【本文首发于《虹膜》公众号】

作者：Bryan Forbes

译者：覃天

校对：易二三

来源：标准收藏（2017年2月20日）

Dark surf and full-throated music wash over the credits ofMildred Pierce,building to a knockout opening with a volley of gunshots in a beach house and a man in black tie keeling over in flickering firelight. Almost two hours later, however, the movie closes not with the swell and crash of waves but with the toiling sponges of scrubwomen on their knees, cleaning the floors of the Hall of Justice at daybreak. These mute women have the last word, bringing to the surface the film’s undercurrent of tough-minded sympathy for unseen, undignified, and unrewarded female labor, and pointing to its unusual blend of realism and high style. Beneath the sheen of glamour and the throb of melodrama,Mildred Pierce(1945) is an acute, unsparing study of relationships poisoned by class and money. The plot reveals a cruel sting in the tail of the most essential American promise—that hard work, sacrifice, and self-improvement will find their ultimate reward in the next generation’s success. But these caustic insights are embedded in a movie as satisfying as the comfort food Mildred serves in her neon-lit upscale diners: the dialogue crisp and salted with wit, the decadently rich emotion cut by just enough acerbic tartness.

在电影刚开始的时候，伴随着高亢的音乐，海浪冲刷出了《欲海情魔》（译者注：本片英文译为《米尔德丽德·皮尔斯》）的片名。随后观众看到，在一座海滨别墅里，枪声响起，一名戴着黑色领结的男人倒在了地毯上。然而，近两个小时后，电影的结尾却不是汹涌的海浪，而是黎明时分，两名跪在地上清扫着司法大厅地板的女工。这两名沉默的女性拥有最后的发言权，她们代表了电影对看不见、不体面、被埋没的女性最为深沉的怜悯之情，并展现出了电影不同寻常的现实主义和高雅风格的完美结合。《欲海情魔》不仅拥有情节剧光彩照人的魅力，同时还对被阶级地位和金钱毒害的亲密关系进行了敏锐、无情的剖析。在美国社会给公民的承诺中，辛勤的工作、牺牲和自我完善的精神将会在下一代人生的成功中得到回报，然而《欲海情魔》却揭示出，这样的承诺得到的只有刺痛。这样尖刻的洞察力优雅地嵌入在了电影中，它犹如米尔德丽德在高档餐厅享用的食物一样，令人舒适、满意。电影的对话干脆、利落，充满机智，恰到好处的尖酸刻薄割裂了颓废而丰富的情感。

We first hear Mildred’s name on the lips of a dying man, and first see her walking alone on a deserted pier that extends into the enormous blackness of the ocean. Her silhouette—the huge, boxy shoulders of a fur coat and the steep ankle-strap heels lengthening slim legs—announces Joan Crawford even before the first tearstained close-up. The role of Mildred won Crawford her only Oscar and distilled her essence as a star: a fiercely hardworking perfectionist driven by a dogged, unappeasable longing for approval. She could play tough, she could play capable and hardheaded, but in her eyes burned a volatile blend of fiendish energy and quivering need. InMildred Pierce,this molten core is tamped down by steely restraint; she was never better, and—at something like forty, depending on which birthdate you believe—never more beautiful.

我们最先正是在这个垂死的男人口中听到了米尔德丽德的名字，随后，在夜色中，我们看到她独自走在一个荒凉的码头上，码头的尽头是黑暗的海洋。她的身影——一件毛皮大衣，宽阔的肩膀，高跟鞋，修长的双腿寂寞地出现在银幕上。在第一个脸部的、泪眼阑珊的特写镜头之前，我们就可以认出，她就是琼·克劳馥。克劳馥凭借米尔德丽德这个角色赢得了她一生中唯一的一座奥斯卡奖，并巩固了她的明星形象：一个极其勤奋、渴望得到认可的完美主义者。她可以扮演强硬、能干、固执的角色，但在她的眼神中，既有残忍感，也有孱弱的渴求。在《欲海情魔》中，这个炽热的内核被冷酷地压抑了起来；米尔德丽德大约40岁，不管你相信与否，她从未像现在这样美丽。

