歌劇電影中雙簧表演的大問題

文：司馬勤（Ken Smith） 編譯：李正欣

我曾經(jīng)對(duì)英國如此著迷的一件事是：無論是亨德爾歌劇或是好萊塢影片，都是在其他地方流行多時(shí)之后，才飄過英倫海峽，又一次掀起熱潮。數(shù)月前，我翻看倫敦各大報(bào)紙，發(fā)現(xiàn)周末特刊評(píng)論的影片，早在美國或亞洲放映過了，有幾部甚至在飛機(jī)上的娛樂系統(tǒng)里都已翻滾多時(shí)。

真正引起我注意的是《美聲》（

Bel Canto

，2018，美國）這部電影。導(dǎo)演保羅·威茨（Paul Weitz）請(qǐng)來了朱麗安·摩爾（Julianne Moore）扮演歌劇巨星，故事的主線是恐怖分子挾持人質(zhì)的暴力事件。歌劇大明星飄洋過海來到拉丁美洲，為一位日本商人的私人盛會(huì)擔(dān)任演出嘉賓。宴會(huì)開始不久，一群武裝恐怖分子攻進(jìn)豪華大宅，俘虜了全部賓客。事實(shí)上，我在飛機(jī)上已經(jīng)看過這部影片，覺得導(dǎo)演拍得不太好，但也沒有上心。后來閱讀英國媒體對(duì)其的苛刻評(píng)論，在讀到其中的貶義詞時(shí)，心里還是感覺有點(diǎn)出乎意料。

朱麗安·摩爾扮演電影《美聲》中的歌劇巨星

為電影《美聲》幕后獻(xiàn)聲的音蕾內(nèi)·弗萊明（右）與原著作者安·帕切特

《衛(wèi)報(bào)》批評(píng)它為“挾持人質(zhì)的空洞故事”；《每日郵報(bào)》警告讀者，這部電影“在各個(gè)層面都令人失望”；《每日鏡報(bào)》則認(rèn)為“到了槍戰(zhàn)場面出現(xiàn)時(shí)，大家都舒了一口氣”。某位影評(píng)人揶揄《美聲》是“真實(shí)地營造出被挾持的滋味”，另一位更添油加醋地說：“唯一被挾持的人質(zhì)就是我，真想逃出電影院。”

首先，我必須強(qiáng)調(diào)，自己并沒有付錢買票去看《美聲》，我也不認(rèn)為航空公司會(huì)為這部糟糕的影片退票——看罷電影，我沒有任何沖動(dòng)，要跑到書店購買安·帕切特（Ann Patchett）的原創(chuàng)小說。盡管如此，這部電影算不上我近期看過最糟糕的——也不是那一周內(nèi)我看過最差勁的作品。如果說它最差勁，未免是種抬舉了。無論最好或最差，在某種程度上都可算是一種榮耀。

但是，某些關(guān)于這部電影的評(píng)語卻令我念念不忘。“一桶桶的煽情肥膏，政治觸覺幼稚至極，對(duì)嘴型的效果也確實(shí)嚇人”——這是《泰晤士報(bào)》的開場白。另一位影評(píng)家嘆息地說，“摩爾本是個(gè)出色的演員，但她的默劇技巧卻不盡如人意。”《標(biāo)準(zhǔn)晚報(bào)》甚至建議：既然摩爾飾演歌劇演員的角色可信度不高，為什么不直接讓女高音蕾內(nèi)·弗萊明來演呢？（電影中摩爾角色的歌唱段落，的確由弗萊明錄制的。）

我可以肯定，說這話的影評(píng)人肯定從來沒有看過弗萊明演戲。我在百老匯的舞臺(tái)上看過她的演出。縱使她扮演的就是一位歌劇明星，你還是得懷著“姑且信以為真”（suspension of disbelief）的心態(tài)度過整個(gè)晚上。但這確實(shí)指出了我對(duì)《美聲》的質(zhì)疑。這部電影里對(duì)歌者角色塑造的可信度，無論是演員還是導(dǎo)演或者后期制作團(tuán)隊(duì)都完全無從下手——他們徹底地失敗。

上：《紅色小提琴》中，相比起教兒童演員拉小提琴，教一位10歲的小提琴學(xué)生表演更為容易

下：張艾嘉在《紅色小提琴》中飾演了一位小提琴高手的女兒

右：為《紅色小提琴》錄制小提琴配樂的喬舒亞·貝爾

＊＊＊

不久以后，我在亞洲協(xié)會(huì)香港中心舉辦的公開講座中，與因給電影《紅色小提琴》（

The Red Violin

）配樂而贏得奧斯卡金像獎(jiǎng)的作曲家約翰·科里利亞諾（John Corigliano）進(jìn)行了訪談。電影在1999年上映時(shí)，我曾為《洛杉磯時(shí)報(bào)》寫過一篇報(bào)道，深入探討了導(dǎo)演佛朗索瓦·吉拉德（Fran?ois Girard）為了營造多位演員演奏小提琴時(shí)的真實(shí)感所投入的資源與精力。此前的幾年，也有另一部與音樂有關(guān)的電影，那就是《閃亮的風(fēng)采》（

