战火1946

Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan [Italy 1946] surpasses his Open City [Italy 1945] in breadth of vision and significance. Open City was still a drama; Paisan is an epic, comparable only to [The Battleship] Potemkin [USSR 1925, dir. Sergei Eisenstein], though profoundly different from it.

This new Italian film consists of six real-life episodes which take place during the Italian Campaign. They seem entirely unconnected, except for the fact that their succession corresponds to the advance of the Allied armies. The first episode records the adventures of an American patrol immediately after the landing in Sicily. Led by an Italian peasant girl, the Americans explore a ruined castle—a nocturnal reconnaissance which culminates in a magnificent conversation between the girl and one of the soldiers. But this bilingual idyll does not last long. A few Germans emerg- ing from nowhere shoot the soldier and then kill the girl for having fired at them. When, alarmed by the shooting, the rest of the Americans return, they take it for granted that the girl has lured them into a trap, and her simple-hearted sacrifice passes unnoticed.

The second episode, in Naples, features a street urchin and a Military Policeman—an American Negro who is thoroughly drunk. The boy, set on stealing the Negro’s shoes, guides him to a rubble heap among the ruins, where his prospective victim raves about the hero reception prepared for him in New York and his home town. But the word “home” provokes a sudden shift of moods in him. He says he will not go home; and in a state of despondency he falls asleep, an easy prey for the boy. Shortly later, the Negro captures the thief and makes him return the shoes. The boy is a war orphan living in a cave crammed with ragged women and children. Overwhelmed by pity, the Negro leaves the shoes behind in the cave. Colorful street incidents round out the brilliant thumbnail sketches of these two stray creatures. The scene in the marionette theatre in which the frantic Negro climbs the miniature stage to defend a Moor is a veritable gem sparkling with Quixotic spirit.

The subsequent Roman episode is a somewhat literary love story, with a touch of Maupassant. Six months after the fall of Rome a drunken Ameri- can soldier follows a prostitute to her room. He is no drunkard but a sensi- tive boy appalled by the ever-increasing corruption around him. Instead of simply sleeping with the girl, he tells her about Francesca, the first girl he met on entering Rome on the day of liberation. A flashback, rich in charming details, renders their innocent flirtation and its premature end. Why did you never go back, asks the prostitute. He mutters that he could not find the house. The prostitute, trembling, describes it. He dozes off, vaguely realizing her identity. Next day, she despairingly waits for him, while he himself, on the point of leaving, tears up the slip of paper with her address. He mounts a truck, and the armies move on.

The fourth episode shows the Allies in the outskirts of Florence, pre- paring the last assault on the city, in which the Partisans are already at grips with the Germans and Fascists. An American nurse, eager to join her Florentine lover of prewar days, learns that he is “Lupo,” the legendary Partisan leader. The whole is a pictorial report on what happens to her and an Italian friend as they slip through the front lines into the Partisan-held sector of Florence. They walk past two British officers, portrayed in all their languid fastidiousness; they pass along the corridors of the abandoned Uffizi, catching a glimpse of three German soldiers who slowly advance deep down on the street. When they finally reach a bullet-swept street corner, one of the few Partisans defending this position is fatally wounded. His comrades liquidate two Fascists on the spot. Before dying in the arms of the nurse, the wounded Partisan says that Lupo has been killed that very morning. “God,” says the nurse.

In the fifth episode three American chaplains in search of shelter enter a remote Franciscan monastery in the Apennines and are accommodated there for the night. The naive unworldliness of the monks is characterized in scenes born out of respect and highlighted by an imperceptible smile. No sooner do the monks find out that one of their guests is a Protestant and the other a Jew than they involve the Catholic chaplain in a sort of religious disputation. Thesis stands against thesis: the worried monks insist that those two lost souls must be saved, while their urbane coreligionist believes them able to attain a state of grace outside the Church. This duel in pious dialectics is the more exquisite since battles are raging in the neighborhood. The end comes as a surprise. The zealous monks impose a fast on themselves for the sake of the Jew and the Protestant, and the Catholic chaplain praises their humility, instead of reaffirming his stand on tolerance. It is a strange conclusion, somewhat reminiscent of the spiritual note in Silone’s novels.1

The last episode is a terrible nightmare unfolding in the marshes of the Po Valley, where flat land and sky fuse into a monotonous universe. A small group of Italian Partisans, British flyers, and American O.S.S. agents engage in a hopeless combat action behind the enemy lines. You do not see the Germans at first; you see only the corpse of a Partisan floating across the water. The reeds are filled with threats; unknown dangers lurk around the lonely house which in its isolation deepens the impression of monotony. Then, after an eternity of unbearable suspense, the massacre takes its course. The people in the house are killed indiscriminately, except for a little child who, outside the house, screams and screams, deserted by the dead on the ground. The Partisans, bound hand and foot, are thrown into the water. The horrified English and American prisoners see them, one by one, disappear, unable to stop the clockwork process. Another witness is left: the Partisan leader hanging behind the prisoners.