Director Michael Curtiz often clashed with Crawford during shooting, complaining that she insisted on glamorizing the woman whose daughter calls her a “common frump.” But the veneer of gentility and obsessive care for her looks that clung to the actress—born into miserable poverty as Lucille LeSueur—perfectly suits Mildred Pierce, who sells cakes and pies out of her kitchen to pay for her daughters’ piano and ballet lessons, even when her husband is out of work. True, Crawford is never quite convincing as an ordinary, downtrodden housewife, but could a woman who builds a chain restaurant empire, makes a fortune, and marries the scion of a fallen old-money clan, all out of desperation to please a snobbish daughter, ever be described as ordinary? This is a woman who, forced to take a job waiting tables to support her children, throws herself into the work like an Olympian in training, becoming an almost frighteningly competent waitress.

导演迈克尔·柯蒂兹在拍摄过程中经常与克劳馥发生冲突，抱怨她坚持美化这个被女儿称为「普通老古董」的角色。但出身贫寒的克劳馥（原名露西尔·费伊·勒·萨埃尔）优雅的外表和她对外表的痴迷关爱非常适合米尔德丽德这个角色，她靠出售自己做的蛋糕和派来支付女儿们的钢琴和芭蕾舞课的费用，即使她的丈夫失业了。诚然，克劳馥作为一个普通的、受压迫的家庭主妇从来都不是很有说服力，但一个创立了连锁餐厅，赚了一大笔钱，并嫁给了一个堕落的老财主的后裔的女人，难道还能被描述为是「普通」吗？米尔德丽德为了取悦她那势利的女儿不顾一切，为了养活孩子，她被迫去当服务员。她全身心地投入到工作中，成为了一名精干的女服务员。

Mildred recounts her history in a police station, where she is being questioned after the murder of her husband, and the accompanying flashbacks begin with her staking a claim to averageness, recalling her street in the stereotypical Southern California suburb of Glendale, “where all the houses looked alike,” her feeling of having been born in the kitchen and lived her whole life there. The trappings of motherhood and pie baking may not seem like the stuff of film noir, but Mildred’s obsession with her older daughter is as perverse and destructive as any man’s enslavement to a femme fatale. Veda (Ann Blyth, only around sixteen when the film was made) is a femme fatale in bobby socks: manipulative, deceitful, selfish, and cold-blooded. Blyth’s primly immaculate, doll-like prettiness, with a head too big for her tiny body, perfectly suits this bad seed who is wily as a grown-up and amoral as a baby.

米尔德丽德讲述了她在警察局的经历，在她丈夫被谋杀后，她在那里接受讯问，伴随着倒叙的开始是她声称自己不过是一个平庸的人，她回忆起了自己所在的南加州郊区格伦代尔的街道，「那里所有的房子看起来都一样，我总是在厨房里，我感觉我好像一生都在厨房里。」母亲的形象和厨房烘焙可能看起来不像常常出现在黑色电影中的事物，但米尔德丽德对大女儿的痴迷就像男人奴役女人时一样变态、带有破坏性。维达（安·布莱斯饰，她拍这部电影时只有16岁左右）是一个穿着短袜的女孩儿，带有操纵欲、善于欺骗、性格自私又冷血。她外表上看上去纯洁无瑕、拥有洋娃娃般的美丽相貌，而她娇小的身体似乎并不能承受她脑中的那些想法，就像她恶毒的内心与她美丽的相貌不相符合一样。

In this fatally unhealthy relationship, it is the mother who fears the daughter’s judgment: the scene where Veda accuses Mildred of “degrading” the family by waitressing is so painful it’s hard to watch. Later, in a fit of ecstatic contempt, the girl insults her mother’s family and breeding—as though they weren’t also her own—and triumphantly tells the self-made success that money and a new hairdo will never give her class. But Veda also knows when to drop this crushing disdain and play what can be described only as love scenes—flinging herself into Mildred’s arms with kisses and tears and promises to change. The only change comes when her smug entitlement curdles into sociopathy; she detests the “smell of grease” on the money from her mother’s restaurants but is delighted with the $10,000 she extorts from a wealthy family with a fake pregnancy. In the end, she blames her mother for all her crimes—“It’s your fault I’m the way I am”—and for once, perhaps she’s right. Veda is a monster, but she’s the monster Mildred created with her insistence on putting the children first and giving them advantages.