Shine

）。導(dǎo)演斯科特·希克斯（Scott Hicks）安排演員杰弗里·拉什（Geoffrey Rush）模仿患有神經(jīng)緊張癥的大衛(wèi)·赫夫考（David Helfgott）的鋼琴技巧。訓(xùn)練的過程十分艱巨：拉什坐在一臺(tái)雅馬哈自動(dòng)演奏鋼琴（Yamaha Disklavier）前，仔細(xì)地跟著電動(dòng)操作的琴鍵練習(xí)指法。相比之下，到現(xiàn)在為止還沒有人成功發(fā)明“自動(dòng)演奏小提琴”——尤其是《紅色小提琴》的故事情節(jié)中出現(xiàn)了不同年齡層的小提琴手，吉哈德只能采用一些“低科技”的方法來呈現(xiàn)真實(shí)的演奏感。

導(dǎo)演找來了一位10歲的琴童來飾演影片中的“神童”一角，下功夫教他如何表演（相比起教兒童演員拉小提琴，這要容易得多）。電影中還有一個(gè)老年小提琴家的角色。導(dǎo)演請(qǐng)來了一位蒙特利爾交響樂團(tuán)的退休樂手——請(qǐng)留意，這不是理所當(dāng)然的——讓他來扮演職業(yè)樂手，令人信服。喬舒亞·貝爾（Joshua Bell）面對(duì)的挑戰(zhàn)更大。這位小提琴大師為《紅色小提琴》電影中全部的獨(dú)奏樂段錄制配樂，包括華人演員張艾嘉的一小段音樂。張艾嘉扮演了一位小提琴高手的女兒——她學(xué)過拉琴，但并不算專業(yè)。為了準(zhǔn)備拍攝《紅色小提琴》，張艾嘉花了幾個(gè)月時(shí)間來學(xué)習(xí)小提琴基本功。在這一段落里，貝爾需要露出真摯的感情，但只能用上有限的技巧來顯示這是一位新手的演奏。對(duì)于這么高水平的演奏家來說，要克制自己的技藝更具挑戰(zhàn)性。

最令導(dǎo)演頭疼的角色，也是整部電影最具挑戰(zhàn)性的部分，是一個(gè)虛構(gòu)的角色——19世紀(jì)英國小提琴家，名叫弗雷德里克·波普（Frederick Pope）。他是浪漫過度的拜倫與放蕩不羈的帕格尼尼的綜合體。飾演波普的杰森·弗萊明（Jason Flemyng）模仿拜倫得心應(yīng)手，卻無法勝任帕格尼尼的特質(zhì)。

在悠久的電影歷史中，還有一部1946年由讓·尼古拉斯科（Jean Negulesco）執(zhí)導(dǎo)的《詼諧曲》（

Humoresque

）。當(dāng)中的小提琴演奏片段用了以下的拍攝方法：當(dāng)時(shí)22歲的小提琴大師艾薩克·斯特恩（Isaac Stern）的手指在指板上舞動(dòng)，但捧著小提琴是演員約翰·加菲爾德（John Garfield）。《紅色小提琴》的拍攝過程中，也有令科里利亞諾記憶猶新的小插曲。導(dǎo)演曾把一場戲稱為“八爪魚”的拍攝：在鏡頭之外，杰森·弗萊明用肩托把小提琴舉起來，雙手向外伸展；喬舒亞·貝爾站在左邊，左手手臂從腋下穿過弗萊明的身體（貝爾的手指在指板上）；另一位英國小提琴手站在弗萊明的右邊，右手手臂同樣穿過弗萊明，將琴弓輕放在琴弦上。左右兩位小提琴家的手肘都跟演員的手肘綁在一起。他們一動(dòng)，演員的身體也會(huì)有所反應(yīng)。

＊＊＊

《爵士風(fēng)情》中，丹澤爾·華盛頓出演小號(hào)手

演員們雖然在模仿指法方面下了功夫，可惜忽略了呼吸節(jié)奏，面部肌肉也絲毫不動(dòng)

這聽起來夠復(fù)雜了吧？但拍攝歌唱家更為艱難，如同攀登珠穆朗瑪峰一樣。在史派克·李（Spike Lee ）執(zhí)導(dǎo)的《爵士風(fēng)情》（

