电影产业已死编辑本段回目录
如今电影同质化现象严重，那是否电影产业真的“青黄不接”呢？电影还能存活下去吗？让纽约时报的记者来告诉你。
几周前我前往长岛一所学院办讲座——说穿了，就是站在一屋子人面前，花几分钟随便聊聊，话题涉及从电影本身和电影批评，随后剩下的时间都用来回答问题。当时正值中午，教室里人群分布比较杂，一半是25岁及以下的本科生，另一半都是65岁及以上的继续教育学院的学生，我估摸着这两群人正好五五开，就我这一名中年男子卡在中间，不出所料，问题扑面而来，应接不暇，一个接一个，内容涉及过往，也包括前景。
Will 3-D last? What will be the next global cinematic hot spot? What young stars will still be around 10 or 20 years from now? Hard questions to answer, since a critic’s job is not prophecy so much as the anticipation of surprise. But the other type of question — which did not always come from the elders in the crowd — was not surprising at all. Why aren’t there any good movies anymore?
“3D电影会长久吗？全球院线的下个热门点又将是什么？10~20年后，如今的青年影星们将何去何从？”这些问题很难回答，因为影评人并非先知，却又总是会遇上各种出其不意的问题。但另一群人——尽管不都是年长人群提出的问题——提出的问题却都是家常便饭了。“为什么现在都没有好电影可看了？”
回答这一问题并无益处，事实上，好电影还是有的。譬如《商海通牒》、《点球成金》、《秘境里斯本》这些电影难道称不上“好电影”吗？虽然有实例可以撑腰，但结果仍是徒劳，其实这种问题并不能称之为问题，更像是普罗大众皆有的抱怨。人们普遍认为电影质量青黄不接，总体上呈颓势；那些历久弥新的经典才是“好电影”，它们算是异类，也是意外的惊喜。过往影片总是荣耀万千，无论是旧式影院放映机的老式轴承技术（脑海中浮现《卡萨布兰卡》以及《彗星美人》），60年代的外籍明星（想想米开朗基罗·安东尼罗奥，让·吕克·戈达尔），还是70年代好莱坞涌现出的一批青年才俊。无论你有多偏爱那一段金黄岁月，有件事确信无疑：这批老影迷把过去吹得夸大其词了。
In strictly technical terms, this is true enough. The machinery of production and distribution is in the midst of an epochal change, part of the rapid and convulsive digitalization of everything under the sun. If you go to a movie theater, you are less and less likely to see a film in the traditional, literal sense. Cans and reels have been replaced by hard drives and digital files, and some of the old material hallmarks of cinema — the grainy swirl of emulsion as the light passes through the stock, the occasional shudder of sprockets sliding into place, the whirr and click of the projector — are quickly taking on an aura of antiquity. Movies are shot and shown digitally and increasingly distributed that way as well, streaming onto the screen in your living room or in your hand.
从严格的技术层面上来说，他们的观点很对。如今电影业量产化规模正随着新纪元一同壮大，部分原因在于，全球所有电影几乎都迅速忙不迭地转向数字化。你现在去看电影，几乎看不到传统意义上的旧胶片电影了。往日的胶片和胶盒都已被硬件和数字电影替代。放映间里射出的一束光粒，链齿轮偶不期然发出的声响、放映机传出的齿轮声——这些老式电影院才有的特质已逐渐成为历史。如今电影的制作、放映都采用数字化，甚至都可以数字发行，你在卧室的电视机或手头的掌上设备上就能看电影。
These changes inspire enthusiasm, bewilderment and also a measure of mourning. In a recent review of “Tower Heist” and “Melancholia” — a pairing that might at once confirm and refute the gloom of backward-looking cinephiles — Anthony Lane of The New Yorker laments the impending eclipse of moviegoing, a collective ritual ostensibly threatened by the ascendance of home viewing. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” he concludes, offering (by way of a quotation from “Melancholia”) a pre-emptive epitaph for a form of cultural consumption, built around “compulsion” and “communion,” with roots in ancient Athens and, apparently, no future to speak of.
