万紫千红

一九四三年十月，张爱玲在英文月刊《二十世纪 / XXth Century》第五卷第四期的影评专栏“On the Screen”中，发表了两部电影“万紫千红 / On With the Show”和“燕迎春 / The Call of Spring”的英文影评。影评全文扫描请见美国夏威夷大学马诺阿分校哈密尔顿图书馆中的电子版馆藏（可直接下载PDF）：
http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10524/32591

On With the Show[万紫千红]. In the leading parts: Li Li-hwa[李丽华], Yen Djuen[严俊], and Wang Tan-feng[王丹凤].
The Call of Spring[回春曲]. In the leading parts: Liu Chuen[刘琼] and Hu Foong[胡枫].

Much of the box-office appeal of On With the Show depends on its promises of sophisticated sensuality; yet the film is curiously naïve. Li Li-hwa (her photograph appeared in Vol. IV p.141 of this magazine) takes the part of a beautiful and oratorical waitress in a restaurant picturesquely old-fashioned in the European style. Making her first appearance on a cart loaded with hay and farm produce, Li Li-hwa sings and recklessly throws apples to street children. With her songs, her charms, and the aid of the Takarazuka dancers(注：日本宝冢歌剧团), she finally raises enough funds to found an orphanage.

Justifying the entertainment by the worthy cause of charity is one of those usual attempts to assuage the demand for an immediate purpose in art. However, On With the Show fails to please everybody all round. Mosquito papers, by far the most favored reading matter among certain urban sets, have contributors who suspect that they do not like On With the Show because of its moralizing. The cannot help complaining that Li Li-hwa shows her famous legs only once, and then half buried in furs.

In Chinese eyes, the Takarazuka dance are expressive only of the splendor of youth, health and intelligent discipline. To the average Chinese, the fascination of ballet lies chiefly in its difficulty. They also find the traditional Japanese dances hard to understand on the screen without the help of the symphonic colors of costumes and background. But on the other hand the audience laughs heartily at the practical jokes the hero and heroine play upon each other—Li Li-hwa fries some bad eggs for her admirer and he sends her an empty cup of ice cream. Also well received are the Chinese Laurel and Hardy who mess about in the restaurant kitchen. On With the Show is a success with the public in spite of its banal situations, its structural weakness, and its apparent clashing of adult and infantile interests. The last-mentioned shortcoming may be disregarded, because modern Chinese of all ages are like children in their fondness for birthday cakes, with or without dancers swirling around one as in the charity performance in On With the Show. The whole picture is modelled on the Hollywood series of Gold Diggers and The Big Broadcast and is meant to "feed the eyes with ice cream and seat the heart in a sofa"—to quote the phrase a Chinese critic once applied to these American extravaganzas.

The Call of Spring presents a far more serious problem. With the modern, Westernized stage as its background, it is written, directed and enacted by Liu Chuen (also portrayed in Vol. IV, p.145 of this magazine), the idol of girl students. The Call of Spring finds an enormous following among the young intelligentsia and is formidably advertised as "recommended by the critical public." In the role of an actor, Liu has the opportunity to do bits as Romeo and as Armand of La Dame aux Camélias. In another "play within the play," Liu makes a convincing old man, but an Occidental one who digs his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets à la Lionel Barrymore. The hero of the picture writes plays with the help of coffee, and the camera dwells with genuine delight on the glittering coffee-pot. When in distress, he gets drunk in a bar. When he falls into poverty, he works as a coolie in a park, his overcoat shabby but shapely like that of a smart foreign tramp; his life in the park seems a perpetual picnic with lots of time for brooding by the campfire.

It is appalling to reflect that, in the imagination of young Chinese intellectuals nurtured on a quarter of a century of foreign films and fiction, there is so little room for anything really Chinese. The transformation has clearly gone past the stage of "fundamentally Chinese, functionally Western, (注：中学为体，西学为用)" the slogan invented at the beginning of this process of Westernization.

The unanalytical acceptance of foreign romances— reality twice removed— results in much posturizing. In modern Chinese art as well as life, the expre$sion is often affected when the emotion is genuine. Liu Chuen is doubtlessly sincere in The Call of Spring, especially in his passionate exposure of greedy theatrical managers. The hero acts always in accordance with the new sense of propriety. Accidentally crippled, he feels he stands in the way of his wife's happiness. He leaves the scene. In a tragic little note he gives her his blessing and asks her not to look for him, as it would be futile. A glance at the personal column in Chinese newspapers ("Since you disappeared, mother refuses to eat or leave her bed. Grandmother had her heart attacks. Whole family daily washes face with tears. Return at once") shows us that Chinese under thirty are prone to walk out of their homes because of abstract principles, domestic disputes, failure to pass examinations, the incompatibility of cultural atmosphere, etc. Perhaps no other work has influenced the average educated Chinese of this century so much as Ibsen's A Doll's House, and in this, as in everything else learned from the West, the Chinese are more impressed by the bleak beauty of Nora's gesture than by the underlying thought. — Eileen Chang[张爱玲]

