@fantaghiro
2016-07-25T01:58:20.000000Z
字数 23727
阅读 17434
文本细读 商务英语综合教程
本文作者是Susan Sontag（苏珊·桑塔格），有关她的简介可以看这里。
Cinema's hundred years seem to have the shape of a life cycle: an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of glories, and the onset in the last decade of an ignominious, irreversible decline. It doesn't mean that there won't be any more new films that one can admire. But such films will not simply be exceptions; that's true of great achievement in any art. They have to be heroic violations of the norms and practices that now govern moviemaking everywhere in the world. And ordinary films, films made purely for entertainment (that is, commercial) purposes, will continue to be astonishingly witless; already the vast majority fail resoundingly to appeal to their audiences. Cinema, once heralded as the art of the twentieth century, seems now, as the century closes, to be a decadent art.
Cinema's hundred years seem to have the shape of a life cycle: an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of glories, and the onset in the last decade of an ignominious, irreversible decline.
It doesn't mean that there won't be any more new films that one can admire.
But such films will not simply be exceptions; that's true of great achievement in any art.
They have to be heroic violations of the norms and practices that now govern moviemaking everywhere in the world.
And ordinary films, films made purely for entertainment (that is, commercial) purposes, will continue to be astonishingly witless; already the vast majority fail resoundingly to appeal to their audiences.
Cinema, once heralded as the art of the twentieth century, seems now, as the century closes, to be a decadent art.
Perhaps it is not cinema that has ended, but only cinephilia, the name of the very specific kind of love that cinema inspired. Each art breeds its fanatics. The love that cinema inspired, however, was special. It was born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and moral – all at the same time. Cinema had apostles (it was like religion). Cinema was a crusade. Cinema was a world-view. Lovers of poetry or dance don't think there is only poetry or opera or dance. But lovers of cinema could think there was only cinema. For cinephiles, the movies encapsulated everything. Cinema was both the book of art and the book of life.
Perhaps it is not cinema that has ended, but only cinephilia, the name of the very specific kind of love that cinema inspired.
Each art breeds its fanatics.
It was born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and moral – all at the same time.
Cinema had apostles (it was like religion).
Cinema was a crusade. Cinema was a world-view.
For cinephiles, the movies encapsulated everything.
Cinema was both the book of art and the book of life.
As many people have noted, the start of moviemaking a hundred years ago was, conveniently, a double start. In that first year, 1895, two kinds of films were made, proposing two modes of what cinema could be: cinema as the transcription of real, unstaged life and cinema as invention, artifice, illusion, fantasy. But this was never a true opposition. For those first audiences, watching the Lumière brothers' The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the cinema's transmission of a banal sight was a fantastic experience. Cinema began in wonder, the wonder that reality can be transcribed with such magical immediacy. All of cinema is an attempt to perpetuate and to reinvent that sense of wonder.
As many people have noted, the start of moviemaking a hundred years ago was, conveniently, a double start.
In that first year, 1895, two kinds of films were made, proposing two modes of what cinema could be: cinema as the transcription of real, unstaged life and cinema as invention, artifice, illusion, fantasy.
But this was never a true opposition.
For those first audiences, watching the Lumière brothers' The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the cinema's transmission of a banal sight was a fantastic experience.
Cinema began in wonder, the wonder that reality can be transcribed with such magical immediacy.
All of cinema is an attempt to perpetuate and to reinvent that sense of wonder.
Everything begins with that moment, one hundred years ago, when the train pulled into the station. People took movies into themselves, just as the public cried out with excitement, actually ducked, as the train seemed to move toward them. Until the advent of television emptied the movie theaters, it was from a weekly visit to the cinema that you learned (or tried to learn) how to walk, to smoke, to kiss, to fight, to suffer. Whatever you took home from the movies was only a part of the larger experience of losing yourself in lives, in lives that were not yours – which is the more inclusive form of desire embodied in the movie experience. The strongest experience was simply to surrender to, to be transported by, what was on the screen. You wanted to be kidnapped by the movie.
Everything begins with that moment, one hundred years ago, when the train pulled into the station.
People took movies into themselves, just as the public cried out with excitement, actually ducked, as the train seemed to move toward them.
Until the advent of television emptied the movie theaters, it was from a weekly visit to the cinema that you learned (or tried to learn) how to walk, to smoke, to kiss, to fight, to suffer.
Whatever you took home from the movies was only a part of the larger experience of losing yourself in lives, in lives that were not yours – which is the more inclusive form of desire embodied in the movie experience.
The strongest experience was simply to surrender to, to be transported by, what was on the screen.
You wanted to be kidnapped by the movie.
The first prerequisite of being kidnapped was to be overwhelmed by the physical presence of the image. And the conditions of "going to the movies" was essential to that. To see a great film only on TV isn't to have really seen that film. It's not only the difference of dimensions: the superiority of the larger-than-you image in the theater to the little image on the box at home. Now that a film no longer has a standard size, home screens can be as big as living room or bedroom walls. But you are still in a living room or a bedroom, alone or with familiars. To be kidnapped, you have to be in a movie theater, seated in the dark among anonymous strangers.
The first prerequisite of being kidnapped was to be overwhelmed by the physical presence of the image.
And the conditions of "going to the movies" was essential to that.
It's not only the difference of dimensions: the superiority of the larger-than-you image in the theater to the little image on the box at home.
Now that a film no longer has a standard size, home screens can be as big as living room or bedroom walls.
