更新时间:2008-01-01
woodfishman • 时代之心:来自http://www.sensesofcinema.com的评论，稍后翻译
The legend of Orson Welles holds that he knew little or nothing about the cinema before making Citizen Kane in 1941. And Welles nurtured this legend, attributing its innovations “to my ignorance. If this word seems inadequate to you, replace it with innocence.” But his little-known first film, The Hearts of Age, made seven years earlier, gives the lie to the legend. While indisputably technically crude and a bit sophomoric, The Hearts of Age reveals both a keen eye for composition and montage, and substantial familiarity with film art.
据说Orson Welles在1941年创作《大国民》之前对电影知之甚少，这几乎成为了一个神话。Welles也不否认，并将其作品中的新意归因于“我的无知。要是这词不合适，你也可以说是天真。”然而，The Hearts of Age，这部他数年前创作的不为人知的处女作，却打破了这一神话。尽管有着明显的技术上的粗糙和一丝幼稚，The Hearts of Age还是显示出他对构图剪接的锐利触觉和对电影艺术的充分认识。
In the summer of 1934, nineteen-year-old Orson Welles returned to the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, three years after graduating from its high school. In the interim, he had spurned a scholarship to Harvard University, visited Ireland on a sketching tour only to talk his way into performing for the Dublin Gate Theatre, written detective stories for pulp magazines, and travelled through London, Paris, the Ivory Coast, Morocco and Seville, where he spent an afternoon as a professional bullfighter. After returning to America in 1933, introductions to Thornton Wilder and Alexander Wolcott led to a position in Katherine Cornell’s touring repertory company. Welles toured with the Cornell company from November 1933 to June 1934, appearing in three plays and making his New York debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet.
1934年夏，十九岁的Orson Welles在高中毕业三年后回到Woodstock, Illinois的Todd School继续学业。期间，他曾放弃了到Harvard University上学的机会，匆匆赶到爱尔兰希望加入Dublin Gate Theatre，为通俗杂志写侦探故事，随后又到过伦敦，巴黎，科特迪瓦，摩洛哥，在塞尔维亚做了一下午的职业斗牛士。1933年回到美国后，被推荐给Thornton Wilder和Alexander Wolcott，在Katherine Cornell的巡回剧团公司工作。1933年十一月到1934年六月随公司巡回期间，他，在纽约上演的罗密欧与茱丽叶中演Tybalt，完成处子秀，又在三出剧中露了脸。
When the tour ended in the summer of 1934, Welles sponsored a theatre festival at the Todd School. While there, he and William Vance, a high school friend, made The Hearts of Age. Roger Hill, the principal of the Todd School provided a 16mm camera. Presumably it was an amateur model, as Vance and Welles shot the film at the silent speed of 18 fps commonly used for home movies, rather than the industry standard of 24 fps. Vance produced the film, which he and Welles co-directed. Their set was an old Woodstock farmhouse that belonged to the Welles family. Handwritten title-cards introduce the stars: Welles and his then-girlfriend Virginia Nicholson, a Chicago socialite he married in November 1934 (8). Vance also makes a brief appearance, as do Edgerton Paul and Blackie O'Neal, members of the Todd Repertory Company (9).
1934年夏巡回演出结束，Welles在Todd School发起了一个戏剧节。他和高中时期好友William Vance在那里完成了The Hearts of Age。校长Roger Hill提供了一台16mm摄影机。推测起来，这应该是一台家用型机器，因为他们使用了一般为家庭录像所用的18fps 的默片帧率，而工业标准是24fps。Vance担任制片，两人共同导演。景取在Woodstock的一间旧农舍，属于Welles家。手写的标题卡介绍两位“领衔主演”的“明星”：Welles和他当时女友Virginia Nicholson，来自芝加哥的名媛，他们之后于1934十一月结婚。Vance和Edgerton Paul及 Blackie O'Neal也有出境，后俩是Todd Repertory Company的员工。
The film begins with a rapid-fire montage sequence of a ringing bell, shot at odd angles and shown in both positive and negative. The “story”, such as it is, begins with Nicholson, liberally made up as an old hag, riding the bell like a hobby-horse. A clown in blackface and top hat appears, pulling on the bell rope, then images of gravestones and crosses. Nicholson struggles with an umbrella, and the montage continues. Then Welles appears at the head of an outdoor staircase, corpulent and leering, made up like a cadaver with a wispy baldhead, cane, and top hat. Over and over he walks down the stairs, Nicholson looking on apprehensively. After another flurry of montage, Welles pantomimes suicide, choking himself with the crook of his cane, followed by footage of the man in blackface hanging in a noose. The film then cuts to indoors, with Welles ostentatiously playing the piano. After hitting a sour note, he opens up the lid and discovers Nicholson, as if in a coffin. Welles then pulls tombstone-shaped cards out of the piano bench: “Sleeping”, “At Rest”, “In Peace”, “With the Lord”, and “The End”. He settles on the last and the film does just that.
