Newsletter No. 447

4 447 • 19.11.2014 張艾嘉1974年《黃面老虎》中的角色 Sylvia Chang in Slaughter in San Francisco (1974) After her first three films, the investor said to her one day, ‘You do look OK in person, but strangely less so on film.’ Chang used to be a young woman with some measure of self-confidence. Upon hearing that she was brought down from heaven. ‘But I treated it like a glass of milk. I swallowed it,’ Chang said. She went into the dubbing studio not to learn dubbing but about how people acted. She discovered that what the actors were made to say in films was not what ordinary people said in real life. She then developed her own method of saying her lines with the most apposite words from her heart. ‘When the next opportunity presented itself, I was ready,’ Chang recalled with some satisfaction. Her next opportunities were famous films such as Victory (1975) and Posterity and Perplexities (1976) in which she cried authentic tears. ‘Most actors don’t cry for real for fear of messing up their noses and lips. My lips are thick already. A real cry would make them even thicker.’ Chang’s next challenge was not writing her marriage vows but writing for the screen. She returned to Taiwan in the early 1980s and became part of Taiwan’s New Wave Cinema, unwittingly her second failure. She showed a clip from That Day, on the Beach (1983), a classic by the late Edward Yang that preceded the recent blockbuster Gone Girl by three decades in its depiction of the alienation and violence of modern couples. Her avant- gardism was, however, treated by distributors with sarcasm and she was branded as hopelessly artsy without regard for the audience or the box office. Chang was distraught and decided to quit. Chang said, ‘After cooling off a little, I began writing again. This time it’s the screenplay for Passion (1986). I gave it all. Since then, success or failure did not mean anything to me anymore.’ The third clip she showed at the lecture was from her new film Calling All Angels . Her smugly childlike smile betrayed her fondness for this latest baby. From Slaughter in San Francisco (1974) to Calling All Angels (2014), the audience have been witness to how Sylvia Chang has developed in terms of film language, tempo, composition and mise-en-scène. Film is a storytelling art through audio-visual means. Sylvia Chang at the Shun Hing Lecture told her story successfully through her past failures. 張艾嘉再次放下身段，捲起袖子重新開始。「我靜下心來， 開始專心寫《最愛》（1986）的劇本。從那時起，我的生命 裏再也沒有成功和失敗兩個詞，只有好好把該做的做好， 僅此而已。」 講座上放映的第三段影片，是她的新片《念念》（2014）。 「其實不允許放的，可我請求片商，希望讓今天的朋友看到 我又一次轉變。他們答應了。」她的眼睛笑成了月牙兒，俏皮 的說。 從1974年的《黃面老虎》到2014年的《念念》，觀眾不僅 看到了張艾嘉的蛻變，更看到了電影在語言、節奏、畫面、 拍攝手法的發展。拍電影是用視聽講故事的藝術。眼前的 張艾嘉用自己的過去，成功地說着關於失敗的故事。 T here is nothing more instructive than listening to the stories of failure of celebrities. In a career that spans acting and singing, script-writing and directing, Sylvia Chang is a paragon of a movie-maker and a woman. Chang came to CUHK on 31 October to deliver a Shun Hing Lecture on Arts and Humanities entitled ‘Failure is the Nutrient of Success’. Chang started out in the early 1970s in the traditional female role of screaming and waiting for her hero to appear, which can be seen in the first clip she brought to the lecture. ‘At that time Hong Kong cinema was dominated by kung fu films and an actress’s role was not much. We waited for a whole day only to be told by the director to sit between two men, one being the male star, and go berserk when one starting to hit the other.’ 沒 有甚麼比聽成功的人談失敗更具吸引力。 張艾嘉 ， 一身光環，從演戲到唱歌，從編劇到導演都功成名 遂，是個全能的電影人和成功女性的典範。一年多前答應來 中大演講，思前想後，最後定下「失敗是成功的牛奶」為題 目，在觀眾前自揭一身成就背後的一身傷疤。 張艾嘉四十年的從藝生涯是以演戲開始的。10月31日的信 興藝文講座上，她放映了自己1974年初入行參演的電影片 段。熒幕上一臉稚氣的她，時而尖叫着躲避反派的追逐，時 而可憐巴巴地等待男主角的英雄救美。「那個時代香港幾 乎全是武打片。女明星可以有的角色，只能是個花瓶。坐在 片場等一天，到了最後半小時，喚你過去坐在中間，副導演 舉起兩個拳頭：『來，左手是男主角，右手是被打的人，你在 中間演不知所措！』」 拍了三部戲後，電影公司老闆有天跟她說：「真奇怪，你本 人看上去還可以，但你上鏡實在不怎麼好看！」「我本來是 個非常有信心的女孩子，但突然有人跟我講，我其實是一只 不太漂亮的花瓶。」 那是張艾嘉面對的人生第一個打擊。「但我沒有把它當作 失敗，只是把它當一杯牛奶，把它喝下去。」她走出錄影 棚，走進配音間。為的不只是配音，更是研究演員的表演。 她發現當時所有對白都設計得肉麻造作，不是日常說的話。 於是發展出自己一套方式，把對白說成發自內心的語言。 「當機會再來臨時，我的功課已經做好了。」張艾嘉接到了 《梅花》（1975）、《碧雲天》（1976）等好劇本，放膽用自 己的方式演。「我每一次都用真眼淚。很多人演哭都是假 哭，因為真哭不好看，鼻子會腫，嘴巴會變厚。我嘴巴已經 蠻厚，再一哭就更厚了！」 張艾嘉決心，要把電影當作一生的事業。在七八十年代，女 演員通常演到三十出頭，就必定結婚息影。為了讓事業得以 延續，她決定自己為自己寫戲。 八十年代初，張艾嘉回台灣和一幫新浪潮導演雄心勃勃打 算創文藝片新風，正當覺得前途一片光明之際，迎來的卻是 人生第二次重創。 她為觀眾播放了一段當年策劃兼主演的《海灘的一天》 （1983，導演為已故的 楊德昌 ）。「這部戲可以和最近的票 房冠軍《失蹤罪》比。也是懸疑片，也講夫妻的不信任和 現代婚姻的問題。我那個年代已經在拍這樣的故事。很可 惜，台灣的發行商絲毫不珍惜，還說，張艾嘉專門拍不賣錢 的戲，專門給自己朋友開戲，開觀眾不看的戲……。我很痛 心，決定辭職。」 了不起的失敗─ 張艾嘉談成功道上 的挫折 The Success of Failure: Sylvia Chang Shares Her Stories of Defeat on the Road to Victory