William S. Hart and the early 'Western' film
威廉.S. 哈特和早期限的‘西部’影片
William S. Hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, for unlike Gary Cooper and John Wayne he appeared in nothing but Westerns. From 1914 to 1924 he was supreme and unchallenged. It was Hart who created the basic formula of the Western film, and devised the protagonist he played in every film he made, the good-bad man, the accidental-noble outlaw, or the honest-but-framed cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip; in short, the individual in conflict with himself and his frontier environment.
Unlike most of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hart actually knew something of the old West. He had lived in it as a child when it was already disappearing, and his hero was firmly rooted in his memories and experiences, and in both the history and the mythology of the vanished frontier. And although no period or place in American history has been more absurdly romanticized, myth and reality did join hands in at least one arena, the conflict between the individual and encroaching civilization.
Men accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indians were bewildered by politicians, bankers and businessmen, and unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. Hart's good-bad man was always an outsider, always one of the disinherited, and if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or rob a bank along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and forgive, especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking Indians. Audiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. We still do; living in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy and impending immolation are part of our daily lives, we all want a code to live by.
本文參考譯文
威廉.S.哈特大概是美國西部電影明星中的佼佼者。他和加里.古柏、約翰.韋恩不同，他只在西部電影中扮演角色。在1914年至1924年期間，他首屈一指，獨(dú)霸影壇。正是他創(chuàng)造了西部電影的基調(diào)，即在他自己的拍攝的影片中他所塑造的主人公形象：被認(rèn)為是壞人的好人，出人意料的高尚的逃犯，誠實(shí)卻遭陷害的牛仔或因流言蜚語蒙受嫌疑的司法官�？傊�，主人公是一個(gè)自相矛盾，又與他的拓荒環(huán)境相矛盾的人物。 哈特與大部分同時(shí)代在好萊塢的演員不同，他確實(shí)了解西部早期拓荒生活的一些情況。作為一個(gè)孩子他曾在西部生活過，當(dāng)時(shí)西部拓荒生活正在消失。他塑造的英雄人物深深地扎根于他本人的記憶和經(jīng)歷之中，也扎根于有關(guān)已經(jīng)消失的拓荒生活的歷史和神話之中。雖然在美國歷史上沒有任何時(shí)期或地區(qū)像西部拓荒時(shí)期那樣被荒謬地浪漫主義化了，但神話和事實(shí)至少在某一個(gè)舞臺上共存，也就是存在于個(gè)人與漸漸闖入的文明這兩者的沖突之中。
習(xí)慣與大自然和印第安人作斗爭以求生存的拓荒者被政客、銀行家和商人搞得暈頭轉(zhuǎn)向，最后被圈地、尖律我外來的清規(guī)戒律所擊敗。哈特扮演的被誤為壞人的好人總是一個(gè)局外人，總是一個(gè)被剝奪繼承權(quán)的人。如果他認(rèn)為在進(jìn)行過程中有必要槍擊一個(gè)司法官或搶劫一個(gè)銀行，他的早期觀眾很容易接受，覺得應(yīng)該原諒他，特別是當(dāng)哈特最后戰(zhàn)勝了前來進(jìn)攻的印第安人時(shí)，觀眾更能原諒他。
生活在20世紀(jì)20年代的觀眾認(rèn)為，逃到一個(gè)即使艱苦但比較簡樸的時(shí)代中去是件愉快的事，我們今天仍有這種感覺。如今，不宣而戰(zhàn)的侵略、戰(zhàn)爭、虛偽、詐騙、無政府狀態(tài)以及即將臨頭的毀滅成了我們?nèi)粘Ｉ畹囊徊糠�，我們都希望有一個(gè)賴以生存的行為準(zhǔn)則。
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