影片以一组快速切换的蒙太奇镜头开始，拍的是一个被敲的钟。这组镜头角度怪异，正负片效果交替。而所谓“故事”，则开始于化妆的像个老婆婆的Nicholson骑在钟上晃来晃去。接着一个穿黑斗篷戴尖帽的仆人出场，他拉着钟绳，然后出现墓碑和十字架的画面。Nicholson拄着雨伞，出现蒙太奇。这时Welles出现在一座楼梯顶，带着邪恶的笑眼，穿得像个秃头的死尸，戴高帽，拄着拐杖。他一次又一次地走下楼梯，Nicholson担心地望他。接着又是一组快速蒙太奇，
Welles作自杀的手势，用拐杖勾自己脖子，接着黑脸男人上吊。随后镜头切入屋内，Welles夸张地弹钢琴。他弹错了一个音，打开盖子并发现了Nicholson像在棺材里一样躺着。Welles从琴椅下抽出墓石般的卡片，写着：“Sleeping”, “At Rest”, “In Peace”, “With the Lord”, 和 “The End”。他在最后一张“The End”处停下，这时影片结束。
Years later, in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Welles dismissed The Hearts of Age as hopeless juvenilia, never intended for exhibition. “It’s nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. It was a joke. I wanted to make a parody of Jean Cocteau’s first film ［The Blood of a Poet, 1930］. That’s all. We shot it in two hours, for fun, one Sunday afternoon. It has no sort of meaning.”
数年后，在一个Peter Bogdanovich的采访中 ，Welles说The Hearts of Age不过是没有希望的少年习作，从来不打算展示。“根本不算回事。真的。笑话而已。我是打算模仿一下Jean Cocteau的首部电影［The Blood of a Poet, 1930］。就是这样。我们拍了两个小时，玩着拍的，就在一个周日下午。根本没有什么寓意。”
Arguably, Welles had a point. Certainly, The Hearts of Age is willfully opaque, consisting primarily of ham-fistedly portentous images and visual non-sequiturs. But some scholars disagree. Its first champion, Welles scholar Joseph McBride, who discovered the film in the Greenwich Public Library collection, suggested that “we can see, through the young man’s mélange of styles, the conglomeration of postures both congenial and unassimilated, a vigorous, unguarded, personal approach to even the most second-hand of ideas and motifs.”
可以指出，Welles在片中还是有意图的。当然，The Hearts of Age的意义并不确凿，它首先是又一系列滑稽的预示性镜头组成，看起来不怎么有前后逻辑。但部分学者并不同意。其头号拥护者，Welles研究者Joseph McBride--他最先在Greenwich Public Library馆藏中发现了这部电影--认为“我们可以看到，透过年轻男子的
In any case, Welles’ own recollection of The Hearts of Age is rather suspect. As a parody of Cocteau, it’s an abject failure, as it hardly resembles the antiseptic languor of The Blood of a Poet. But its ghoulish make-up, mechanical acting, off-kilter compositions and frantic montage quite successfully parody German Expressionism, notably Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Additionally, the structure of the montage sequences recalls Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925), repeating actions and fracturing motions.
无论如何，Welles自己对该片的回忆是最有疑问的。若说对Cocteau的模仿，那么它实在是比较失败，它不像The Blood of a Poet的压抑冷峻。反而是它吸血鬼般的化妆，生硬表演，失衡的构图和疯狂蒙太奇十分成功地模仿了德国表现主义，特别是Robert Wiene的The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)。另外，蒙太奇段落的结构令人回想其Eisenstein的The Battleship Potemkin (1925)中的重复表演和破碎运动。
Apparently, William Vance kept the original of The Hearts of Age, as it was eventually donated to the Greenwich Public Library (Connecticut) as a part of the Vance Collection. Joseph McBride rediscovered the film in the late 1960s, and the American Film Institute eventually preserved it and deposited a print in The Library of Congress .
很明显，William Vance保留了The Hearts of Age的原始胶片，后来作为Vance Collection的一部分捐给了Greenwich Public Library (Connecticut)。Joseph McBride在60年代末重新发现，最终交由American Film Institute保存并在The Library of Congress留有备份。
Ultimately, The Hearts of Age, like so many of Welles’ films, is a parable of mortality. Although rather cruder than his notable later efforts, it introduces a theme that resonates throughout all of his work. As he remarked near the end of his life, “I rejoice in the presence of death because I think it’s what makes life brilliant and beautiful. And without it, the world would be ridiculous. I’m interested in it from every point of view. My interest in it has not dimmed with its approach.”
