嘉宝的脸蛋

 文/罗兰．巴特

 　　　　嘉宝（Garbo）的脸蛋依然属于电影中会令观众欣喜的时刻。人会在人的影像中迷失，有如迷药一般。面孔代表一种血肉的具体呈现，既难以触及又难以抛弃。几年前，范伦天努（Valentino）的脸曾引发自杀事件。嘉宝的脸蛋则仍然带有优雅情爱的规则，脸上的血肉给人一种毁灭性的感觉。　　这确是一张令人激赏的脸。在《克莉丝蒂娜皇后》（Reine Christine）一片中，其化妆有如一张雪白的面具，这张脸不是画上去的，而是用石膏打造出来的，保护它的是色彩而非容貌。这片雪白既虚弱又紧密。光是眼睛，就厚得像奇特的柔软肌肉，但并非毫无表情。它们其实是微弱而抖颤的伤口，这张脸极端美丽，是雕塑在某个平滑易碎的物体上，既完美又短暂，很像卓别林粉白的脸孔，他单调无神的两眼，以及他图腾般的表情。　　面具全然的诱惑（例如，古董面具），暗示着脸的原型而非秘密主题（如意大利的半边面具）。嘉宝给人一种人类生灵的柏拉图式意念，这也解释了为什么她的脸在性意义上并不明确，但却未令人疑惑。这部电影（由克莉丝蒂娜皇后轮流装扮为骑士和女人），主要是未做任何区别，嘉宝没有以穿异性服装癖的方式表演。她总是她自己，没有什么伪装，在她的皇冠或宽边帽下，都带着这副雪白而孤寂的脸。大家所给予她的称谓——“女神”（The Divine），想要表达的讯息，应该是她肉体上的美丽，而非一种超越的美，她是从天堂下凡的，在那儿，所有物体都以最清晰的方式形成并臻于完美。她自己了解——有多少女演员愿意让群众看见他们的美人不祥的成长过程。不会是她！这个本质不会降尊纡贵，她的脸蛋不会有任何现实，除了自己完美的状态，这是智力上的而非形式上的。本质开始逐渐模糊，逐步被墨镜、宽边帽和放逐掩饰：但它绝对不会恶化。　　而且在这种神格化的脸蛋中，一种比面具还尖锐的东西浮现了：一种在鼻尖和眼眉之间的自愿性，这是一种完人性的关系；一种罕见和脸部两个区域相关的个别功能。一幅面具不过是线条的总和；相反地，一张脸则是它们主题上的和谐。嘉宝的脸蛋代表一种虚弱的时刻，这个时刻就是当电影将要自本质的美滤出存在主义的意义、当原型借重凡人脸蛋的眩目、当肉体的清晰本质让位给女人的抒情诗时。　　嘉宝的脸蛋被视为一种转换，它令人忆念起两个肖像的时代，它确认了从敬畏到魅力的过程。众所周知，我们今天是在演化的另一极端：例如奥黛丽．赫本的脸庞，就很个人化了，不只因为它奇特的主题（女人是小孩，女人是小猫），也因为她这个人脸庞的独特规格，上面没有留下任何本质，而是由形态学方面的功能做无限复杂的组成。就语言方面的意义而言，嘉宝的奇特是观念的秩序，奥黛丽．赫本的则是实体的秩序。嘉宝的脸是一种理念，赫本的脸则是一种事件。　　　　　　　　摘自《神话：大众文化诠释》（法）罗兰．巴特著，许蔷蔷许绮玲译，上海人民出版社 1999年3月第一版。　　　　　The face of Garbo 　　　　Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philter, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which would be neither reached nor renounced. A few years earlier the face of Valentino was causing suicides; that of Garbo still partakes of the same rule of Courtly Love, where the flesh gives rise to mystical feelings of perdition. 　　　　It is indeed an admirable face-object. In Queen Christina, a film which has again been shown in Paris in the last few years, the make-up has the snowy thickness of a mask: it is not a painted face, but one set in plaster, protected by the surface of the colour, not by its lineaments. Amid all this snow at once fragile and compact, the eyes alone, black like strange soft flesh, but not in the least expressive, are two faintly tremulous wounds. In spite of its extreme beauty, this face, not drawn but sculpted in something smooth and friable, that is, at once perfect and ephemeral, comes to resemble the flour-white complexion of Charlie Chaplin, the dark vegetation of his eyes, his totem-like countenance. 　　　　Now the temptation of the absolute mask (the mask of antiquity, for instance) perhaps implies less the theme of the secret (as is the case with Italian half mask) than that of an archetype of the human face. Garbo offered to one's gaze a sort of Platonic Idea of the human creature, which explains why her face is almost sexually undefined, without however leaving one in doubt. It is true that this film (in which Queen Christina is by turns a woman and a young cavalier) lends itself to this lack of differentiation; but Garbo does not perform in it any feat of transvestism; she is always herself, and carries without pretence, under her crown or her wide-brimmed hats, the same snowy solitary face. The name given to her, the Divine, probable aimed to convey less a superlative state of beauty than the essence of her corporeal person, descended from a heaven where all things are formed and perfected in the clearest light. She herself knew this: how many actresses have consented to let the crowd see the ominous maturing of their beauty. Not she, however; the essence was not to be degraded, her face was not to have any reality except that of its perfection, which was intellectual even more than formal. The Essence became gradually obscured, progressively veiled with dark glasses, broad hats and exiles; but it never deteriorated. 　　　　And yet, in this deified face, something sharper than a mask is looming; a kind of voluntary and therefore human relation between the curve of the nostrils and the arch of the eyebrows; a rare, individual function relating two regions of the face. A mask is but a sum of lines; a face, on the contrary, is above all their thematic harmony. Garbo's face represents this fragile moment when the cinema is about to draw an existential from an essential beauty, when the archetype leans towards the fascination or mortal faces, when the clarity of the flesh as essence yields its place to a lyricism of Woman. 　　　　Viewed as a transition the face of Garbo reconciles two iconographic ages, it assures the passage from awe to charm. As it well known, we are today at the other pole of this evolution: the face of Audrey Hepburn, for instance, is individualized, not only because of its peculiar thematics (woman as child, woman as kitten) but also because of her person, of an almost unique specification of the face, which has nothing of the essence left in it, but is constituted by an infinite complexity of morphological functions. As a language, Garbo's singularity was the order of concept, that of Audrey Hepburn is of the order of the substance. The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event. 　　 　Roland Barthes. Elements of Semiology. Translated by Annette Laversy and Colin Smith. 　　New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.