But you are still in a living room or a bedroom, alone or with familiars.
To be kidnapped, you have to be in a movie theater, seated in the dark among anonymous strangers.
Furthermore, the unprincipled manipulation of images (faster and faster cutting) to be more attention-grabbing has produced a cinema that doesn't demand anyone's full attention. Images now appear in any size and on a variety of surfaces: on a screen in a theater, on home screens, on disco walls and the outsides of tall public buildings. The sheer ubiquity of moving images has steadily undermined the standards people once had both for cinema as art at its most serious and for cinema as popular entertainment.
Furthermore, the unprincipled manipulation of images (faster and faster cutting) to be more attention-grabbing has produced a cinema that doesn't demand anyone's full attention.
The sheer ubiquity of moving images has steadily undermined the standards people once had both for cinema as art at its most serious and for cinema as popular entertainment.
In the first years there was, essentially, no difference between cinema as art and cinema as entertainment. And all films of the silent era – from the masterpieces to the melodramas and comedies – are on a very high artistic level compared with most of what was to follow. With the coming of sound, the image-making lost much of its brilliance and poetry, and commercial standards tightened. This way of making movies – the Hollywood system – dominated filmmaking for about 25 years (roughly from 1930 to 1955). Then, in the mid-1950s, vanguard ideas took hold again. A dazzling number of ambitious, passionate films of the highest seriousness got made, went to film festivals, and from there, into movie theatres around the world. This golden age actually lasted as long as twenty years.
In the first years there was, essentially, no difference between cinema as art and cinema as entertainment.
And all films of the silent era – from the masterpieces to the melodramas and comedies – are on a very high artistic level compared with most of what was to follow.
With the coming of sound, the image-making lost much of its brilliance and poetry, and commercial standards tightened.
Then, in the mid-1950s, vanguard ideas took hold again.
A dazzling number of ambitious, passionate films of the highest seriousness got made, went to film festivals, and from there, into movie theatres around the world.
It was at this specific moment in the hundred-year history of cinema that going to movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies became a passion among university students and other young people. You fell in love not just with actors but with cinema itself. Cinephilia had first become visible in the 1950s in France: its forum was the legendary film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Its temples, as it spread throughout Europe and the Americas, were the many cinemathèques and film clubs specializing in films from the past and directors' retrospectives that sprang up. The 1960s and early 1970s was the feverish age of moviegoing, with the full-time cinephile always hoping to find a seat as close as possible to the big screen, ideally the third row center.
It was at this specific moment in the hundred-year history of cinema that going to movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies became a passion among university students and other young people.
Cinephilia had first become visible in the 1950s in France: its forum was the legendary film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.
Its temples, as it spread throughout Europe and the Americas, were the many cinemathèques and film clubs specializing in films from the past and directors' retrospectives that sprang up.
The 1960s and early 1970s was the feverish age of moviegoing, with the full-time cinephile always hoping to find a seat as close as possible to the big screen, ideally the third row center.
For some fifteen years there were new masterpieces every month, and one allowed oneself to imagine that this would go on forever. How far away that era seems now. To be sure, there was always a conflict between cinema as an industry and cinema as an art, cinema as routine and cinema as experiment. Now the balance has tipped decisively in favor of cinema as an industry. The great cinema of the 1960s and 1970s has been thoroughly repudiated. The catastrophic rise in production costs in the 1980s secured the worldwide reimposition of industry standards of making and distributing films on a far more coercive and global scale. Soaring production costs meant that a film had to make a lot of money right away, in the first month of its release, if it was to be profitable at all – a trend that favored the blockbuster over the low-budget film. The theatrical release time of movies became shorter and shorter; many movies were designed to go directly into video. Movie theaters continued to close – many towns no longer have even one – as movies became, mainly, one of a variety of habit-forming home entertainments.
For some fifteen years there were new masterpieces every month, and one allowed oneself to imagine that this would go on forever.
How far away that era seems now.
To be sure, there was always a conflict between cinema as an industry and cinema as an art, cinema as routine and cinema as experiment.
Now the balance has tipped decisively in favor of cinema as an industry.
The great cinema of the 1960s and 1970s has been thoroughly repudiated.
The catastrophic rise in production costs in the 1980s secured the worldwide reimposition of industry standards of making and distributing films on a far more coercive and global scale.
Soaring production costs meant that a film had to make a lot of money right away, in the first month of its release, if it was to be profitable at all – a trend that favored the blockbuster over the low-budget film.
The theatrical release time of movies became shorter and shorter; many movies were designed to go directly into video.
Movie theaters continued to close – many towns no longer have even one – as movies became, mainly, one of a variety of habit-forming home entertainments.
Predictably, the love of cinema has waned. People still like going to the movies, and some people still care about and expect something special, necessary from a film. And wonderful films are still being made. But one hardly finds anymore, at least among the young, the distinctive cinephilic love of movies, which is not simply love of but a certain taste in films (grounded in a vast appetite for seeing and reseeing as much as possible of cinema's glorious past).
Predictably, the love of cinema has waned.
But one hardly finds anymore, at least among the young, the distinctive cinephilic love of movies, which is not simply love of but a certain taste in films (grounded in a vast appetite for seeing and reseeing as much as possible of cinema's glorious past).
If cinephilia is dead, then movies are dead too – no matter how many movies, even very good ones, go on being made. If cinema can be resurrected, it will only be through the birth of a new kind of cine-love.
If cinema can be resurrected, it will only be through the birth of a new kind of cine-love.