“This happened in the winter of 1944,” a commentator says at the very end. “A few weeks later, spring came to Italy and the war in Europe was declared over.”

All these episodes relate the experiences of ordinary people in a world which tends to thwart their noblest efforts. The dead Sicilian girl is cal- lously slandered by those who should have honored her; Francesca, the fresh Roman girl, turns prostitute, and her decent lover sinks into emo- tional inertia. It is the war which dooms them. Yet it is not always the war: in the case of the Negro, his fate results from circumstances entirely unconnected with events in Italy.

What endears these people to us is their inborn dignity. They have dignity in the same way that they breathe or eat. Throughout the film, humanity appears as a quality of man’s nature, as something that exists in him independently of his ideals and creeds. Rossellini’s Partisans never refer to their political convictions; rather, they fight and die in a matter-of- fact way, because they are as they are. And the Negro is simply a humane creature, filled with compassion, love of music, and Quixotic reveries.

This emphasis on the reality of good nature is coupled with a marked indifference to ideas. Of course, the Nazis appear as hateful, but it seems they are hated only for their acts of savagery and their vulgar conduct. All judgments are concerned with human dignity, and what goes beyond it is completely omitted. There is in the whole film not a single verbal statement against Fascist rule, nor any message in favor of democracy, let alone a social revolution. And the surface impression, that Paisan advo- cates pacifism, must be dismissed also, for it is scarcely compatible with the experience of the Catholic chaplain, to whom the war has been a great lesson in tolerance. This deliberate disregard of all “causes,” including that of humanity, can be explained only by a profound skepticism about their effects. Even the most praiseworthy cause, Paisan implies, is bound to entail fanaticism, corruption, and misery, thus interfering with the free flow of a good and meaningful life. Significantly, the Sicilian peasants are suspicious of American liberators and German invaders alike; and the Roman episode bears out their suspicions by highlighting the demoraliza- tion wrought upon the liberated in less than six months.

The attitude behind Paisan is in keeping with the film’s episodic struc- ture. In stringing together six separate episodes, Rossellini manifests his belief in the independence of human dignity from any overarching idea. If humanity materialized only under the guidance of an idea, then a single, well-composed story might suggest itself to express the latter’s significance (viz. Potemkin). But humanity is here part and parcel of reality and there- fore must be traced in various places. The six isolated episodes indicate that streaks of it are found everywhere.

Since Paisan confines itself to real-life experiences, its documentary style is most adequate. The style, cultivated by D.W. Griffith, Flaherty, and the Russian film directors, is genuinely cinematic, for it grows out of the urge, inherent in the camera, to explore the world of facts. Like Eisenstein or Flaherty, Rossellini goes the limit in capturing reality. He shoots on location and prefers laymen to professional actors. And instead of working from an elaborate script, with each detail thought out in advance, he lets himself be inspired by the unforeseeable situations that arise in the process of filming.

These techniques become virtues because of Rossellini’s infatuation with reality and his gift for translating its every manifestation into cin- ematic terms. He masters horror scenes no less expertly than moments of tenderness, and the confused street crowd is as near to him as is the abandoned individual in it. His camera angles and twists of action owe their existence to sparks of intuition ignited by the closest touch with the given material. And directed by him, most people play themselves without seeming to play at all. To be sure, Paisan has its weak spots: parts of the Sicilian episode are shot in slapdash fashion; the Roman love story is too much of a story; the nurse and her companion in the Florentine episode are strangely flat; and the Catholic chaplain is not entirely true to type. But these occasional lapses amount to little within a film which sets a new pattern in documentary treatment. Its wonderful freshness results from Rossellini’s unflinching directness in formulating his particular notion of humanity. He knows what he wants to say and says it as simply as possible.

Are examples needed? Far from capitalizing, after the manner of The Last Chance [USA 1945, dir. Leopold Lindtberg], on bilingual dialogue to sell the idea of international solidarity, Paisan presents the mingling of lan- guages in wartime Italy without any purpose. In the opening episode, the conversation between the Sicilian girl and the American soldier in charge of her is a linguistic dabbling which, born out of the latter’s boredom and loneliness, does not lead up to anything. Yet precisely by recording their pointless attempts at mutual understanding with infinite care, Rossellini manages to move and fascinate us. For in the process these two people, left speechless by their mother tongues, increasingly reveal what as a rule is buried under conventional phrases.

