英文电影影评---魂断蓝桥

Waterloo Bridge（魂断蓝桥）1940Let there be no doubt about it. Vivien Leigh is as fine an actress as we have on the screen today. Maybe even the finest, and that's a lot to say. Plenty of skeptics are still mumbling that her Scarlett O'Hara was a freak, that any one could have played it with such a wide-open field. We know all about them—and we know, too, about the unreconstructed dissidents. So this is an urgent hint that they hike themselves, one and all, right straight to the Capitol Theatre, where "Waterloo Bridge" opened yesterday, and see this remarkable Miss Leigh in her first picture since "Gone With the Wind." If they are not then convinced, we will cover ourself with a sack.Obviously, Metro has provided Miss Leigh with a story and role which permit her to range, to employ all the grace and mobility which are springed in her frail body and all the expressiveness of her vital face. It is one of those bitter-sweet stories, a poignantly romantic tale of a little ballet dancer who meets a young British army officer on Waterloo Bridge in London during the last World War, falls breathlessly in love with him (and he with her) in a whirlwind wartime courtship, has him torn away from her by the war and then, when she thinks he has been killed, is forced by destitution and despair into the oldest profession. What happens when he returns and finds her thus puts a climax on the story which fairness forbids us to reveal.True, this is not such a fiction as would qualify for a place among the great. It is an oddly isolated story of two people who rush eagerly into love against the barest background of a world at war and who are held apart mainly by the long arm of coincidence, not by any insuperable barriers. A connection is missed here, a misunderstanding occurs there—and the fate worse than death is the consequence. But Miss Leigh shapes the role of the girl with such superb comprehension, progresses from the innocent, fragile dancer to an empty, bedizened street-walker with such surety of characterization and creates a person of such appealing naturalness that the picture gains considerable substance as a result.Robert Taylor, too, turns in a surprisingly flexible and mature performance as the young officer, although his activity is mainly confined to being enthusiastic. Other good jobs are done by Virginia Field as a dancer friend, Lucile Watson as an aristocratic matron and C. Aubrey Smith as the inevitable British peer.Mervyn LeRoy has directed the picture with an emphasis on romantic close-ups, has given it ironic overtone through a tie-up at the beginning and end with the present day in England and has provided one superb sequence—a dance by the two lovers in a candlelit cabaret the night before his departure for the front—which will live in tender memory. In fact, all of "Waterloo Bridge" spans a dream-world of sentiment.At the CinecittaOnce again the old conflict between the real and the foster mother for the love of a handsome and worthy son has been put on the screen so convincingly as to hold the interest of the audience to the foregone conclusion.Vittorio De Sica, one of Italy's best actors, never did a better job than he does in "Le Due Madri" ("The Two Mothers"), the Astra production directed by Amleto Palermi, now at the Cinecitta. As the young journeyman barber and amateur painter raised in a small village by akindly peasant woman (Bella Starace Sainati) and finally discovered by his real mother (Lydia Johnson), a retired prima donna, Signor De Sica is practically perfect. So are the others in the cast.There is plenty of humor and a modicum of mental suffering in the picture, but it is disfigured by the gratuitous injection of a glorification of the Fascist invasion of Spain when an automobile accident or any other accident would have served just as well.No.2 Waterloo Bridge（魂断蓝桥）1940Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, based on Robert Sherwood's play, with a screenplay by S.N. Behrman, Hans Rameau, and George Froeschel, this classic, tear-jerking wartime love story, starring Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh (reportedly her favorite), was Oscar nominated for its B&W Cinematography and Original Musical Score. The second film version of Sherwood's play, after Waterloo Bridge (1931) with Mae Clarke and Kent Douglass.Leigh plays a melancholy dancer, Myra, who meets soldier Roy Cronin (Taylor) during an air raid in World War I London, just before he's to be shipped off to the front. Given a 48 hour leave, the carefree & romantic Roy, captivated by her beauty, sweeps Myra off her feet until she too (for the first time in her life?) is optimistic about their future. He receives permission from his uncle the Duke ( C. Aubrey Smith) to marry her. Unfortunately, per some red tape, they are unable to wed before Roy must leave for France. Myra attempts to return to the ballet, but her stern taskmaster (Maria Ouspenskaya) refuses to accept her back into the company, and fires fellow dancer Kitty (Virginia Field) for her outburst in support of her friend.Myra and Kitty take an apartment together where they struggle to make ends meet until Roy's mother, Lady Margaret (Lucile Watson), who had been working with the Red Cross, is able to come for a visit. Just before this meeting, however, Myra reads Roy's name on a casualty list in the newspaper. Stunned and in shock, Myra is unable to make a good impression on her would-be future mother-in-law (why wouldn't she share with her what she'd just read?!). After being consoled by the restaurant's hostess (Norma Varden, uncredited), Myra returns to Kitty who supports her financially during her depression by the only way a girl who can't find a job otherwise can. Soon, Myra comes out of her funk and realizes that Kitty has been selling herself to soldiers on leave. Naturally, she then joins this oldest profession hersel f. Tom Conway is the uncredited voice one hears as her first client.Later, as Myra is "greeting" the latest batch of soldiers arriving from the front at the train station, she sees Roy. Apparently, there was a reporting error made when he'd lost his dog tags. Ignorant of what's transpired in her life, Roy is thrilled to see Myra and figures they'll just pick up where they left off. Promising never to leave her again, Roy insists on taking Myra to their country estate, to more properly introduce her to his family and friends. Though Myra struggles with what to tell Roy of her recent past, she also sees an opportunity to finally "make it" and promises Kitty, before she leaves, to set her up well when she returns.Though things do not go smoothly initially at the Cronin estate for Myra; some of the local families had hoped Roy would marry one of their daughters and are not very accepting of the newcomer from outside their caste. However, with help from Lady Margaret, who'd given her anotherchance per Roy's obvious love for Myra (and vice versa) and the Duke, who insists on a showy dance with her, Myra is accepted. It is at this point that Myra's conscience gets the best of her and she comes clean to Lady Margaret, whom she asks never to tell Roy. Myra then departs early the next morning, leaving Roy clueless.*** SPOILERS ***Of course, Roy must find out what happened to the love of his life. He returns to London where he finds Kitty. Convinced of his love for Myra, Kitty reveals the truth of Myra's nightlife to Roy by taking him on a search for her through one seedy bar after another. Meanwhile, Myra is on Waterloo Bridge, where she's seen giving up; she walks rapidly past several troop trucks as they drive by before she throws herself under the wheels of one of them. The film ends with (now) Colonel Roy, many years later at the beginning of World War II, fingering the good luck charm Myra had once given him.。