在这段致命的、不健康的关系中，母亲米尔德丽德畏惧的正是女儿维达对自己的评判：观看维达指责米尔德丽德通过当服务员来「贬低」家庭的场景是如此痛苦，让人有些难以接受。随后，在一阵羞辱中，维达还侮辱了她母亲的家庭和与生俱来的教养——就好像自己不属于这个家庭一样——并傲慢地告诉她，金钱和新的发型永远不会给她带来地位。然而维达也知道什么时候该放下这种带有压迫感的蔑视，她投入米尔德丽德的怀抱，哭泣着承诺要改变自己。唯一的变化是，她的傲娇心变成了反社会心态；她厌恶母亲餐馆里的钱上的「油味」，却对她从富裕家庭勒索得来的一万美元感到高兴。最后，她把所有的罪行都归咎于她的母亲——「我变成这样的都是你的错」——这一次，也许她是对的。维达是个怪物，她是由米尔德丽德的宠溺所创造出来的怪物。

“Why don’t you just forget about her?” Mildred’s friend and coworker Ida (Eve Arden) asks, as they drink straight bourbon in the afternoon. Even knowing the bitter truth about Veda, Mildred realizes she can’t live without her and will do anything to get her back. Ida can’t shake her from this abject trance—not even with the benefit of Arden’s wry, drawling contralto, the Campari in the cocktail of American cinema. But she gives the movie a solid base of female sanity and solidarity to balance the neurotic central relationship, as well as an invaluable dash of astringent humor—from her praise of alligators that “eat their young” to her toast: “To the men we have loved—the stinkers.”

There are three men in Mildred’s life, and each has his flaws, though only one is really a stinker. Her first husband, Bert (Bruce Bennett), is a gloomy defeatist who resents her greater spine and energy, though he correctly diagnoses her toxic obsession with their children. Having lost his job, he consoles himself with a mistress, and sees his wife’s own earning capacity as a deliberate rebuke. When she throws him out, he sneers, “Let’s see you get along without me,” which she proceeds to do quite well, as he later admits. Women’s willingness to do whatever it takes to survive and support their children is a truism of Depression-era women’s sagas likeBlonde Venus, Call Her Savage(both 1932), andBaby Face(1933). These films argue that the fluidity of women’s identities and their ability to accept degrading compromises make them tougher than men, whose pride and cherished dignity are handicaps. So is their cockiness. “I’m so smart it’s like a disease,” crows Wally Fay (Jack Carson), an affable blowhard who makes a pass at Mildred at least once a week. She bats back the passes but uses him mercilessly, first turning to him for help in building her business, then turning him into a fall guy when she has need of one.

「你为什么不干脆忘了她呢？」米尔德里德的朋友和同事艾达（伊芙·阿登饰）在下午喝纯波旁威士忌时问道。即使知道了有关维达的一切，但米尔德里德意识到她不能没有她，并会做任何事情让她回到自己身边。艾达无法将她从这种可怜的恍惚状态中解脱出来——不论是她沉稳、缓慢的语调，还是金巴利威士忌都不能帮到米尔德丽德。但艾达在电影中展现了女性的才智，正是她平衡了米尔德丽德母女之间的神经质关系。另外，艾达身上还带有一种辛辣的幽默感——在片中，她称赞鳄鱼，因为它「吃掉它们的幼崽」，她的祝酒词也意味深长：「献给我们爱过的男人——那些讨厌的家伙。」 米尔德丽德的生活中有三个男人，每个人都有自己的缺点，尽管只有一个是真正的混蛋。她的第一任丈夫伯特（布鲁斯·班尼特饰）是一个忧郁的失败主义者，他对米尔德丽德的精干恨之入骨，尽管他感受到了她对孩子们中毒般的迷恋。失业后，他找了个情妇来安慰自己，并把妻子的挣钱能力视为一种对自己的故意指责。当米尔德丽德把他赶出去时，他冷嘲热讽地说，「让我们看看你在没有我的情况下过得怎么样。」事实是，她后来过得很好，他后来也承认了这一点。在经济大萧条时期的那些电影中，女性常常不顾一切代价谋求生存，赡养自己的孩子，比如《金发维达斯》（1932）、《她是野蛮人》（1932）和《娃娃脸》（1934）。在这些电影里，女性身份的流动性，以及当她们对有辱人格的事情妥协的经历，使她们比男性更加强大，这让男性的自傲和自以为是的尊严看上去像是一种缺陷。他们的骄傲和自大也是如此。吹牛大王沃利·费伊（杰克·卡森饰）每周至少都要向米尔德丽德求爱一次，他说：「我太聪明了，这就像是一种疾病。」米尔德丽德拒绝了他，但同时也毫不留情地利用他，她先是让他给自己的生意帮忙，然后当她需要的时候，把他变成自己的替罪羊。