从终极意义上，The Hearts of Age，一如Welles的许多其他电影，是关于死亡的寓言。尽管它比后期作品粗糙得多，它仍然贯彻了同一个主题。正如他晚年的谈到:“我对死亡到来感到喜悦，因我觉得是死亡令生命如此美丽和耀眼。没有它，世界会变得荒诞。我从方方面面对它发生兴趣。即使它将降临到我身上也没有减退。”
据说Orson Welles在1941年创作《大国民》之前对电影知之甚少，这几乎成为了一个神话。Welles也不否认，并将其作品中的新意归因于“我的无知。要是这词不合适，你也可以说是天真。”然而，The Hearts of Age，这部他数年前创作的不为人知的处女作，却打破了这一神话。尽管有着明显的技术上的粗糙和一丝幼稚，The Hearts of Age还是显示出他对构图剪接的锐利触觉和对电影艺术的充分认识。
In the summer of 1934, nineteen-year-old Orson Welles returned to the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, three years after graduating from its high school. In the interim, he had spurned a scholarship to Harvard University, visited Ireland on a sketching tour only to talk his way into performing for the Dublin Gate Theatre, written detective stories for pulp magazines, and travelled through London, Paris, the Ivory Coast, Morocco and Seville, where he spent an afternoon as a professional bullfighter. After returning to America in 1933, introductions to Thornton Wilder and Alexander Wolcott led to a position in Katherine Cornell’s touring repertory company. Welles toured with the Cornell company from November 1933 to June 1934, appearing in three plays and making his New York debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet.
1934年夏，十九岁的Orson Welles在高中毕业三年后回到Woodstock, Illinois的Todd School继续学业。期间，他曾放弃了到Harvard University上学的机会，匆匆赶到爱尔兰希望加入Dublin Gate Theatre，为通俗杂志写侦探故事，随后又到过伦敦，巴黎，科特迪瓦，摩洛哥，在塞尔维亚做了一下午的职业斗牛士。1933年回到美国后，被推荐给Thornton Wilder和Alexander Wolcott，在Katherine Cornell的巡回剧团公司工作。1933年十一月到1934年六月随公司巡回期间，他，在纽约上演的罗密欧与茱丽叶中演Tybalt，完成处子秀，又在三出剧中露了脸。
When the tour ended in the summer of 1934, Welles sponsored a theatre festival at the Todd School. While there, he and William Vance, a high school friend, made The Hearts of Age. Roger Hill, the principal of the Todd School provided a 16mm camera. Presumably it was an amateur model, as Vance and Welles shot the film at the silent speed of 18 fps commonly used for home movies, rather than the industry standard of 24 fps. Vance produced the film, which he and Welles co-directed. Their set was an old Woodstock farmhouse that belonged to the Welles family. Handwritten title-cards introduce the stars: Welles and his then-girlfriend Virginia Nicholson, a Chicago socialite he married in November 1934 (8). Vance also makes a brief appearance, as do Edgerton Paul and Blackie O'Neal, members of the Todd Repertory Company (9).
1934年夏巡回演出结束，Welles在Todd School发起了一个戏剧节。他和高中时期好友William Vance在那里完成了The Hearts of Age。校长Roger Hill提供了一台16mm摄影机。推测起来，这应该是一台家用型机器，因为他们使用了一般为家庭录像所用的18fps 的默片帧率，而工业标准是24fps。Vance担任制片，两人共同导演。景取在Woodstock的一间旧农舍，属于Welles家。手写的标题卡介绍两位“领衔主演”的“明星”：Welles和他当时女友Virginia Nicholson，来自芝加哥的名媛，他们之后于1934十一月结婚。Vance和Edgerton Paul及 Blackie O'Neal也有出境，后俩是Todd Repertory Company的员工。
The film begins with a rapid-fire montage sequence of a ringing bell, shot at odd angles and shown in both positive and negative. The “story”, such as it is, begins with Nicholson, liberally made up as an old hag, riding the bell like a hobby-horse. A clown in blackface and top hat appears, pulling on the bell rope, then images of gravestones and crosses. Nicholson struggles with an umbrella, and the montage continues. Then Welles appears at the head of an outdoor staircase, corpulent and leering, made up like a cadaver with a wispy baldhead, cane, and top hat. Over and over he walks down the stairs, Nicholson looking on apprehensively. After another flurry of montage, Welles pantomimes suicide, choking himself with the crook of his cane, followed by footage of the man in blackface hanging in a noose. The film then cuts to indoors, with Welles ostentatiously playing the piano. After hitting a sour note, he opens up the lid and discovers Nicholson, as if in a coffin. Welles then pulls tombstone-shaped cards out of the piano bench: “Sleeping”, “At Rest”, “In Peace”, “With the Lord”, and “The End”. He settles on the last and the film does just that.
