控方證人中克里斯汀是一個柏林女人，為了生存隱瞞婚姻，委身于男主，影片中寥寥數語帶過了她的身世，那些年柏林的女人究竟是怎樣一種境況？柏林艷史為我們答疑解惑。戰(zhàn)爭本就無正義和非正義之說，興百姓苦，亡百姓苦，二戰(zhàn)之后的德國人，特別是德國的女人活得和動物一樣，承受他國男人的報復，承擔戰(zhàn)爭的后果。對于美俄這些國家的士兵來說，柏林到處是女人，到處是艷遇，而對于柏林女人來說就是赤裸裸的強暴，為了活下去，她們別無選擇，在生命的本能面前，是沒有羞恥心的。艷史并不艷，柏林女人的血淚透過黑色的膠片把歷史染成了紅色。電影中每個人物都有故事，每個故事都可以拍成一部獨立的電影。海上鋼琴師中有一個片段，1900為小號手講解他音樂的靈感來源，這艘船上的每個人都是一首曲子，彼時的心境，行為，妝容都是一段即時的旋律，因而我們不妨把這部柏林艷史看成是克里斯汀們的故事。

Billy Wilder’s romance-triangle comedy is set in the Allied-occupied Berlin in 1947, in the face of Hollywood's entrenched agism and sexism, A FOREIGN AFFAIR is bracingly headlined by two 40-plus female marquee players, Jean Arthur (in her penultimate picture) and Marlene Dietrich, in roles which cagily keep their real ages under wraps.

Arthur plays aprudish American congresswoman Phoebe Frost of Iowa, scandalized by the dissipation she witnesses of American soldiers in the rubble strewn city, she is headstrong in making an example by finding out the American officer who is clandestinely protecting a German torch singer Erika von Schlutow (Dietrich),a woman with a Nazi past. Naturally and provincially, Captain John Pringle (an amicable and amenable Lund), another Iowan, is elected as her aide, but little does she know, John is the man she determines to uncover.

So to sabatoge Phoebe’s tenacious investigation, John starts to woo her and hope the flirtation can distract her, and indeed, it works (Wilder stages a fluid filibustering resistance before the pair landing their first kiss, and near the end, with a role-changing iteration), but of course, it is the bean-spilling moment that sells the tickets, when Phoebe and Erika share the same limelight, their conversation may well pass the Bechdel test, but what is at stake is a winning/losing game towards a man’s love and the less glamorous Phoebe is the honorable also-run, as it seems.

A looming revenge plan from one of Erika’s Nazi ex-lovers, is thrown into the game in a very late stage to precipitate a switcheroo, Wilder could never allot Erika too much time in the winner’s corner simply because his anti-Nazi ire, which presumably gives a certifiable license for its tepid ending.

Jean Arthur, for one last time, stretches her crow’s feet and psyches up for a straitlaced-to-smitten transformation, gives a fine presence but she is on a hiding to nothing in comparison with Dietrich’s sultry stature and sing-song poise, especially when those ditties are written by the eminentFriedrich Hollaender (BLACK MARKET is a humdinger), Dietrich is never a singer’s singer because of the discernible vocal stricture, but the combo of her contralto timbre and exterior élan is simply par excellence.

While Wilder doesn’t hide his personal attachment with the city in ruins, striking aerial shots bearing testimony of something its US audience may not realize at then, retrospectively A FOREIGN AFFAIR is a minor Wilder-Brackett’s output because of its frothiness and a deus ex machina perhaps dished up without much deliberation.

referential points: Wilder’s THE FORTUNE COOKIE (1966, 7.4/10), THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955, 7.1/10); Howard Hawks’ BALL OF FIRE (1941, 7.5/10).

認識電影

8.9

[美] 路易斯·賈內梯 [瑞典] 英格瑪·伯格曼 [日] 黑澤明 等供圖 / 2007 / 世界圖書出版公司

第十章 意識形態(tài)——同性戀解放

黛德麗在20世紀20年代的柏林,那個當時在歐洲對性最開放也最性感的城市中出道。當她初抵好萊塢時,曾因公開的雙性戀身份而引起飛短流長。但導演們也成功地剝削她的曖昧性傾向。她足足紅了60年,拍本片時她已48歲,但這張照片足以證明她那雙美腿如何充滿噱頭。