Mildred Piercewas made during the Second World War but not released until about a month after V-J Day. There are only a few glancing references to the war—for instance, a line about the shortage of nylon stockings—but the film captures its pivotal moment by looking back at the struggles of the Depression and ahead to postwar prosperity. (The latter is gloriously envisioned in the gala opening of Mildred’s first restaurant, trumpeted by searchlights like a Hollywood premiere, with carhops serving drive-in patrons, swing music on the jukebox, fried chicken and dry martinis, and the sweet music of greenbacks riffling in the cashier’s hand.) Similarly, in its treatment of men, the movie follows the pattern of classic 1930s women’s pictures, in which males remain marginal plot devices, and at the same time previews film noir’s gallery of suckers, heels, and pawns of fate.

《欲海情魔》制作于第二次世界大战期间，但直到1945年8月15日（二战胜利纪念日）大约一个月后才上映。电影里，对战争的提及只有寥寥几笔，例如一句有关尼龙丝袜短缺的台词——但这部电影通过回顾大萧条的挣扎，以及对战后社会繁荣的展望，捕捉到了大萧条时期的关键时刻（在探照灯的照射下，米尔德里德的第一家餐厅的开业仪式就像好莱坞电影的首映式一样，为顾客打开车门的餐厅侍者，点唱机里播放的摇摆乐，炸鸡和干马提尼酒，收银员手中挥舞着美钞，这些场景都是对战后繁荣景象的一种美好憧憬）。同样，在对男性角色的处理上，这部电影遵循了20世纪30年代经典女性电影的模式，在这一模式中，男性仍然被置于影片情节的边缘，同时也预示了黑色电影中那些社会边缘人、蛇蝎美人的高跟鞋以及人物作为命运棋子的设置。

It is often said that men’s discomfort with women’s entry into the workforce during World War II conjured the figure of the femme fatale, which demonized strong, ambitious women. This theory makes no sense, since the femme fatale is never a woman who works or is independent; she is always a woman who uses men to get what she wants, relying on the most traditional feminine wiles. Women who do work, like Mildred and Ida (or like the secretaries played by Ella Raines inPhantom Ladyand Lucille Ball inThe Dark Corner,or the nightclub performers portrayed by Ida Lupino inThe Man I Loveand Ann Sheridan inNora Prentiss) are invariably good eggs, while femmes fatales are like Veda, avaricious gals who would rather cheat and exploit their desirability than work for what they want.

人们经常说，第二次世界大战期间，男性对女性进入劳动力市场的现象感到不适，「蛇蝎美人」的形象开始出现，然而这一形象却妖魔化了坚强、有抱负的女性。这一理论毫无意义，因为蛇蝎美人从来都不是依靠工作或独立生活的女性；她们总是利用男人来得到她想要的东西。那些努力工作的女性，比如米尔德丽德和艾达（或者像埃拉·雷恩斯在《幻影女郎》中饰演的秘书和露西尔·鲍尔在《死角》中饰演的秘书，以及艾达·卢皮诺和安·谢里登在《我爱的男人》、《风流如梦》中饰演的夜总会舞女）都是都是好女孩，而蛇蝎美人都像维达一样，是贪婪的女孩，她们宁愿欺骗和利用自己的欲望，也不愿为自己想要的东西工作。

The male version of this type is Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), the penniless heir to a once-wealthy Pasadena family, who proudly admits that all he does is loaf “in a highly decorative and charming manner.” At first, his seduction of Mildred seems to be motivated by sincere if superficial attraction, and it’s easy to see why the grass widow （离婚的女子）who spends her life sweating in kitchens succumbs to a man who makes her feel desirable again. Soon she is bankrolling the lifestyle he can no longer afford, eventually buying him outright when they marry—not because she’s in love with him but as a means of holding on to her daughter, who worships the aristocratic, polo-playing gigolo. Monte and Veda are two of a kind, equally devious and narcissistic, and between them they strip poor Mildred of everything she has or cherishes.

