（译）今时今日的《旺达》: 反思芭芭拉·洛登的女性主义杰作 (original) (raw)
还没翻完，我语言水平太差了搞了半年多还差快1/3，因为隔太久了（开始翻的时候cc刚出碟）就先发了，应该可以凑活看吧…欢迎纠错和建议（请不要骂我）谢谢
当芭芭拉·洛登（Barbara Loden）的《旺达》（Wanda）在1970年首映时，美国观众还没有做好准备。带着对工人阶级女性的赤裸描绘（由洛登本人不假粉饰地出演），电影的主人公挣脱了悲惨的婚姻，却发现自己和一个粗暴的银行劫犯一同踏上了逃亡之路。可以想见，这部影片与六十年代帮助洛登开启演艺生涯的好莱坞和百老汇制作是如何相去甚远。“我讨厌那些华而不实的画面，”这位编剧 - 导演 - 主演在一次关于本片采访中说道，这种坚定的反商业态度在片中昏暗破旧的场景、难以预测的节奏和剧烈燃烧的情感中煜煜闪光。尽管《旺达》对于宾夕法尼亚乡村生活的无情展现在欧洲赢得了一些影迷、从威尼斯电影节摘得了奖座，并得到了玛格丽特·杜拉斯（Marguerite Duras）等人物的喜爱（“我认为在《旺达》中有一个奇迹，”她说），电影在美国的上映并没有引发太多反响。
很少有起先被如此忽视的电影能期望在近半个世纪后得到如此强烈的喜爱。近些年，《旺达》成为了新一代艺术家们的一个重要灵感来源，在法国作家娜塔莉·莱热（Nathalie Léger）2012年的《芭芭拉·洛登组曲》（Suite for Barbara Loden）中作为主题露面，并在蕾切尔·库什纳（Rachel Kushner）2013年的小说《喷火器》（The Flamethrowers）中有过短暂登场。尽管缺乏发行覆盖，洛登唯一的全长导演作品现已被广泛认可为独立电影中的杰作，同时也是女性影坛的奠基作品——一股在女性导演凤毛麟角且相距甚远的时代里迸发而出的创造自治。它的部分力量源自其对洛登神秘人生的直白反映，它起始于经济萧条中的北卡罗来纳乡村，结束在四十八岁的边缘化处境里。
在影片的最新修复版本于纽约 Metrograph 影院展开为期一周的首映之际，我们邀请了一些最喜欢的作家与艺术家来讲述他们初次与《旺达》相遇的回忆，以及电影如何在之后继续影响他们。回答覆盖的范围本身即说明了洛登拒绝妥协的影像之力量，以及它从发行最初走过的漫长而颠簸之路。
Amy Taubin，评论家：
我最初在1972年看到芭芭拉·洛登的《旺达》，当时它在第一届国际女性电影节展映——那的确是前所未有的场合——在纽约早已消失的第五大道影院。选片多由当代电影构成，尽管也有早至1920年代的影片（来自 Dorothy Arzner、Germaine Dulac 和 Lotte Reiniger），内容则几乎覆盖了所有类型：主流和艺术影片叙事、包括录像在内的实验作品，以及关于女性生活和代表形式的纪录片（我拍摄的关于非裔美国女同性恋的纪录片短片 Paul’s Film 也被选入，令我很意外）。
《旺达》使我大开眼界，不只是因为我之前已经在电影节看过了许多好电影。我知道洛登作为演员参与的舞台作品，尤其是她在阿瑟·米勒（Arthur Miller）令人愤怒的《坠落之后》（After the Fall）中扮演的玛丽莲·梦露（Marilyn Monroe）角色。但这些都没能让我对她的表演有任何准备——亦或是对电影本身。展现在我眼前的是一部带有意大利新现实主义风格遗迹的美国电影，它的道德准则与美学色彩根植于荒僻的美国乡村，但那些充斥着战后欧洲电影的多愁善感在其中不见任何踪影。这里是美国对亡命之徒的描写，但它拒绝实施美化（不妨将《旺达》视作洛登对费·唐纳薇 [Faye Dunaway] 在《邦尼和克莱德》[Bonnie and Clyde] 中饰演的时尚偶像的反驳）。最重要的是，这里是一部展现一位无法为自己做出决定的女人的女性主义电影，因为她已经把社会对她的轻蔑深深纳入了自己的一言一行。
在70年代早期，女性主义运动因其迫切的政治目标是保卫所有女性的自由权还是更为实际地利用其影响帮助那些有才华、志识并且已经享有特权的女性而产生了分歧。在《旺达》四周围绕着不安，因为它的中心角色并不是一位楷模——并且这种不安还在继续。我在视觉艺术学校（School of Visual Arts）的女性主义和电影课堂中放映《旺达》已经有三十多年了，而直到大约十年前，我收到的多数反馈都是负面的。学生们十分讨厌要花费近两个小时观看一个如此被动、致使自己被如此糟糕对待的角色。他们没有看到这部电影以及洛登的表演怎样为旺达的人性以及全世界范围内大多数无法想象反抗姿态的女性的存在提供了证明。
不过，在近些年，一些事情改变了。这其中的原因不仅是现在我在放映时有了一个好的 DVD 版本这么简单，或是伊萨贝尔·于佩特（Isabelle Huppert）将这部电影视为她的影响，亦或是我现在可以把娜塔莉·莱热的出色专著《芭芭拉·洛登组曲》推荐给学生。年轻女性对于《旺达》的态度转变要先于 #MeToo 运动，但它脱身于致使#MeToo 成为可能的变化里——准确说来即是五十年间不断渗入主流文化中的女性主义力量。令人惋惜的是洛登没能看到她创作《旺达》的勇气和她的角色在电影结尾的瞬间唤醒的勇气如何被一代人接受，这是能看透旺达眼神的一代人，并且他们理解谁也无法承担作为“后女性主义者”（postfeminist）的奢侈。
