柏林艳史

Billy Wilder’s romance-triangle comedy is set in the Allied-occupied Berlin in 1947, in the face of Hollywood's entrenched agism and sexism, A FOREIGN AFFAIR is bracingly headlined by two 40-plus female marquee players, Jean Arthur (in her penultimate picture) and Marlene Dietrich, in roles which cagily keep their real ages under wraps.

Arthur plays aprudish American congresswoman Phoebe Frost of Iowa, scandalized by the dissipation she witnesses of American soldiers in the rubble strewn city, she is headstrong in making an example by finding out the American officer who is clandestinely protecting a German torch singer Erika von Schlutow (Dietrich),a woman with a Nazi past. Naturally and provincially, Captain John Pringle (an amicable and amenable Lund), another Iowan, is elected as her aide, but little does she know, John is the man she determines to uncover.

So to sabatoge Phoebe’s tenacious investigation, John starts to woo her and hope the flirtation can distract her, and indeed, it works (Wilder stages a fluid filibustering resistance before the pair landing their first kiss, and near the end, with a role-changing iteration), but of course, it is the bean-spilling moment that sells the tickets, when Phoebe and Erika share the same limelight, their conversation may well pass the Bechdel test, but what is at stake is a winning/losing game towards a man’s love and the less glamorous Phoebe is the honorable also-run, as it seems.

A looming revenge plan from one of Erika’s Nazi ex-lovers, is thrown into the game in a very late stage to precipitate a switcheroo, Wilder could never allot Erika too much time in the winner’s corner simply because his anti-Nazi ire, which presumably gives a certifiable license for its tepid ending.

Jean Arthur, for one last time, stretches her crow’s feet and psyches up for a straitlaced-to-smitten transformation, gives a fine presence but she is on a hiding to nothing in comparison with Dietrich’s sultry stature and sing-song poise, especially when those ditties are written by the eminentFriedrich Hollaender (BLACK MARKET is a humdinger), Dietrich is never a singer’s singer because of the discernible vocal stricture, but the combo of her contralto timbre and exterior élan is simply par excellence.

While Wilder doesn’t hide his personal attachment with the city in ruins, striking aerial shots bearing testimony of something its US audience may not realize at then, retrospectively A FOREIGN AFFAIR is a minor Wilder-Brackett’s output because of its frothiness and a deus ex machina perhaps dished up without much deliberation.

referential points: Wilder’s THE FORTUNE COOKIE (1966, 7.4/10), THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955, 7.1/10); Howard Hawks’ BALL OF FIRE (1941, 7.5/10).

控方证人中克里斯汀是一个柏林女人，为了生存隐瞒婚姻，委身于男主，影片中寥寥数语带过了她的身世，那些年柏林的女人究竟是怎样一种境况？柏林艳史为我们答疑解惑。战争本就无正义和非正义之说，兴百姓苦，亡百姓苦，二战之后的德国人，特别是德国的女人活得和动物一样，承受他国男人的报复，承担战争的后果。对于美俄这些国家的士兵来说，柏林到处是女人，到处是艳遇，而对于柏林女人来说就是赤裸裸的强暴，为了活下去，她们别无选择，在生命的本能面前，是没有羞耻心的。艳史并不艳，柏林女人的血泪透过黑色的胶片把历史染成了红色。电影中每个人物都有故事，每个故事都可以拍成一部独立的电影。海上钢琴师中有一个片段，1900为小号手讲解他音乐的灵感来源，这艘船上的每个人都是一首曲子，彼时的心境，行为，妆容都是一段即时的旋律，因而我们不妨把这部柏林艳史看成是克里斯汀们的故事。

第十章 意识形态——同性恋解放

黛德丽在20世纪20年代的柏林,那个当时在欧洲对性最开放也最性感的城市中出道。当她初抵好莱坞时,曾因公开的双性恋身份而引起飞短流长。但导演们也成功地剥削她的暧昧性倾向。她足足红了60年,拍本片时她已48岁,但这张照片足以证明她那双美腿如何充满噱头。