Each episode abounds in examples. When the drunken G.I. tells the Roman prostitute about his yearning for Francesca, he is seen lying on the couch, with his legs apart in the foreground—a shot which renders his physical disgust and moral disillusionment to perfection. Though long shots are ordinarily less communicative than close shots, Rossellini draws heavily on them in the last episode to picture the marshes. He does so on purpose, for these shots not only convey the impression of desolate monotony, but, through their very flatness, they make the ensuing mas- sacre seem more dreadful. A model of artistic intelligence are the street scenes in the Neapolitan episode. First it is as if these loosely connected shots of performing jugglers, ragged natives, blackmarketing children, and idling G.I.’s were inserted only in the interest of local color. Shortly, however, it becomes evident that they also serve to characterize the Negro. As he reemerges from the marionette theatre, his companion, the wily boy who does not want to lose him, begins to play a harmonica; and, enticed by these heavenly sounds, the Negro follows the little Pied Piper through streets teeming with the crowds and diversions that have already been impressed upon us. So we are all the more struck by the impact of the trickling harmonica music on the Negro.

This last example well illustrates the way Rossellini organizes his mate- rial. There is a veritable gulf between his editing style and the “montage” methods used in Potemkin and other early Soviet films. For Rossellini deliberately turns his back on ideas, while the Russian film directors aim exclusively at driving home a message. Paisan deals with the human assets of ordinary people; Eisenstein’s Potemkin shows ordinary people wedded to the cause of revolution. All editing devices in the Eisenstein film are calculated not only to render a historic uprising, but to render it in the light of Marxist doctrine. In Potemkin, the priest’s face, besides being his face, stands for Tsarist oppression, and the sailors are made to appear as the vanguard of the proletariat. Nothing of that kind occurs in the Italian film. On the contrary, Rossellini so composes his narrative that we never feel challenged to seek symbolic meanings in it. Such instances of oppres- sion or humanity as Paisan offers are strictly individual facts which do not admit of generalization. Rossellini patiently observes where Eisen- stein ardently constructs. This accounts for the thrill of a few shots which represent border cases. I am thinking in particular of the documentary shot of the three German soldiers in the Florentine episode. Reminiscent, perhaps deliberately so, of similar shots in official Nazi documentaries, it is inserted in such a manner that it affects us as a true revelation of German militarism. The allusiveness of this shot is sufficiently strong to drive us beyond the bounds of immediate reality, and yet too unobtrusive to make us lose contact with it.

Paisan is all the more amazing as it defies the traditional patterns of film making in Italy. The Italian prewar screen was crowded with historical extravaganzas and beautifully photographed dramas that displayed inflated passions before decorative settings—a long progression of glossy products, led by d’Annunzio’s world-famous Cabiria, of 1914. Taking advantage of their audience’s love for theatrics, these films reflected both the glitter and the hollowness of the regime under which they flourished. . . . It is a far cry from d’Annunzio to Rossellini, from the spectacular to the real. The sudden emergence of such a film as Paisan indicates that many Italians actually loathe the grand-style manner of the past and all that it implied in allegiances and sham beliefs. They have come to realize the futility of Mussolini’s conquests and they seem now determined to do without any messages and missions—at least for the moment.

And this moment is a precarious one for the Italians. Fascist rule has ended, the new government is weak, and the country resounds with inter- nal strife. During this interregnum the Italians might feel completely lost, were it not for a compact cultural heritage which protects them from dis- integration. Theirs is an articulate sense of art and a tested way of putting up with the tragedies common to mortals. And under the undiminishing spell of custom they knowingly enjoy the rites of love making and the gratifications of family life. No doubt, the Church has played its part in shaping and civilizing these people throughout the ages. That they are aware of it perhaps accounts for the surprise ending of the Monastery episode in Paisan—that scene in which the American chaplain bows to the religious ardor of the Italian monks, thus disavowing what he has said about the inclusiveness of true tolerance shortly before. His deliber- ate inconsistency can be considered a tribute to Italian Catholicism and its humanizing effects.

Italian everyday life, then, is rich in meaningful outlets for all imagin- able needs and desires. So the Italians do not sink into a vacuum when they refuse, as they are now doing, to let themselves be possessed with ideas. Even without ideas they still have much to rely upon. And since their kind of existence, mellow and sweet as it is, has long since become second nature to them—something that seems to them as natural as the blue sky or the air they breathe—they may well believe that their repudiation of ideas relieves their lives of excess baggage. What remains, in their opinion, is humanity, pure and simple. And in their case, as Paisan demonstrates, humanity assumes all the traits of self-sufficient reality.