影片以一组快速切换的蒙太奇镜头开始，拍的是一个被敲的钟。这组镜头角度怪异，正负片效果交替。而所谓“故事”，则开始于化妆的像个老婆婆的Nicholson骑在钟上晃来晃去。接着一个穿黑斗篷戴尖帽的仆人出场，他拉着钟绳，然后出现墓碑和十字架的画面。Nicholson拄着雨伞，出现蒙太奇。这时Welles出现在一座楼梯顶，带着邪恶的笑眼，穿得像个秃头的死尸，戴高帽，拄着拐杖。他一次又一次地走下楼梯，Nicholson担心地望他。接着又是一组快速蒙太奇，
Welles作自杀的手势，用拐杖勾自己脖子，接着黑脸男人上吊。随后镜头切入屋内，Welles夸张地弹钢琴。他弹错了一个音，打开盖子并发现了Nicholson像在棺材里一样躺着。Welles从琴椅下抽出墓石般的卡片，写着：“Sleeping”, “At Rest”, “In Peace”, “With the Lord”, 和 “The End”。他在最后一张“The End”处停下，这时影片结束。
Years later, in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Welles dismissed The Hearts of Age as hopeless juvenilia, never intended for exhibition. “It’s nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. It was a joke. I wanted to make a parody of Jean Cocteau’s first film ［The Blood of a Poet, 1930］. That’s all. We shot it in two hours, for fun, one Sunday afternoon. It has no sort of meaning.”
数年后，在一个Peter Bogdanovich的采访中 ，Welles说The Hearts of Age不过是没有希望的少年习作，从来不打算展示。“根本不算回事。真的。笑话而已。我是打算模仿一下Jean Cocteau的首部电影［The Blood of a Poet, 1930］。就是这样。我们拍了两个小时，玩着拍的，就在一个周日下午。根本没有什么寓意。”
Arguably, Welles had a point. Certainly, The Hearts of Age is willfully opaque, consisting primarily of ham-fistedly portentous images and visual non-sequiturs. But some scholars disagree. Its first champion, Welles scholar Joseph McBride, who discovered the film in the Greenwich Public Library collection, suggested that “we can see, through the young man’s mélange of styles, the conglomeration of postures both congenial and unassimilated, a vigorous, unguarded, personal approach to even the most second-hand of ideas and motifs.”
可以指出，Welles在片中还是有意图的。当然，The Hearts of Age的意义并不确凿，它首先是又一系列滑稽的预示性镜头组成，看起来不怎么有前后逻辑。但部分学者并不同意。其头号拥护者，Welles研究者Joseph McBride--他最先在Greenwich Public Library馆藏中发现了这部电影--认为“我们可以看到，透过年轻男子的
In any case, Welles’ own recollection of The Hearts of Age is rather suspect. As a parody of Cocteau, it’s an abject failure, as it hardly resembles the antiseptic languor of The Blood of a Poet. But its ghoulish make-up, mechanical acting, off-kilter compositions and frantic montage quite successfully parody German Expressionism, notably Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Additionally, the structure of the montage sequences recalls Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925), repeating actions and fracturing motions.
无论如何，Welles自己对该片的回忆是最有疑问的。若说对Cocteau的模仿，那么它实在是比较失败，它不像The Blood of a Poet的压抑冷峻。反而是它吸血鬼般的化妆，生硬表演，失衡的构图和疯狂蒙太奇十分成功地模仿了德国表现主义，特别是Robert Wiene的The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)。另外，蒙太奇段落的结构令人回想其Eisenstein的The Battleship Potemkin (1925)中的重复表演和破碎运动。
Apparently, William Vance kept the original of The Hearts of Age, as it was eventually donated to the Greenwich Public Library (Connecticut) as a part of the Vance Collection. Joseph McBride rediscovered the film in the late 1960s, and the American Film Institute eventually preserved it and deposited a print in The Library of Congress .
很明显，William Vance保留了The Hearts of Age的原始胶片，后来作为Vance Collection的一部分捐给了Greenwich Public Library (Connecticut)。Joseph McBride在60年代末重新发现，最终交由American Film Institute保存并在The Library of Congress留有备份。
Ultimately, The Hearts of Age, like so many of Welles’ films, is a parable of mortality. Although rather cruder than his notable later efforts, it introduces a theme that resonates throughout all of his work. As he remarked near the end of his life, “I rejoice in the presence of death because I think it’s what makes life brilliant and beautiful. And without it, the world would be ridiculous. I’m interested in it from every point of view. My interest in it has not dimmed with its approach.”
从终极意义上，The Hearts of Age，一如Welles的许多其他电影，是关于死亡的寓言。尽管它比后期作品粗糙得多，它仍然贯彻了同一个主题。正如他晚年的谈到:“我对死亡到来感到喜悦，因我觉得是死亡令生命如此美丽和耀眼。没有它，世界会变得荒诞。我从方方面面对它发生兴趣。即使它将降临到我身上也没有减退。”