这种转变引来了不少非议，有人感到欢欣雀跃，也有人感到迷茫失措，还有部分人黯然。最近《高楼大劫案》和《忧郁症》这两部电影的情况同时印证也驳斥了老影迷们的守旧情节，纽约时报的安东尼·莱恩（Anthony Lane）感到惋惜，因为影院的客流可能会逐渐流失——传统的电影观摩方式受到家庭观影的威胁，在家看电影已成为主流。莱恩把这种现象总结为“及时行乐”（这句话出自电影《忧郁症》），由于人们忍不住想要“下载电影”，也乐于“分享”，这种精神文化消费模式将早早为电影行业写上墓铭志，即便是美国这样富有电影历史的国家，也将断送前程。
Around the same time a headline on Roger Ebert’s blog announced “The Sudden Death of Film.” In the essay that follows, Mr. Ebert’s grief is tempered with resignation: “The celluloid dream may live on in my hopes, but video commands the field,” he writes. Mr. Ebert, who has frequently (and eloquently) argued for the aesthetic superiority of film over video, acknowledges that “my war is over, my side lost, and it’s important to consider this in the real world.” And he concludes with a wry elegy for the typewriter, a machine that has become, along with the movie projector and the turntable, a fetish and an emblem of superannuated modernity.
与此同时，罗杰·艾伯特（Roger Ebert）的博客上发表了一篇题为“电影产业猝死”的文章。文章中艾伯特的语气与其说是悲观，更多的是透露出一丝无可奈何，他写道：“我希望电影梦将永存，但如今视频大行其道。”艾伯特也经常（而且极富表现力）为家庭观影伸冤。他觉得“从观感上来说，影视比视频更上一层楼”——这样的说法是不对的。并强调：“既然两者已决出雌雄，电影业节节败退，那面对现实才是当务之急。”他把打字机、电影放映机、留声机比在一起，用自嘲的口吻把它们总结成是“落伍时代”的象征和迷恋。
Mr. Ebert is generally immune to the golden-ageism that has become a critical default position; he embraces the old and the new with equal ardor. But the sense of loss he expresses in the face of changing technology resonates with the gloom I encountered on Long Island. It can be hard to escape, and even harder to argue against, the feeling that something we used to love is going away, or already gone. This is less a critical position or a historical insight than a mood, induced by the usual selective comparisons and subjective hunches. Back then (whenever it was) the stars were more glamorous, the writing sharper, the stories more cogent and the critics more powerful.
尽管现在人们普遍认为电影产业青黄不接，但艾伯特对此却不太以为然。他对新老事物抱有同样的热情。但面对电影技术的变革，他表达出的失落感同我在长岛碰到的问题不谋而合。你无所遁迹，或许更无从争辩——因为我们曾经一直深爱的事物能离我们渐行渐远，甚至早已消失在事业——这种情愫难以言喻。与其说这种问题带有批判的姿态亦或是深刻的历史见地，不如说是由于比较新老电影，再加上自己的主观喜好而心生的落寞之情。那时（具体也不只是何时）明星们都比现在更光鲜，编剧更犀利，剧本更切实，剧评也更有影响力。
Are movies essentially a thing of the past? Does whatever we have now, digital or analog, represent at best a pale shadow of bygone glory? Among the recent arrivals in bookstores — speaking of obsolescence! — are two collections of writing by prominent critics that say as much in their titles. The Library of America volume of Pauline Kael’s essays and reviews is called “The Age of Movies,” a period that evidently lasted from the mid-’50s until the early ’90s, when Kael departed her perch at The New Yorker. Meanwhile a book by Dave Kehr (who writes a home-video column for The New York Times), titled “When Movies Mattered,” gathers up his articles from the ’70s and ’80s, when he wrote mainly for The Chicago Reader.
旧式电影必定是过去时代的产物吗？如今我们的电影形式——不论是数字化还是其它种种——都在昔日辉煌下显得黯然失色吗？近来出版的新书中，有两本丛书一看标题就知道它们的主论点都是讨论“过时”。一本是美国文库系列（The Library of American Volume）系列出版的，由鲍林·卡埃尔（Pauline Kael）撰写的《电影时代》（The Age of Movies），这本书写的是上世纪50年代中期至90年代早期，那时卡埃尔离开了位于纽约的住所。另一次则是戴夫·科尔（Dave Kehr）撰写的书籍，题为《电影何时变得重要》（When Movies Mattered），他同时也在为纽约时报的“家庭影院”专栏写作。这本书收录了他上世纪70~80年代的文章，那时他主要为《芝加哥读者报》撰稿。
Not that you should judge a book by its cover. The air of nostalgia in the packaging — i.e., the age of movies is obviously not now, when they no longer matter — is undermined by the prose, which is resolutely and often thrillingly situated in the present. That is, even though Kael and Mr. Kehr sometimes glance backward into film history, they share a concern (it is almost all they share) with what is happening around them, with the new work of actors and directors who feed and frustrate their faith in the medium. To read Kael on Robert Altman or Mr. Kehr on Blake Edwards is not merely to revisit bygone arguments but also to encounter and absorb the vigor of those arguments as if they were taking place today.
