Two Gus Van Sant’s 1990s pictures about psychopaths, between which is sandwiched his mainstream breakthrough and awards magnet GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997). TO DIE FOR is about a career-driven, small-town reporter’s delusional, murderous ploy to get rid of her hubby, who tries to bog her down with child-bearing, it is a soap opera starring a scrumptious Nicole Kidman in her first “major” role that proves she is not just a pretty face and a gorgeous fashion plate.
Suzanne Stone (Kidman) is a pluperfect specimen of lusciousness and blond ambition, it is easy to see why Larry Maretto (a blandly benevolent Dillon), an Italian-American restauranteur, is swept off his feet by her. However, the film doesn’t elaborate on why Suzanne decides to get hitched. Because Larry is so irresistibly good-looking or she simply marries for financial stability? Neither can convince audience such is the case. It soon becomes clear that it is a wrong move on her part, which speaks volume of her naivety and conformity to the societal dictates at large. In hindsight, the best advice the film can confer to a careen woman is that never walk down the aisle hastily.
Suzanne’s spotlight-craving impulse bares its teeth right away in the onset of their ill-fated marriage, during the honeymoon, the film suggests that there is no moral boundary in her pursuit of ascendancy (George Segal is spot on in a lascivious cameo), which guarantees that this glamour puss is totally unfit for the role of a traditional wife. Soon by hexing and manipulating three impressionable high schoolers, including putting out with Jimmy (Phoenix, still possessing a sharp jawline in his bizarre adolescent phase peppered by ennui and hormones, makes for a commensurable foil in the folie à deux), Suzanne hatches a rather facile plan to getting Larry out of her way and not for one second, dreads its grave consequences. Basking in the media circus in the wake of Larry’s death, Suzanne finally becomes the cynosure she craves and she enjoys every minute of it, but the world is far much sinister than she thinks, a tit for tat awaits her just when she believes she can get away with murder by selling Jimmy down the river, a surprising cameo from Cronenberg is the icing on the cake.
TO DIE FOR is a pitch-black comedy, and its soapy elements are vivaciously elevated by Kidman’s high-wire acting and needle-point nicety. Suzanne is a one-track-minded blondie planning her amoral affairs through a pair of rose-colored glasses, oblivious of any complications. On paper, the character sounds fictitious and shallow, but Kidman resists from cheapening or mocking Suzanne’s devotion that someday her ship will come in, and her deliriously watchable performance is preciously devoid of histrionics, it is another classic case of the so-called American dream going down the toilet.
The psychopath in PSYCHO, a nearly shot-for-shot, full color remake of Hitchcock’s deathless PSYCHO (1960), is the mommy’s boy Norman Bates, embodied by Vince Vaughn before his towering physique balloons, with enough mugging, emoting and loping, but cannot hold a candle to Anthony Perkins’s tic-twinged perversion and twisted vulnerability. The awful truth is, nothing in this remake can outsmart its sacrosanct predecessor (although one could argue that Julianne Moore exerts herself with more resolution in Lila Crane than Vera Miles in Hitch’s picture). So the best way to watch Van Sant’s film is to remember the proverbial saying “imitation is the sincere form of flattery”, it is a one-off, and quite costly experiment from Hollywood’s everlasting refashioning factory, a redux ritualistically slavish to the original, more invested in calibrating Hitchcock’s superb techniques (that twirling shot originated from a vertical close-up of a lifeless Marion’s eyeball is a master stroke of camera choreography and movement) than putting a new spin on the sensational material.
Opening with a complete traveling shot panning and zooming over the city of Phoenix into Marion Crane’s hotel room, the remake presents Van Sant’s upmost veneration to Hitchcock, a feat the latter couldn’t accomplish at his time, smack dab in the beginning. Anne Heche’s pixie-cut Marion Crane is unfairly bad-mouthed for retreading the path of an already iconic role from Janet Leigh. Examined or ogled by the omnipresent, belittling, lecherous male gaze, her Marion shows enough guarded resilience to solider on, her initial sympathy towards a faux-innocent Norman is also marked by little yellow flags. Such assignment is always a mug’s game but Heche shouldn’t be singled out for the film’s own intrinsic defect, it only betrays the society’s unrelieved sexism because the weakest link is Vaugh, who ought to be under the flaks for his less than satisfactory mimicry and grandstanding.