This is a mirage, though, which may appear as more than a mirage only at a very particular moment, such as the Italians are now going through. Paisan is delusive in that it virtually makes the triumph of humanity dependent on a world released from the strain of ideas, or “causes.” We cannot feel this way. As matters stand, we know humanity would be irre- trievably bogged down if it were unsustained by the ideas mankind breeds in desperate attempts to improve its lot. Whatever their consequences, they hold out a promise to us. Rossellini’s film dismisses the audience without any such promise. But this does not invalidate its peculiar greatness. And precisely in these postwar years with their tangle of oblique slogans and propaganda artifices, Paisan comes to us as a revelation of the steady flow of humanity beneath the turmoil of sheer ideology. So, if Paisan does not kindle hopes, yet it reassures us of the omnipresence of their sources.

原文出处：Siegfried Kracauer's American Writings Essays on Film and Popular Culture

Paisan (1948) P156

1. 像一篇篇短篇小说，没有形容词，只有动词和名词的那种。

2. 虚构和非虚构镜头的无缝衔接，真实的战争感。

3. 英语，意大利语，两种语言的隔阂和互通。

4. 六篇故事的主旨：每个人都认为自己是正确的。

5. 故事梗概：一. 西西里。将意大利女人当成敌人是错的。二. 那不勒斯。我们美国人富裕善良。美国人炸死了孩子的爸爸妈妈。 三. 罗马。你们女孩全变了。纯真的姑娘靠自己抵御饥饿，她们是好姑娘。四. 佛罗伦萨。狂奔。乌菲齐，雕塑，废墟。在将死之人口中听到爱人的死讯。五. 哥特线。五百年的修道院。派发好时巧克力和罐头的美国神父，不同教派。每个人都以为自己走在正确的道路上。（自认为的）美好心灵必然获得平静。六. 北部湖区。意大利游击队+美国士兵+英国空军，被杀，被推进水里。德国人说，建千年政权先得毁灭一切。1944年冬天。来年春天战争结束。

看过再多的战争史诗和煽情电影，也会被罗伯托•罗西里尼的《战火》打动。事实上，你看的关于战争的浓墨重彩的宏大叙事越多，越会被《战火》这样的电影打动。 因为《战火》作为意大利新现实主义电影的扛鼎之作，拍的真实客观，更在平实中蕴含深刻的洞见和宽阔的情怀。 电影摄于1946年，用六个故事刻画1943-44年二战胜利前后的意大利社会全景。此时美军登陆意大利，与游击队一道在半岛上与德军和意大利法西斯展开缠斗。电影并不像罗西里尼前一部作品《罗马，不设防的城市》一样反映正义与邪恶力量之间的对决，而是聚焦于解放者（美军）和被解放者（意大利人民）之间的复杂关系，并在这种特殊历史背景形成文化和宗教的冲突中，揭示人性深处的善良微光。 这种微光就好像开篇故事里美国兵John手中的打火机在黑暗中发出的微弱光线。他与素不相识、语言不通的意大利女孩坐在黑暗里试图交流，并点亮打火机试图让女孩看到他的妈妈和姐姐的照片，结果他手中的微光招致德国兵的一粒子弹，他与女孩最后都死于德国兵枪下。 John的同伴找到了他，看着他的尸体，他们误以为他是被意大利女孩枪杀，狠狠地骂了一句“这个意大利婊子！” “这个意大利婊子”这句诅咒，突然将这个故事的立意提升到新的高度 --- 它不再只是刻画人性中的善良如何被战争机器碾压，它揭示的是解放者与被解放者之间的隔阂和阻断。 这种隔阂和阻断可以是关于爱情的。电影中美国大兵和意大利妓女的故事，本来是一个艰困时局逼良为娼的老套情节，但却因那种阴差阳错的戏剧安排而成为一个令人叹惋的凄美爱情故事。 隔阂和阻断也可能是关于宗教的。电影里修道院的故事直指宗教教派之间的冲突。这个传统封闭的天主教修道院，勉强地幸存于战火之下，修士们只能用信仰对付饥饿。这时三名美国军队牧师来了，带来了食物和巧克力，也带来异教（新教、犹太教）给他们造成的恐慌。 修士们慌慌张张地奔走通报：修道院里来了新教和犹太教牧师！这一幕不禁让人莞尔。最后美军牧师在晚餐上站起来，郑重地感谢修道士，也呼吁教派之间的宽容。这时电影的博爱主旨可以说是和盘托出。 当然解放者与被解放者之间的隔阂和阻断也不一定那么深刻，也可以朴素而生动。“偷鞋”这个故事讲述美国大兵对偷他鞋子的意大利孤儿的同情，但最动人的是喝醉了的他坐在废墟上跟孤儿的一段对话。他幻想着回到花花世界的美国，作为英雄拥有那里的一切：“看！下面是曼哈顿的高楼！他们都是我的，因为我，是一名英雄！” 可是即使是喝醉了的大兵，也没能一路幻想下去，一个醒悟打断了他：这一切都不是真的，“不，我不想回去，因为我的家只是贫民窟而已”。 美国兵的这个醒悟完美解释了他后面给予意大利孤儿的同情，因为他在孤儿经历的穷困之中，看到了自己。 这就是《战火》的动人之处：生活并不是电影，但罗西里尼的电影用不事声张的镜头和大量非专业演员，无限逼近了生活的真实。他的理性和克制，让电影出奇的有力；而他在平实叙事里寄托的思辨，又让电影获得了真实之上更强的力量。 值得留意的是，电影中“偷鞋”桥段里的美国兵，不停地管身边的意大利孤儿叫Paisa，意大利语里意思是“同胞，同乡”。而《战火》的片名原文正是Paisan，里面其实就寄托了罗西里尼对意大利同胞的一份情结。 所以我私下里倒觉得，《战火》的片名应该翻译成《老乡》才更地道更准确。