我并不是教导大家应该“以貌取书”。拿起《电影时代》，一看书封，一股怀旧之情扑面而来，这本书写的肯定不是现在，具体何时并不重要，重要的是这股怀旧情愫体现在文体上，而文法上却是出人意外地使用现在式。也就是说，尽管卡埃尔和科尔时而回首电影业的过去，但他们对现状却都心存担忧（几乎可以是说是共鸣）——新兴导演和演员们都对媒体行业感到厌倦和沮丧。阅读卡埃尔写的《罗伯特·艾尔特曼》（Robert Altman）和科尔的《布莱克·爱德华兹》，不仅仅是在品读昔日的非议，而是去面对和吸纳往日非议的精髓，就好像即便到今日，也都争论仍时时刻刻产生作用。
“Nashville” and “10” by now belong to the category of old movies, and the act of republishing earlier works of criticism can look like a way of shoring up monuments of the past against the deficiencies of now. The transition from analog to digital technology has the somewhat paradoxical effect of making those monuments more numerous and imposing. As a platform for criticism, the Internet lends itself to the endless making and circulation of lists, and it has also become a gathering place for cinematic antiquarians of all stripes and sensibilities. At the same time the history of film is now more widely and readily accessible than ever before. We may lament the end of movie clubs and campus film societies that presented battered prints of great movies, but by any aesthetic (as opposed to sentimental) standard, the high-quality, carefully restored digital transfers of classics and curiosities now available on DVD and Blu-ray offer a much better way to encounter the canon.
《纳什维尔》（Nashville）和《10》如今已被归为老电影的行列。翻拍早期的影视作品也许是为了表达对过去的缅怀以及弥补如今“青黄不接”的情况。可电影数字化变革的进程中，反而产生了自相矛盾的效果，翻拍的电影与其说是“复刻经典”，不如说是“滥竽充数”。作为言论平坦，网络上免不了一番唇枪舌剑将，永无止尽，网络也让来自各阶层的电影发烧友们聚集到一起。与此同时，人们更容易也更能够接触到电影历史。我们也许会免不了伤感，因为影视俱乐部、校园影视社团不会再分享各类经典电影，但有别于情感层面，从观感上来说，高质量、保存完好的数字复刻DVD或是蓝光光碟如今都能在市面上买到，数字化为我们提供了接触经典的良好途径，这点更值得我们高兴。
But the very proximity of this canon contributes to the devaluation of the present. Those Criterion Collection and Warner Brothers boxes — of Ozu and Rossellini, of westerns and films noirs and avant-garde cinema — gaze reproachfully from the shelves, much as the Turner Classic Movies titles lurk in the conscience of the DVR, silently scolding viewers who just want to catch up on “Modern Family” or “Bored to Death.” Shouldn’t we be giving our attention to movies that have proved themselves, over the years, worthy of it?
但复刻经典却贬低了新兴影片的价值。那些标准收藏公司以及华纳兄弟出版的经典影片——无论是小津安二郎（Yasujiro Ozu）还是罗西尼奥（Rossellini）演过的影片；不论是西部片还是悲情片，创新片——都从经典的保护壳里，用责备的眼光审视着外界；在你打开硬盘录像机（DVR）观看特纳经典电影频道（Turner Classic Movies）放出的经典影片时，“经典”二字也在用责骂的眼光看待那些观看《摩登家庭》（Modern Family）以及《无聊致死》（Bored to Death）的人。难道我们不应该关注这些年来，那些已经树立起口碑并值得人们津津乐道的新兴电影吗？
By all means. The alternative is an uncritical embrace of the new for its own sake, a shallow contempt for tradition and a blindness to its beauties. But there is at least an equal risk of being blinded by those beauties to the energies that surround us, and to mistake affection for a standard of judgment. Of course no modern movie star can match Humphrey Bogart’s world-weary toughness or Bette Davis’s sparkling wit, and of course nothing in today’s movies looks or sound the way it used to. But why — or how — should it? Every art form changes, often at rates and in ways that cause discomfort to its devotees. But the arts also have a remarkable ability to withstand and absorb those changes, and to prove wrong the prophecies of their demise.