Elsewhere, Van Sant’s PSYCHO rehashes Bernard Herrmann’s lush, suspenseful original score boldly if occasionally stridently, and Saul Bass’s geometrically innovative title sequences is always a treat for sore eyes. Also, Van Sant secretively interleaves several surreal snapshots into the two famous murder scenes, what does one see right before their life is unexpectedly snuffed out? Van Sant reveals his answers in blink-and-you-miss-it flourishes.
Although both pictures stand relatively low on the rung among Van Sant’s oeuvre - TO DIE FOR is regarded chiefly as a Kidman vehicle of transmogrification while PSYCHO denotes the nadir of his career (let not forget THE SEA OF TREES, 2015 though) - they are scintillating character studies of aberrant, certifiable souls, never too dull even for a finicky viewer.
referential entries: Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960, 9.2/10); Gus Van Sant’s GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997, 8.1/10), RESTLESS (2011, 6.8/10).
这种说法适合于他的大部分影片，但《精神病人》却不是如此。这部影片使用了倒叙的一贯风格，一次次让情节从观众的猜测中自然转变。从凶手案发生，到最终真相揭露，导演一次又一次让人震惊不已。而那个终于真相大白的结尾简直让人无法相信，但仔细想想却又几乎完美——为了不影响没看过片子的同学，此处不剧透。
Marion（珍妮特·利JanetLeigh饰）在亚利桑那州凤凰城上班，每天中午都急匆匆地与男友幽会，然而男友却因为推说没钱给前妻赡养费而迟迟不肯离婚。这天Marion要替老板存进4万美元进银行，一时冲动之下她决定捐款潜逃。沿途她换车后又遇下雨，身心备受煎熬的她见到路边有一家贝兹汽车旅馆，便决定留下过夜。
贝兹汽车旅馆的老板Norman（安东尼·博金斯AnthonyPerkins饰）是个个性良善的青年，只是面对房间中的母亲十分敬畏。Marion只想赶紧度过今晚，然而在她淋浴时被恐怖杀害。
Marion的妹妹Lila（维拉·迈尔斯VeraMiles饰）一路追踪失踪的姐姐过来，也住进了贝兹汽车旅馆，私家侦探Milton则帮助Lila将目标锁定在Norman身上。一切都似乎与Norman的母亲有关，那控制着儿子的母亲，到底是何方神圣？
确实，我不得不说非常糟糕。选角，就拿男主角来说，一个布光这么严谨考究并且极为重要的片子，一个大量的不同种布光集中在男主角面部来凸显人物性格和暗示剧情的片子--我截了好几张图来证明这个好像出自三流同性酒吧里面边跳脱衣舞边舔嘴唇吸引顾客为自己的背带上夹一张钞票的面孔（真不是我丑化，文斯沃森饱满富有肉感的嘴唇、唇周、和下巴都只能导向这种气质）是多么的不适合这个角色。
然后再说最重要的影史里程碑级别的浴缸戏剪辑，很多影评认为格斯范桑特的处理是“逐帧式翻拍”，然而不是，就...完全不是。这场戏的剪辑和希区柯克出入大到不想吐槽又不得不吐槽，举例几个极为影响观感的地方1，凶手打开浴帘后，和他刺杀女主之前，该片竟然又三次给出了极短的凶手镜头，仅仅是为了实现快速狂乱的剪辑吧，原版在此处用了不同景别跳切被害者面部的镜头来烘托氛围，并不描绘凶手，并不一味地剪剪剪好吗...2，这场戏凶手在原片完全逆光只留轮廓，非常神秘，而在本片一出场像一个化妆拙劣的变态...45分36秒竟然能看到凶手的面部妆容了都（就是涂黑了）
3，为什么在凶杀结束后，加了一组在此处略长的俯拍全裸镜头，原片自从女主被袭击之后就没有再展现过其完整身体，这个镜头效果差到引人发笑；