《战火》拍摄于《罗马，不设防的城市》第二年，却因为后者的成功而赢得了更充沛的拍摄资金，导演罗西里尼也在更宽松的拍摄环境下得以大展拳脚。如果说《罗马，不设防的城市》开辟了一类全新的电影美学，《战火》则实现了在电影语言和叙事手法上的全面探索。

《战火》由6个相互独立的段落构成，各个段落由截然不同的人物谱写，既有美国大兵和意大利当地的游击队员，也有平凡的百姓和孩子，还有神甫与妓女。6个段落之间唯一的关系，是故事发生的地理位置，从第一个故事讲述的美军在西西里登录，逐个往北追溯，直至第六个故事里，依然在纳粹控制下的意大利北部地区，游击队员被德国纳粹屠杀。

这6个互不关联的故事，共同组成了1943-1944年反法西斯战斗胜利前夕意大利全境的生动写真，迎面而来的真实人物与戏剧化的虚构互为关照，当年真实的历史场地与电影中的拍摄背景也实现了无缝交融。在安德烈·巴赞看来，《战火》之于欧洲电影，好比《公民凯恩》之于好莱坞，两者都在当时对各自的电影技巧做出了突破性的开拓，而且两者的开拓都直接指向巴赞始终强调的电影本性——真实。在此之前，《罗马，不设防的城市》已经让电影在捕捉真实上大大向前迈进了一步，而《战火》则更为完美地融合了传统意义上剧情片与纪录片的界限，片中的每个人物都可以被认为是在“表演”，但也都令人下意识地承认，他们演绎的正是真实。

在《战火》上映之初，不少人把它定性为一部宣传美军解放意大利的电影，事实上罗西里尼的诉求远不在此，《战火》也不应被视作一部传统战争片。在6个故事的设置上，除了地理上明显的由南往北推进，罗西里尼赋予了它们更多内涵与深意。

完整地看待《战火》，会发现这6个故事组成了一个层次分明的闭环：第一个故事正面描写了美军在西西里的登录；第二和第三个故事则是美军与意大利当地平民间发生的间歇性关联；在第四和第五个故事中，美军士兵已经从台前隐退消失，主角变成了清一色的平民百姓；而在第六个故事中，士兵重新成为主角，盟军却成为了被杀死的一方。整部影片的情绪基调，也从最初的喜，转入略显尴尬的诙谐，再转入令人唏嘘，直至最终生悲。

在这一过程中，伴随美军士兵始终的，是与当地居民语言的隔阂，以及其所必然引致的交流沟通的障碍，正是这些隔阂与障碍，催生了越来越强烈的唏嘘和悲怆气息。罗西里尼并未简单的赞美或是歌颂，而是更加敏锐地捕捉到了意大利战后重建期间与美国的沟通交流时可能发生的种种问题。这或许是由于罗西里尼自己的左翼政治立场所决定，在后来的50年代，他拍摄了大量“反思资产阶级腐朽生活方式”的电影。