Illeana Douglas，演员和作家：
芭芭拉·洛登曾写道：“我尝试去变得独立并创造我自己的方式。不然我就会像旺达那样，终其一生四处漂泊。”
这件不合时宜的艺术作品，它由一位不合时宜的女性艺术家创作、导演、主演——你能看到它该是多么幸运，或许还是第一次！我可以告诉你，观看《旺达》不是快乐的体验，但它是令人难忘和必要的。在我第一次看到它时，我感到主人公任由她的浪人男友摆布的悲惨境况——“不要便裤！“他冲她喊道——太过使人不适，以至于我必须中途停止观影。
《旺达》会进入你的皮肤之下。那令人挥之不去的感觉和样子——就像老式宝丽来相片一样。那些污浊昏暗、散落在宾夕法尼亚州的旅馆房间、酒吧和卫生间，还有芭芭拉·洛登那令人揪心的表演里带有的原始和生猛会一直伴随着你，不管你多少次冲洗身体。
值得注意的是，《旺达》是洛登在她的主要角色被从弗兰克·佩里（Frank Perry）的电影《浮生录》（The Swimmer）中开除后才创作的。她的撤演所围绕的特殊情况——洛登当时的丈夫埃利亚·卡赞（Elia Kazan）在和伯特·兰卡斯特（Burt Lancaster）一同看过粗剪后认为她的表演不值一提，于是她被简妮丝·鲁尔（Janice Rule）替代，出镜的场景则由西德尼·波拉克（Sydney Pollack）重拍——一度成为了热议话题。然而，也正是卡赞使她越发浸入默默无闻的状态；在洛登去世后，他把《旺达》的成就归为自己名下，写道：“这就像是我帮她的一个忙，好给她一些事去做。”正如你会看到的，这部被忘却的古怪电影的部分美感便来源于芭芭拉·洛登与旺达的浑然一体。甚至连旺达对她抢银行的粗暴男友的奇怪情感都像是洛登本人与卡赞关系的隐喻。不知为何，我可以想象他冲她大喊：“不要便裤！”
通过把艺术创作完全交付在自己手中，洛登重新赢回了掌控权。她用出演这个漫无目的的迷失灵魂的方式传递出了自身的绝望感。在写作、导演、主演她自己的电影中，她获得了救赎。洛登是一位深沉的女性主义者，而《旺达》则是她寻找个人话语权的挣扎之见证。
Kate & Laura Mulleavy，时尚设计师和电影创作者：
对冷门电影的喜爱使我们成为一个很酷的隐蔽俱乐部中的一员。《旺达》于1970年发行，大约在我们看到它的三十年前，那时的互联网还没有现在这样畅通发达，也不是一个对发掘知识和冷门内容友善的平台。因为影评人在当时忽视了洛登的艺术眼光，发现《旺达》感觉就像一个秘密。这部电影本身是一个胜利，它是我们的心头好。它用摄影捕捉了缺憾之美、胶片的颗粒质感和印象主义式风格。倘若我们不是在最近读到芭芭拉的本意即捕捉一种纪录片的感觉——她相信这是最真实的表达形式，而完美只能导致不坦诚的虚伪事实——我们可能会误以为这种影像风格只是故事和其荒凉的丢弃感的一部分。但事实上这是一种决定性的审慎考量，融合了作者的意图和艺术方向。在这些年间，我们对这部电影的体验正如记忆一般粗糙与短暂。
《旺达》之所以带给我们这样的影响，是因为我们极少能在 “编剧和导演” 这几个字后面看到一个女人的名字。洛登的作品是艺术群体里不可或缺的一部分——它全然击碎了关于女性特质和女性主义的社会构建。正如洛登所言，旺达本身便是她自身情绪状态的呈现。她将自己的人生改造成了这个迷人的角色。这也不禁令人思考，创作一部如此执着于揭示那些因太过渺小而常被电影忽视的真相的影片需要投入什么。充斥于旺达故事中的庸常时刻与细节帮助观众理解她无法找到属于自己的地方。旺达是迷失的……但她真正想要什么？为什么她无法获得她想要的？是什么在阻止她？这些是我们被引导着相信对电影主人公而言十分重要的问题。然而，那些停留在电影每一帧画面中的问题却是更加深刻地关乎存在主义的。旺达想要知道她是谁。她问出了“我是谁？”这个问题，而这对电影中的女性角色而言是前所未有的。
传统的快乐结局通常划定出女性主人公的历程，而令人惊讶的是，旺达自始至终都是迷失的，她被束缚在充斥着男性原型（male archetypes）的叙事之中。但旺达从未被她与男性间的关系定义；她的存在即是对他们控制欲的全然否定。她不遵循他们的规则，抑或社会对女性气质与其被动性的构建。在叙述中，她获得了自己的声音——也正是洛登用以讲述她的故事的声音。她的主体变得强大，强大到能把一个看来像是失败的结尾变为胜利。
Durga Chew-Bose, essayist:
“Did you want that piece of bread?” she asks, before mopping up his leftover spaghetti sauce. “That’s the best part,” she says, smiling, chewing. Smoking Marlboros. Her blonde hair is pulled up and tied into a top-pony. Like a fountain but sort of sloppy. Her shirt looks like pajamas. Her flushed face and entire pleased-with-oneself-ness, totally testing and perhaps even conquering his surly, cigar-puffing impatience. Their body language—hers, eager and satisfied; his, edgy, tightly wound but eased by Wanda’s pure spaghetti-delight—perfectly suits the cozy, cooped-up tension of a restaurant booth. One person’s pleasure—seen, for example, in how she chugs her beer from a flute—can counter the severity of another person’s bulk or the boyish, mid-tantrum demeanor of a man turned to the side and making little eye contact. He’s a bank robber on the run, and they haven’t known each other long, and yet isn’t it somehow lovely how Wanda and Mr. Dennis look like they’re on a date thirty years into a marriage?
Bérénice Reynaud, scholar:
I first saw Wanda as a very young woman, in a special event on “Women and Cinema,” organized at the 1980 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The screening was tinged with sadness, as it was announced onstage that the director had just died of cancer. The film made a strong impression on me, with its structure made of precious moments that did not add up to a completely coherent narrative. At the time I was mostly interested in experimental cinema, so the strategy Loden used spoke to me. It was, however, nearly impossible to see the film again, so I didn’t revisit my first impressions of it until Alex Horwath, then the director of the Viennale, included Wanda in a series called The Last Great American Picture Show he curated in 1995, and asked me to write about it (Kent Jones, now the director of the New York Film Festival, lent me a VHS copy he had taped late at night off the now-defunct Z Channel for Martin Scorsese’s archives). Eventually published as “For Wanda,” in a collection edited by Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath, and Noel King and published by Amsterdam University Press, as well as in Senses of Cinema, the text gave me opportunities for extended interviews with actor Michael Higgins, who played Mr. Dennis, and DP Nicholas Proferes, who was Loden’s close collaborator for many years, opening a vista not only onto the film but also onto the life and personality of its director.