4，紧张的背景音乐被无节制滥用，原片在女主被杀后有足够长的安静，甚至可以说是很突然地陷入完全的安静，所以随后镜头落到那笔钱上，给观众的感觉是一波未平，新的悬念又随即翻涌而来的感觉，真的稍微对比一下就知道格斯范桑特的处理...一言难尽，而且原片大量镜头是失焦、躯体的部分在镜头边缘、或者由边缘滑出取景范围...不像本片拍得这么端端庄庄，一股戏味儿。...我只能说希区柯克的肩膀确实不好踩也不是这么踩的吧。谁叫惊魂记已经增之一分则少之一分则。
这部《98惊魂记》剧本和台词和原版几乎是一模一样的，当然分镜机位也是大致相同，于是很多人说是一次原封不动的翻拍之作，但是我觉得并没有这么简单。
以下谈一些本人发现并且可以理解的不同之处：首先是在制片公司出现的片头，两者均是环球出品（原版还有派拉蒙），原版在此处并未配加配乐，但是98版的则先声夺人的直接在片头增加了《惊魂记》的经典配乐，这是首要的一处不同，因为格斯范桑特在整部影片的多处都额外增加了这个配乐，比如女主玛丽拿到客户的现金提出要回家时、侦探发现线索打电话通知时等等，一方面伯纳德赫尔曼所创造的配乐太过于经典，使看过原版的人一听就能激发出《惊魂记》紧张惊悚感觉，提前使观众寻找回忆起曾经看原版的感觉，从而更好的进入氛围，另一方面格斯范桑特在片中额外增加的地方也是情节相对紧张的时刻，至少是让熟知原版的范桑特感到紧张的地方，以及片尾心理医生解说时同样也加入了新的配乐。
过完字幕片段，到了影片的第一个镜头，原版是采用的“淡出”的影视特效来做开场，而98版的采用的则是“分屏结合”的特效，这点不分好坏，大概是范桑特对于电影的时代性来言，采用“分屏”的特效更具进步性的意义，因为经常看老片的人知道，淡入淡出是较早的电影技巧转场特效了，因为当时电影特效的匮乏，希区柯克在原版技巧转场中几乎使用的都是“叠印”手法。
然后紧接着的就是胖希影迷众所周知的那个因为当时摄影技术的原因而未实现的长镜头了，这里范桑特用长镜头拍摄只能说是做了影迷粉丝的本分，无论是谁都会选择替偶像实现当时的意愿。
接下来的不同点其实很多，比如演员的位置不同，穿着不同，机位的角度不同，甚至在两位主角谈话时98版里加入了来自隔壁的熟女叫床声，当然这些不同点不得理解，暂且不谈（包括后面剧情类似的不同点）。
分别前对话的这场戏，明显的不同一处是98版的加入了一只苍蝇的特写镜头，肤浅理解是为了表现女主对现状的厌恶，或是为了达到首尾呼应的效果？（片尾诺曼在监狱上手部飞来一只苍蝇）另外是对这场对话的精简，其实范桑特对情节的删减不仅这一处，还有莱拉和山姆与警长的第一次对话，甚至直接删掉了与警长的第二次会面，至于这些情节是否真的是删去更为精简，恐怕只有让两波人分别观看两部电影之后才能做出比较吧，而范桑特的删减也有可能是为了节省篇幅增加其他细节的原因？这点不得而知。
在老板带着客户来公司与玛丽对话的戏的处理上，相对于原版来说，98版的把这场戏在分镜上做了剪切，原版是一个长镜头交代，98版的切为四个较为简单的正反打，不能断定这里范桑特处理的更高级，但至少可以看出对各个人物当然的处境状态体现的更为全面，同样也不止这一处，在莱拉第一次去找山姆时的对话戏也是做了同样的处理，效果自然同上。
当然相对于在分镜上的改动，范桑特做的更多的是对细节的改变或是说增多。比如诺曼偷看玛丽换衣服时打飞机、诺曼处理尸体时染了一手血去洗时滴了一滴在洗漱池又擦掉、诺曼拿了报纸扔进车内里时差点要打开、莱拉和山姆登记时莱拉与诺曼互抛媚眼等等，这些情节的增加用意较为明显，多是为了叙事，使观众更容易理解剧情，还有最后诺曼母亲的尸体转过身后的情节，98版比原版对诺曼母亲尸体的特写增多了两次，对山姆与诺曼的格斗戏也加长，这也很明显是为了增强惊悚气氛，至于这些的增加是否真的有必要，仁者见仁，智者见智吧。当然范桑特也做出了一些不如前者的改动，不严重的如警察在对面观察玛丽换车的一场戏，胖希影迷都知道在这场戏的剪辑处理上，胖希很好的调动了观众的心理参与性，在警察面前飞驰而过的汽车在原版的剪辑上是未完全出画即做剪切，由观众内心填补车辆出画，而98版的剪辑则是汽车完全出画。比较严重的是诺曼最后上楼抱母亲时，原版中安东尼博金斯的表演非常出色，步伐委婉，腰臀部摆动的像个女性，其实这个时候胖希已经告诉观众诺曼的真实身份了，而98版中演员则完全失去了这一细节，当然演员是一方面，不太像是范桑特有意指导过的现象。
诚然，以上所说的所有不同之处并无实质性的意义，而接下来要讨论的是98版与原版最为不同的一处，那就是最经典的浴室杀人之戏。