Mo’ Better Blues

）中，丹澤爾·華盛頓（Denzel Washington）出演小號(hào)手。我以前學(xué)過小號(hào)，一眼就能發(fā)現(xiàn)雖然丹澤爾·華盛頓對(duì)模仿指法方面下了功夫，看起來有模有樣，可惜他忽略了呼吸節(jié)奏，面部肌肉也絲毫不動(dòng)，效果太失真了。

歌唱家不存在演奏樂器的問題，但不知何故，拍攝上遇到的問題更加復(fù)雜。就算是最成功的音樂劇電影都會(huì)困難重重，更何況歌劇電影呢？最近，我翻開多明戈的回憶錄（《我的頭四十年》），他描述了當(dāng)年為弗朗哥·澤菲雷利（Franco Zeffirelli）拍攝《茶花女》的場景。這部電影至今仍是歌劇電影最成功的例子。平常拍攝電影，前期的影像部分弄好了以后才加上音樂。但是，拍攝歌劇電影必須先把音樂錄制剪輯好，然后拍攝的時(shí)候，歌手只能跟播放的錄音來對(duì)嘴型。

“我覺得有困難。如果我真的跟著錄音唱出來——真的發(fā)聲唱出來——我就聽不到自己的錄音，因此無法對(duì)上嘴型。”多明戈這樣寫道，“另一方面，如果我為了聽到錄音而不打開喉嚨歌唱，視覺效果就沒有可信性：能聽到高亢的歌聲卻看不出歌唱家的嘴唇或喉嚨用力的跡象，真是荒謬。”

這讓我開始思考。歌劇電影屬于特別門類。多明戈的回憶錄雖然描繪了以上的情況，歌劇演員在銀幕上只是“演歌劇”，跟現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中的人物是有界限的。我們坐在觀眾席，聽著普契尼美妙絕倫的旋律；但在《波希米亞人》的世界里，魯?shù)婪蛑皇窃诩议T前與女生搭訕。

但是，關(guān)于歌劇演員的電影又怎樣？條件與因素不可同日而語。我的腦海里浮現(xiàn)多年前以及近年來我喜歡的電影。無論是《歌劇紅伶》（

Diva

）中名副其實(shí)的歌劇演員威爾赫梅尼婭·費(fèi)爾南德斯（Wilhelmenia Fernandez），或是《邂逅維納斯》（

Meeting Venus

）中由格倫·克洛斯（Glenn Close）扮演的歌劇明星，還有，上天保佑我，梅麗爾·斯特里普（Meryl Streep）在《跑調(diào)天后》（

Florence Foster Jenkins

）的開口發(fā)聲——那絕對(duì)不能算是歌唱！——任何人飾演歌劇演員，必須有充分準(zhǔn)備，上場的時(shí)候真的要“做秀”。

One of the things I used to find so charming about England was that, from Handel operas to Hollywood films, things usually got there only after they became popular somewhere else. Several months ago, I was reading through the London newspapers amused to see that every movie being reviewed that weekend had already been released in the US and Asia. A couple of them had even been showing on the plane.

What really caught my eye was

Bel Canto

, a hostage drama by Paul Weitz with Julianne Moore playing an opera singer who travels to Latin America to perform at a birthday party for a Japanese businessman just as the entire party is held captive by a group of guerilla fighters. I’d actually seen it on the plane and didn’t think it was very good, but I wasn’t braced for the critical pile-up.

上：格倫·克洛斯在《邂逅維納斯》中扮演歌劇明星

下：梅麗爾·斯特里普在《跑調(diào)天后》中開口發(fā)聲

右：出演《歌劇紅伶》的名副其實(shí)的歌劇演員威爾赫梅尼婭·費(fèi)爾南德斯

左：電影《美聲》海報(bào)

“Vacuous hostage drama,” said the

Guardian

.“Disappoints on every level,” warned the

Daily Mail

.“Bullet fire is a welcome relief,” claimed the

Daily Mirror

. “Accurately recreates the feeling of being held against one’s will,” wrote another critic, echoed by a colleague at another paper who wrote, “The only hostage was me wanting to get out of the cinema.”

First of all, I admit that I hadn’t really paid to see the film—I don’t think the airline will refund my money, in any case—and it didn’t exactly motivate me to run out and get Ann Patchett’s original novel.But still, I wouldn’t call it the worst movie in recent memory—or even that week. That would be giving it too much credit. There’s still a certain honor in being number one.