In March 2007, I organized a special screening of a non-restored copy of Wanda at REDCAT in Los Angeles, in collaboration with one of Loden’s two sons, the folk singer and composer Marco Joachim, who flew from New York for the event. He brought an unexpected treasure, his eighty-one-year-old father, a very sprightly Larry Joachim, who had been Loden’s first husband. During the Q&A, father and son regaled us with stories of how spirited, funny, generous, and no-nonsense the Barbara they knew was. Larry Joachim—who in the 1970s became famous for distributing Hong Kong kung fu films (including some starring Bruce Lee) in the U.S.—had swept Barbara off her feet by taking her to a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown and paying with IOUs he had collected. She had been a chorus-line dancer at the Copacabana, and he introduced her to The Ernie Kovacs Show and eventually to Elia Kazan.
Even after marrying Kazan, she never took herself seriously as Hollywood royalty. When attending an official function, if a woman was admiring her dress, she would simply say that she “had bought it at Woolworths,” the five-and-dime department store that closed in 1997. Loden’s heartfelt impersonation of a Pennsylvania coal miner’s wife drifting through depressed landscapes represented a side of herself—what she could have become had she not run away to New York City. Through Wanda, she remained connected with her marginalized “sisters.” Yet her other side—the fiercely independent director, the witty moralist, the rigorous artist, the inspired visionary who knew how to get the best out of professionals such as Higgins and Proferes—also shines through the film as it did through her life before her untimely death. Meeting Larry Joachim filled in a missing connection in Loden’s biography, one I will always be immensely grateful for.
Molly Haskell, critic:
I met Barbara Loden around the time she made Wanda: we were on several panels together, and bonded as women and Southerners. It was an exciting time on the filmmaking scene as women were questioning traditional roles, straining against the shackles of domesticity without having quite arrived at firm notions of self-determination. A flurry of movies—call them the neo-woman’s films or the mad housewife genre—addressed women’s roles with a kind of probing, baffled ambivalence.
These were roughed-up versions of the old women’s films: movies that pivoted on women dropping out, exiting wobbly marriages, or resisting traditional roles of handmaiden or sex object. A little nudity, a lot of profanity, a bit of sleeping around and, above all, no lighting camera men focusing on the best angles, the hollows and planes of a particular star’s face.
The domestic refuseniks weren’t going to take it anymore, but if they renounced romantic love, if they weren’t going to live through and for husband and family, who were they? This was the question mark hanging over the heroines of such emblematic films as Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Rain People (1969), Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), Klute (1971), Play It as It Lays (1973), and, in 1974, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Woman Under the Influence.
The shaggiest, boldest, and most extreme in its portrayal of a kind of despair that owes nothing to Byronic romanticism and everything to firsthand knowledge of marginalized, working-class women was Barbara Loden’s Wanda, featuring the actress-turned-director in a bleakly original cinematic ballad rooted in the poor mining country of her upbringing. As she embarks on an aimless pilgrimage through a blue-collar world of bars and sex, the camera captures her on the margins of life, a lone figure crashing in someone’s house, picking up a guy, traversing a vast industrial landscape.
I was staggered by the brutality of the vision (no “positive role model” here!) and what she must have come through to make such a film, whose pitilessness may strike a more responsive cord in viewers today.
With her hair in rollers or flowing waywardly like some untrammeled river, and with her shy, child’s voice, it’s as if she’s always waiting to be told what to do, and will try her best to do it, but that best won’t be very good. (She had played another needy blonde as the Marilyn Monroe character in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall.) So concentrated and intuitive is Loden’s performance—she once said she’d learned from psychotherapy that she played the role of victim and orphan throughout her life—that there’s only a sliver of light between actor and role.
Wanda never falls prey to self-pity, or the chic despair of some of the woman-adrift films of the period. There’s a kind of raw energy in the journey’s very futility. And in the fact that she remains mysterious and unknowable, reminding us afresh of the inadequacy of the categories by which we find meaning—and an illusion of mastery—in experience.