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二〇〇二年四月，中国华侨出版社编辑出版了《张爱玲文集·补遗》一书，收录有陈炳良先生对本篇影评所做的中文翻译，现引用如下，以供参考：

《万紫千红》和《燕迎春》

《万紫千红》(李丽华、严俊、王丹凤主演。）
《燕迎春》（刘琼编、导、演。）

《万紫千红》所以能吸引观众，是在于它的“高级调情”的宣传；但它却天真得令人有点奇怪。李丽华饰演在一家景色怡人的古老欧洲式餐馆里的漂亮而口齿伶俐的女侍。她出场时坐在一辆载满了干草和农产品的推车上，一面唱歌，一面无拘束地把苹果掷向街上的儿童。她的歌，她的美，加上宝冢舞女，使她终于筹足了钱建一所孤儿院。

用慈善筹款来作为举行娱乐表演的理由，是企图缓和对艺术表演需求的一个常用的手法。但是《万紫千红》并没有使每个人都高兴。在市民所爱看的小报上，有人指出《万》片不受欢迎的原因是因为它说教。他们抱怨李丽华只把她出名的玉腿呈现一次给观众，以后就半裹在皮裘里面。

在中国人眼中，宝冢的歌舞只表现青春的美好、健康，和合理的规律。对普通的中国人来说，芭蕾舞的吸引力是在它的困难程度上。他们也觉得日本歌舞在银幕上如果没有服装和背景的缤纷彩色，便很难明白。另一方面，观众对男女主角互相捉弄感到开心——李丽华给她的追求者煎了些臭蛋，而他又送给她空的冰淇淋杯子。还有那对把厨房弄得一团糟的中国莱路、哈地，也被观众所接受。虽然“万”片有着平平无奇的场景、软弱的结构，和成人与儿童口味的冲突，它对一般观众来说仍是成功的。至于上面所说的第三个缺点，我们可以不理，因为中国现在的成年人也和小孩一样喜欢生日饼，不管它是否像在《万》片的慈善表演中一样有舞女在旁边团团转。全片仿照好莱坞的Gold Diggers(注：华纳兄弟1929年至1938年间发行的系列歌舞片，共五部)和它的续集The Big Broadcast(注：派拉蒙1932年至1938年间发行的系列歌舞片，共四部)，目的是要使观众做到对这两部美国歌舞片的评语所说的“眼睛吃冰淇淋，灵魂坐沙发椅”。

《燕迎春》发生了个更大的问题。这部片子是由女学生偶像刘琼用现代西式舞台作为背景来编、导、演的。《燕》片在年轻知识分子中，有很多支持者。而它更大事宣传，说是被有批评眼光的观众所推荐。在片中刘琼饰一个演员，他有机会演罗密欧和“茶花女”的亚孟。在另一场戏中戏里，刘的外国老人扮相也令人信服。他把拇指插在背心口袋里，像Lionel Barrymore(注：赖尼尔·巴利摩，美国奥斯卡影帝)—样。片中主角靠咖啡的帮助去写作和演出，而镜头就把兴趣集中在闪闪生光的咖啡壶上。在困恼的时候，他就往酒吧买醉。贫穷时他到公园里做苦工。他的大衣陈旧，但裁剪合度，像一个外国的潇洒流浪汉。他在公园里的生活，像永远在吃野餐和花很多时间在火堆旁边沉思。

对受了四分之一世纪外国电影和小说薰陶的中国年轻知识分子来说，片中没有多少是中国东西，这种情形是令人着恼的。这转变已远远超过了洋务运动时所提倡的“中学为体，西学为用”了。

对外国爱情故事不经批判的接受，这种和现实双倍地远离的情况引起了不少问题。在现代中国艺术和生活中，当感情是真挚的时候，表情常会受到影响。刘琼在《燕》片中无疑是诚实的，尤其在他激动地揭露贪婪的戏院经理的真面目的时候。主角时常按照他新得到的合情合理的感觉去做事。当意外地弄跛了他的腿以后，他觉得他会使妻子不快乐，便自己出走。在他给她带有悲情的字条中，叫她不要找他，因为那是徒劳的。稍看一下寻人广告——“自你走后，母亲不食不眠，祖母心脏病发，全家每日以泪洗面，速回家。”——我们可以见到三十不到的中国人很容易为了抽象的原则、家庭的纠纷、考试的失败、文化的不适应等而离家出走。在这世纪中，可能没有一本书比易卜生(注：Henrik Johan Ibsen，挪威著名剧作家)的《傀儡家庭》(注：1879年创作的剧作，挪威语原名“Et dukkehjem”，英文译名“A Doll House”或“A Doll's House”，中文又译作“娜拉”或“玩偶之家”)所给予一般受过教育的中国人的影响更大。如同对其他从西方学回来的东西一样，中国人对这剧本中娜拉的美丽而苍凉的手势所得的印象，较之它所包含的思想，更有兴趣。 — 陈炳良 译