这场戏的经典优秀之处自然不必多说，被众多教科书奉为几乎是金科玉律，更是被无数影迷影评人一谈起就是津津乐道，而范桑特却在如此“完美”的剪辑上做了一些改变，先不说好坏，光是这种勇气就让人佩服，这种精神也是值得赞扬的。对于这场戏，由于这组镜头之多、之短、机位之复杂，对其的改动大致认为有这三种，一是将玛丽被吓张大的嘴由固定镜头变为急推镜头，二是加入了两个天空飘云的镜头，三是加入了一个玛丽的瞳孔放大的特写。其中一与三的改变并未特别突出，由固定变为急推无非是想增强镜头的表现力，而增加瞳孔特写的镜头虽是一次表现蒙太奇的运用，但由于后面的镜头也是由玛丽的瞳孔特写拉出，所以即使增加一个特写可以更有表现力但难免很难超出胖希的原有效果。但是第二个加入云的镜头，我认为是一次非常惊喜的表现蒙太奇的运用，表现出一种“天有不测风云”之意，效果令人相当的震撼。相当的范桑特在后面侦探被杀时以同样的方法加入美女和野牛的镜头，无奈学识浅显不能揣摩出导演之用意，不过同样的令我产生了无比惊艳的效果。这两处的剪辑是我认为和原版最为不同的地方，也是我认为本片最为出色的地方。在侦探被杀的这场戏中，还有一处也值得一提，在侦探倒地的镜头之后接的是正拍假装母亲的诺曼冲下来的镜头，这个镜头采用了人物快速拖影的效果拍摄，这点也是本片中最能体现出摄影杜可风的风格特征的一个镜头。这几处改动我自然不敢说超越了原版，我也没有资格说。
我很喜欢希区柯克，我也很喜欢他的《惊魂记》，但是范桑特的这次翻拍同样让我在观看原版多次的情况下再次体验到了惊喜的效果，让我觉得这是一部相当出色的电影，当然我没说这部电影超过了原版，但我认为这部电影不应该受到大部分人的冷热嘲讽，虽然原版是希区柯克特意拍成黑白的，但是依现在观众的审美观念肯定更倾向于彩色片，范桑特的翻拍不仅是致敬、学习、可能更多的是为了让现代观众更多的了解曾经的一个电影巅峰，可是却被无数人认为是抄袭、模仿之作。翻拍经典当然是出力不讨好的事情，让人想到了“美国悬疑大师”布莱恩德帕尔玛，拍的作品几乎一直都被人认为处在在希区柯克的背影下，他的作品真的不优秀吗，好在他也有众多粉丝，支持他赞扬他，不知为何格斯范桑特的这部作品评价好的这么少，看了看短评少数说好的基本上都是不了解原版的，而看过原版的几乎都不给予好评，相对于原版来说98版最大的问题是当然很明显的是演员，不过也是因为原版的表演太难超越了，除却这一点，就真的是觉得这部作品在制作上不如原版还是因为原版的名气和地位而刻意的有所偏袒？
Two Gus Van Sant’s 1990s pictures about psychopaths, between which is sandwiched his mainstream breakthrough and awards magnet GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997). TO DIE FOR is about a career-driven, small-town reporter’s delusional, murderous ploy to get rid of her hubby, who tries to bog her down with child-bearing, it is a soap opera starring a scrumptious Nicole Kidman in her first “major” role that proves she is not just a pretty face and a gorgeous fashion plate.
Suzanne Stone (Kidman) is a pluperfect specimen of lusciousness and blond ambition, it is easy to see why Larry Maretto (a blandly benevolent Dillon), an Italian-American restauranteur, is swept off his feet by her. However, the film doesn’t elaborate on why Suzanne decides to get hitched. Because Larry is so irresistibly good-looking or she simply marries for financial stability? Neither can convince audience such is the case. It soon becomes clear that it is a wrong move on her part, which speaks volume of her naivety and conformity to the societal dictates at large. In hindsight, the best advice the film can confer to a careen woman is that never walk down the aisle hastily.
