us.
Since we are nourished on the epic picture only, I have no illusions that film poetry will ever be understood and felt by very many. Most of the time poetical feelings are considered weak and unmanly. The farthest that our “sober” audience can go to meet poetry is in a narrative poetic picture like the Polish Two Men and a Wardrobe, because “it has a story to tell,” or because “it is a straightforward film.”
But during the showing of Maya Deren’s films at the Living Theatre, the place was bursting with people – sitting everywhere on the floor, standing by the walls, on the stairway – a most unusual and exultant moment for a film poet to experience in this sober world.
不是很好评的，也不太适合作为媒体影评人选择评论的对象，能评这种电影的，都是。但看他的描述，似乎Maya Deren当时在美国很火啊！