在影片中，蛇蝎美人的男性版本则是蒙特（扎查瑞·斯考特饰），他是曾经身无分文的帕萨迪纳家族的继承人，他自豪地承认，他所做的一切就是「以一种高度伪装和迷人的方式」游手好闲。起初，他对米尔德丽德的诱惑似乎是真诚的，即使只是表面上的吸引，很容易理解为什么这个「一生都在厨房里忙碌」的离婚女人会屈服于一个让她再次感到被吸引的男人。很快，她就为蒙特这种奢靡的生活方式提供了积蓄，并且最终在他们结婚时接受了这种生活——这并不是因为她爱上了他，而是为了留住她那崇拜贵族身份、打马球的小白脸的女儿。蒙特和维达属于同一类人，他们一样狡猾和自恋，他们剥夺了可怜的米尔德丽德所拥有和珍视的一切。

In this respect, the movie is faithful to the 1941 James M. Cain novel from which it was adapted, but there are subtle differences in tone, as well as a glaring departure: the murder that frames the film and has no equivalent in the book. This is a case where infidelity to the source is mostly well judged, particularly in the abandonment of Veda’s sudden transformation into a celebrated opera singer, a twist in the novel that not only is unconvincing but seems to validate the girl’s haughty conviction that life with her “common” mother can never be good enough for her. The murder serves both to sharpen the dramatic thrust of the story and to satisfy the Breen Office censors who enforced the Production Code, by pushing amorality into outright villainy and ensuring punishment. It also seals the movie’s status as a film noir, though the body count matters less than the emotional violence that hits as hard and cuts as deep as bullets.

在这方面，这部电影忠实于1941年詹姆斯·M·凯恩的小说，但在风格上有些许细微的差异，以及明显的不同：构成电影关键情节的谋杀，在书中是没有的。尤其是在维达突然转变为一名歌剧演唱者的过程中，这是小说中的一个转折，电影改编得不仅令人信服，而且很好。这似乎证实了这个女孩的傲慢信念，即与「普通的」母亲一起生活，对她来说永远是不够的。这起谋杀案既强化了整个故事的戏剧性主旨，又通过将不道德行为的行为转变为彻底的的恶行，并且确保恶行得到惩罚，以此来满足《海斯法典》的严苛要求。这也印证了这部电影作为黑色电影的重要地位，尽管电影中的死亡人数没有通常的黑色电影中那么多。

This was Curtiz’s first noir, and he pulls out all the stops in the opening sequence, aided and abetted by veteran cinematographer Ernest Haller. The beach house is a modernist labyrinth of split levels, spiral stairs, dark rectangular spaces sliced by diagonal low-angle shafts of light. Huge shadows loom on the walls, watery ribbons of light play on the ceiling, and firelight twitches spasmodically in the room where a man lies dead. All of the film’s interiors—from the California Spanish bungalow where Mildred starts out to the oppressively grandiose mansion where she winds up—are exceptionally detailed and expressive. Curtiz matches each scene’s style to its mood, from the flamboyant prologue to the plain lighting and framing of Mildred’s everyday life in the suburbs. The director’s films of the forties are all lustrously handsome, often suffused with a faintly visible atmosphere—like humidity, or breath—that gives volume to the light and shade. But Curtiz is never distracted by style; his power as a storyteller comes from the simplicity and stinging clarity he can give the most dramatic moments.Mildred Piercehas its flourishes of operatic excess—Veda slapping her mother is perhaps the most stunning—but its most painful scenes are quiet and pitilessly straightforward, like the one where Mildred watches her younger daughter, Kay, struggle for life in an oxygen tent.