A couple of remarks stuck with me, though.“Buckets of schmaltz, political naivety and some truly horrendous lip-synching,” opened the review in the

Times

. “For such a great actress,” another critic wrote, “Moore’s a terrible mime.” The

Evening Standard

even suggested that, since Moore was hardly credible in the role, why not just cast soprano Renée Fleming (who dubbed Moore’s singing voice in the film).First of all, I’m positive the critic hadn’t actually seen Fleming act. I’ve seen her on Broadway,and even playing an opera singer she struggled with credibility. But this did point out one of my major problems with

Bel Canto

. When it came to representing a singer on film, neither the actress,nor the director nor the post-production crew had a clue about what they were doing.

＊＊＊

Not long afterward, I found myself hosting a screening of

The Red Violin

at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center with John Corigliano, the film’s Oscarwinning composer. Back when the film came out in 1999 I’d written a piece for the

Los Angeles Times

about the lengths to which director Fran?ois Girard had gone to make the film’s various characters look as if they were actually playing a violin.A couple of years before in

Shine

, director Scott Hicks had the actor Geoffrey Rush mimic the mentally disturbed pianist David Helfgott by sitting at a Yamaha Disklavier—a digital player piano—and painstakingly following the fingerings that the instrument reproduced. But since there’s no such thing has a “player violin”—and since

The Red Violin

had a broad range of characters—Girard had to pursue a number of low-tech strategies.To play a child prodigy, Girard found a 10-yearold violin student and taught him to act (easier, he realized, than trying to teach a child actor to play the violin). For a more mature virtuoso, he cast a retired violinist from the Montreal Symphony who—and this cannot be taken for granted—was able to

act

like a professional musician. A greater challenge for violinist Joshua Bell, who recorded all the violin playing in the film, was dubbing for Chinese actress Sylvia Chang. Her character was the daughter of a virtuoso—not a virtuoso herself—and the actress had only a few months to learn rudimentary violin technique. Bell had to play with genuine feeling using only limited performing skills. The hardest thing for a virtuoso to do is reign in his technique.

右頁：電影《紅色小提琴》海報(bào)

上：電影《邂逅維納斯》海報(bào)

下：電影《歌劇紅伶》DVD封套

The most problematic character for the director—and the film as a whole—was the fictional 19century English violinist Frederick Pope, a creature of Byronic excess and Paganini-like abandon. Jason Flemyng, the actor in the role, could only manage the first part.

Long gone were the days of

Humoresque

, Jean Negulesco’s 1946 film where a 22-year-old Isaac Stern could simply reach around actor John Garfield to finger the violin in Garfield’s hands. In

The Red Violin

, Corigliano fondly remembered a scene that Girard christened “the Octopus”: just beyond range of the camera, Flemyng had the violin tucked under his chin with his arms extended; Bell, standing to left, had one arm crossing Flemyng’s (hands on the fingerboard) while a British violinist to Flemyng’s right reached across from the other direction to bow the strings. Both violinists had their arms tied to Flemyng’s at the elbow, so that when either moved,the actor’s body followed.

＊＊＊

As complicated as this sounds, it’s all child’s play compared to playing a singer on camera. As a former trumpet player, I remember watching Denzel Washington play a jazz musician in Spike Lee’s

Mo’

Better Blues

wondering why he took so much care to get the fingerings right but not to breath or flex his facial muscles like an actual trumpeter.Singers don’t even have an instrument between themselves and the camera, but somehow that makes it all even more problematic. Even the best musicals often have trouble getting it right, let alone cinematic operas. Recently I came across Plácido Domingo’s memoir

My First Forty Years

, where he recalls starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s film of

La Traviata

, still the best example of the genre. Unlike standard filmmaking, where the music is inserted after the visuals are shot, opera films record and edit the musical performance first. Then singers mouth the words to the playback when the camera is rolling.

“I find this difficult, because if I really try to sing along with myself—really singing out—I cannot hear myself, and I end up out of synchronization with the recorded sound,” Domingo writes. “On the other hand, if I barely sing at all, in order to hear the soundtrack better, the visual element loses credibility: it is ridiculous to hear powerful sounds emerging from a voice while not seeing any signs of strain in the singer’s mouth or throat muscles.”

That got me to thinking. Opera films are one thing.Domingo’s comments notwithstanding, singers can get away with a lot on screen simply because it’s the performer singing and not the character. Those of us sitting in the audience may be hearing Puccini’s glorious melodies; within the world of

La Bohème

Rudolfo is merely chatting up a girl in the doorway.But films about opera singers? This is quite another thing entirely. Thinking about some of my old and recent favorites, whether it’s a real opera singer on screen like Wilhelmenia Fernandez in

Diva

or an actor playing one like Glenn Close in

Meeting Venus

or, God help us, Meryl Streep doing whatever she was doing in

Florence Foster Jenkins

—it can’t properly be called singing!—any actor playing an opera singer on screen had better be ready to put on a show.

右頁：電影《跑調(diào)天后》海報(bào)