可以肯定的是，就其本身而言，老电影拥抱数字化并不矛盾，人们对经典的盲目追崇亦或菲薄也无可厚非。但周遭的盲目追崇很可能是一把双刃剑，导致最后的评判有失公允。当然，如今新一代影星没有人能诠释出亨弗莱·鲍嘉那样玩世不恭的硬汉形象，也没有人能与贝蒂·戴维斯那熠熠生辉的形象相媲美，可现今的银幕形象也不该刻意追随经典，换句话说，有什么必要去刻意复刻经典呢？所有艺术形式都会演变，演变过程中也常会造成爱好者感到不适。但艺术有足够的能力去吸纳和承重这些改变，以此让那些“末世耀眼”不攻自破。
And yet movies, at the moment, feel especially fragile and perishable. That may be because film is so much younger than the other great art forms, which have had centuries to wane, wax, mutate and cross-pollinate. But there is also something about cinema’s essentially modern character that makes it vulnerable to fears of obsolescence. The camera has an uncanny ability to capture the world as it is, to seize events as they happen, and also to conjure visions of the future. But by the time the image reaches the eyes of the viewer, it belongs to the past, taking on the status of something retrieved. As for those bold projections of what is to come, they have a habit of looking quaint as soon as they arrive.
但现阶段电影业仍然脆弱不堪，命悬一线。也许是因为电影较之其它艺术形式要年轻得多，有些艺术创作经历过跨世纪的兴衰、异变以及融合。但实质上影院的现代特性在“衰退论”面前依旧显得单薄无力。镜头能以不可意思的方式捕捉世间景象，记录发生的事情，以此探索前方道路。但等到影片呈现给观众时，它早已成为了过去，重现当时的情形和状态。至于那些大胆革新的影片，一上映则带给观众眼前一亮的感觉。
Nostalgia, in other words, is built into moviegoing, which is why moviegoing itself has been, almost from the beginning, the object of nostalgia. It hardly seems like an accident that so many movies embrace this bittersweet disposition. This week Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” which visits the earliest days of cinema, will open on the same day as “The Artist,” Michel Hazanavicius’s silent film about the silent era. Both films recapture some of the heady magic of the old days, and both make use of the latest technology in doing so.
怀旧风行——换句话说——也成了电影的一部分，这也是为什么看电影本身从一开始已成为怀旧的化身。因此现在这么多影片陷入这种两难境地算不上是什么“意外”。这周上映的，由马丁·斯科塞斯（Martin Scorsese）导演的《雨果·卡布里特》（Hugo），将携手迈克尔·哈扎纳维希乌斯（Michel Hazanavicius）导演的默片《艺术家》（The Artists）一同带你重温昔日影院风采。这两部电影将凭借最新影视技术，重塑昔日影片的魔幻色彩。
“Hugo,” full of digital effects and viewable in 3-D, takes audiences back to the time of Georges Méliès, the visionary filmmaker whose inventive sense of spectacle made him a special-effects pioneer at the turn of the 20th century. “The Artist,” a black-and-white, narrow-screen confection, tells the bittersweet tale of a screen idol whose career is threatened by the arrival of sound.
《雨果·卡布里特》里特效无数，而且还有3D版本上映。这部影片将带领观众重温乔治·梅里爱（Georges Méliès）的风采，他是一名视觉系导演，独创了大场面拍摄的手法，使他晋升为20世纪中叶特效技术的先驱人物。而《艺术家》则将采用黑白片加窄屏的拍摄手法，叙述一位由于有声片的到来，而逐渐没落的默片明星的故事。
The birth of the talkies, it goes without saying, represents the first death of cinema, a tragedy that Mr. Hazanavicius has the sensitivity to acknowledge and the wit to mock. The movies survived sound, just as they survived television, the VCR and every other terminal diagnosis. And they will survive the current upheavals as well. How can I be sure? Because 10, 20, or 50 years from now someone will certainly be complaining that they don’t make them like they used to. Which is to say, like they do right now.
俗话说“人言可畏”。自有言论起，电影就如同被判了一审死刑，导演哈扎纳维希乌斯敏锐地观察到了这场悲剧，并运用自身的智慧挖苦了一番。电影在有声片的浪潮中存活下来，也同样在电视等其它任何形式的终端浪潮中幸存。因此我相信电影仍旧会在这次的剧变中幸存下来。有人会问我为何如此确信。答案很简单：因为即使到了10年、20年、甚至50年后，还是有人会对电影改革颇有微词，就跟现在人们的抱怨心态一样。
参考文献编辑本段回目录
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/movies/film-technology-advances-inspiring-a-sense-of-loss.html?_r=2&ref=movies