Suzanne’s spotlight-craving impulse bares its teeth right away in the onset of their ill-fated marriage, during the honeymoon, the film suggests that there is no moral boundary in her pursuit of ascendancy (George Segal is spot on in a lascivious cameo), which guarantees that this glamour puss is totally unfit for the role of a traditional wife. Soon by hexing and manipulating three impressionable high schoolers, including putting out with Jimmy (Phoenix, still possessing a sharp jawline in his bizarre adolescent phase peppered by ennui and hormones, makes for a commensurable foil in the folie à deux), Suzanne hatches a rather facile plan to getting Larry out of her way and not for one second, dreads its grave consequences. Basking in the media circus in the wake of Larry’s death, Suzanne finally becomes the cynosure she craves and she enjoys every minute of it, but the world is far much sinister than she thinks, a tit for tat awaits her just when she believes she can get away with murder by selling Jimmy down the river, a surprising cameo from Cronenberg is the icing on the cake.
TO DIE FOR is a pitch-black comedy, and its soapy elements are vivaciously elevated by Kidman’s high-wire acting and needle-point nicety. Suzanne is a one-track-minded blondie planning her amoral affairs through a pair of rose-colored glasses, oblivious of any complications. On paper, the character sounds fictitious and shallow, but Kidman resists from cheapening or mocking Suzanne’s devotion that someday her ship will come in, and her deliriously watchable performance is preciously devoid of histrionics, it is another classic case of the so-called American dream going down the toilet.
The psychopath in PSYCHO, a nearly shot-for-shot, full color remake of Hitchcock’s deathless PSYCHO (1960), is the mommy’s boy Norman Bates, embodied by Vince Vaughn before his towering physique balloons, with enough mugging, emoting and loping, but cannot hold a candle to Anthony Perkins’s tic-twinged perversion and twisted vulnerability. The awful truth is, nothing in this remake can outsmart its sacrosanct predecessor (although one could argue that Julianne Moore exerts herself with more resolution in Lila Crane than Vera Miles in Hitch’s picture). So the best way to watch Van Sant’s film is to remember the proverbial saying “imitation is the sincere form of flattery”, it is a one-off, and quite costly experiment from Hollywood’s everlasting refashioning factory, a redux ritualistically slavish to the original, more invested in calibrating Hitchcock’s superb techniques (that twirling shot originated from a vertical close-up of a lifeless Marion’s eyeball is a master stroke of camera choreography and movement) than putting a new spin on the sensational material.
Opening with a complete traveling shot panning and zooming over the city of Phoenix into Marion Crane’s hotel room, the remake presents Van Sant’s upmost veneration to Hitchcock, a feat the latter couldn’t accomplish at his time, smack dab in the beginning. Anne Heche’s pixie-cut Marion Crane is unfairly bad-mouthed for retreading the path of an already iconic role from Janet Leigh. Examined or ogled by the omnipresent, belittling, lecherous male gaze, her Marion shows enough guarded resilience to solider on, her initial sympathy towards a faux-innocent Norman is also marked by little yellow flags. Such assignment is always a mug’s game but Heche shouldn’t be singled out for the film’s own intrinsic defect, it only betrays the society’s unrelieved sexism because the weakest link is Vaugh, who ought to be under the flaks for his less than satisfactory mimicry and grandstanding.
Elsewhere, Van Sant’s PSYCHO rehashes Bernard Herrmann’s lush, suspenseful original score boldly if occasionally stridently, and Saul Bass’s geometrically innovative title sequences is always a treat for sore eyes. Also, Van Sant secretively interleaves several surreal snapshots into the two famous murder scenes, what does one see right before their life is unexpectedly snuffed out? Van Sant reveals his answers in blink-and-you-miss-it flourishes.
Although both pictures stand relatively low on the rung among Van Sant’s oeuvre - TO DIE FOR is regarded chiefly as a Kidman vehicle of transmogrification while PSYCHO denotes the nadir of his career (let not forget THE SEA OF TREES, 2015 though) - they are scintillating character studies of aberrant, certifiable souls, never too dull even for a finicky viewer.
referential entries: Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960, 9.2/10); Gus Van Sant’s GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997, 8.1/10), RESTLESS (2011, 6.8/10).
除非十分无聊~
↑Funny Games(1997)VS Funny Games(2007)
"Paycho"
——为格斯·范·桑特抱不平
↑Psycho(1960) VSPsycho(1998)
↑Psycho(1960)VSPsycho(1998)