历劫佳人

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

第一次看奥逊·威尔斯的电影，深为开场的长镜头折服。密处躲藏的凶手、两国边界小镇的喧嚣、藏在车后面的炸药、看起来就像主角偏偏又总不经意和炸药离的过分接近......一个跟踪式长镜头几乎把影迷的胃口掉到天上和太阳肩并肩。警匪、谋杀、绑架、毒品、边界、折磨美人，可以说作为一部黑色电影它该有的惊悚猎奇元素都有了，剩下的则交给道德灰色地带的正邪纠缠了。而结尾的追踪真相与之形成完美呼应，不经意间存在的危机最可怕。电影开头是一段义正言辞的说明，表示本片曾遭片商私自剪辑，后威尔斯写下58页长信，最终尽量按照导演意愿剪辑成了现在这个版本。

影片最引人注目的不是破案的曲折坚信，而是在破案过程中对执法手段和公正判断的怀疑。一个凭借直觉判案的警察为了验证猜想不惜假造证据陷害被告人，尽管在影片的结束这件案子证实了这个警察的直觉没错，而他在办案过程中依赖直觉、与毒贩勾结、杀人嫁祸铲除异己、捏造证物、严刑逼供被告人等等行为全部超出了执法人应有的职业素养和道德操守，与其说是为了贯彻正义，不如说是为了满足自己作为正义化身的幻想。奥逊饰演的美国警察即便是魔鬼的化身却干了天使的工作，叱咤警界三十年到头来却被最好的同伴枪毙在臭河沟里，给不光彩的人生留下一个尽是谜思的转身。

在构图上，本片利用人物远近造成视觉上身材的大小比对显示力量对比，往往占据画面更多更靠前的掌握更多的主动权和操控能力：美国警察出场时都站在最醒目显眼的位置，身形总要比旁人更为高大一些，特别是处于少数几个人同框的画面里更是如此，唯有贯彻原则的墨西哥警察可以与之分庭抗礼。然而当美国警察第一次被怀疑时怒而出走，在大厅被喊住，此时美国警察处于画面的最远端，又远又小看不清真面目，而日后看清真相与之反目的同僚站在画面的正中间左右为难，而选择调查他的警察站在离观众最近的位置，显得极为高大。三个人连成一条完美的对角线，既显出美国警察自钻牛角尖的一意孤行，也侧面烘托了导演对这个狂妄警察的评价，未来已在这个镜头里得到预言。

有趣的是，在片中屡遭不幸的女主角，即墨西哥缉毒警察的妻子，被当地毒枭用计骗到家中试图恐吓，两个人在镜头前好似上演了一出抢镜大戏：毒枭趁女主还云里雾里之时摆姿态吓唬她，整个人占了多半个镜头，把女主角挤得只能露出半个头；等女主角反应过来巧舌如簧临危不惧反而呛了毒枭一波，毒枭被骂的目瞪口呆反而自己在镜头下只露出半个头，这正是以抢镜之细节突出正邪之较劲。

更为令人揪心的是观众可以在同一框中看到跟踪者与被跟踪者、偷窥者和被偷窥者，甚至是嫌疑满满的毒枭和窝里反的警察，他们互相之间只有前者知道后者的存在，于是观众可以在一方不知情的情况下眼睁睁看着罪恶的发生，这种似乎亲临其境的感觉不免使人心惊。

众多的仰视镜头将角色烘托的高大之余，也将各个角色的心事放大到观众面前：美国警察的自大阴鸷、女主角面临危难的恐惧等等。最经典的莫过于美国警察即将被同僚诱出时的特写：身后被一只巨大的野牛头占据整个背景，狂野之余却也见垂死之态。

黑白电影里的光影对照总是最为明显，美国警察私自杀死毒枭时屋子里的光一明一暗，正邪在这里失去了明显的边界，只留下暧昧不清的杀欲和恐惧。女主角被毒枭手下盯住时也是在黑暗中用一只手电筒晃住她，唯一的光亮反而成了危险的源头。女主角在汽车旅馆被抓住时，脸从光明逐渐到被一个人的阴影笼罩，放慢的恐怖加深了危机的程度。

究竟是坚持正义放过怀疑对象、还是以正义之名陷害真凶进网，这是个死题。毕竟人不是神，会犯下无数的过错；而执法者也不没有审判的权力，不应该凭借一己私欲改变许多人的命运走向。两个国家的两种性格截然不同的警察碰撞在这个边界小镇，其中的火花燃烧起的更多于道德。而关于在汽车旅馆没有给女主角注射真正的毒品这个情节，我只能说还是年代太早口味太轻了。

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。