《欲海情魔》是柯蒂兹的第一部黑色电影，在资深摄影师欧内斯特·哈勒的帮助下，他在开场的场景中努力展现了自己的功力。这座海滨别墅是一座现代主义的迷宫，错落有致，它的楼梯呈螺旋状，黑暗的矩形空间被光柱分割开。在墙上，巨大的阴影隐约可见，在天花板上浮现着水面的回光，当那个男人倒地身亡时，壁炉里的火光不断在他的身旁跳动着。影片的所有内景——-从一开始米尔德丽德叙述中的加州的西班牙式平房，到她最终落脚的令人压抑的宏伟豪宅——都异常细致和富有表现力。柯蒂兹将每个场景的风格及其对应的情绪相匹配，从令人眼花缭乱的开场到米尔德丽德在郊区的日常生活。这位导演在1940年代的电影都非常精致，弥漫着一种隐约可见的氛围——比如电影里的湿度或呼吸的韵律——这给明暗两色赋予了音量。但柯蒂兹从来不会被风格分心；作为一个讲故事的导演，他的叙事力量来自于他对场景简单、清晰的描述。《欲海情魔》的华丽感正是来自于其歌剧式的，对情感的过度表达——维达扇她母亲的耳光的场景可能是最令人惊叹的——但在电影里，最痛苦的场景反而安静、无情、直截了当的，比如米尔德丽德看着她的小女儿凯躺在床上逐渐死去。

Mildred Piercewas Crawford’s great comeback after a string of flops and a humiliating departure from MGM in 1943, and it led to a late-career peak at Warner Bros. Having struck black gold, she continued to mine it in a series of terrific noir melodramas, likeHumoresque(1946),Possessed, Daisy Kenyon(both 1947),Flamingo Road(1949, again with Curtiz),The Damned Don’t Cry(1950),Sudden Fear(1952), andAutumn Leaves(1956). In many of these films, she plays gritty, determined women who work—as a carnival dancer, a model, a magazine illustrator, a playwright, a typist—and for whom love and marriage, far from representing security, are violently destabilizing, leading to suicide, beatings, murder, madness. Challenging the false assumption that noir always takes the male point of view, these films find in women’s dilemmas the essence of noir’s you-can’t-win pessimism. Mildred gets everything a woman can have—marriage, children, a high-powered career, a passionate love affair, a fur coat—yet none of it brings her happiness. She wants only the one thing she lacks, her daughter’s love.

《欲海情魔》还是克劳馥在1943年经历了一系列失败，耻辱地离开米高梅之后，伟大的复出之作，这也促成了她职业生涯后期，在华纳电影公司的巅峰。在被这部电影鼓舞之后，她继续在一系列极好的黑色情节剧中延续了自己的表演，比如《银海香魂》（1946）、《作茧自缚》（1947）、《情迷意乱》（1947年）、《手足英雄》（这部电影同样由柯蒂兹执导， 1949年）、《虎穴幽兰》（1950）、《惊惧骤起》（1952）以及《怨妇悲秋》（1956）。在许多这样的电影中，她饰演坚韧不拔、意志坚定的女性——在其中狂欢节上的舞者、模特、杂志插图画家、剧作家和打字员等等——对她们来说，爱情和婚姻非但不能代表安全，反而极不稳定，导致人物的自杀、殴打、谋杀和发狂。这些电影挑战了黑色电影总是从男性角度出发的错误臆断，在黑色电影「你赢不了」悲观主义的本质中，找到了女性的困境。米尔德丽德得到了女人能拥有的一切——婚姻、孩子、一份有地位的工作、一段充满激情的恋情、一件毛皮大衣——但这些都没有给她带来幸福。她只想要她所缺少的一样东西：女儿的爱。

This is where film noir and melodrama converge: both are fueled by people wanting what they can’t have, and going too far trying to get it. With her talent for going too far, and for glamorously suffering the consequences, Joan Crawford was made for the noir melodrama. In a career marked by endless transformations and hard-fought comebacks, she also embodied the glamour of work: that hard work of being a woman that is never done.

这就是黑色电影和情节剧的结合：两者在剧情上的推动，都是因为人们想获得他们得不到的东西，并且为了得到它而铤而走险。琼·克劳馥凭借其过人的天赋和努力，是黑色情节剧的不二人选。在以没有尽头的改变以及艰难的复出为标志的职业生涯中，她也体现了工作的魅力：那种作为一个女人永远无法完成的艰苦工作。