选一部影片，代表你心目中的纽约
据市政厅的说法，每天在纽约有约120个影视项目处于制作过程中。每年发放的许可约有1.2万个，导致我们这些与该行业无关的居民在试图停车或推婴儿车时常常觉得很烦。我们或许抱怨连连，但其实并不希望事情有所改变。拖车、后勤工作台，还有拿着笔记板和对讲机在人行道上维持秩序的制片助理，早已是纽约生活不可或缺的一部分。
They are also the building blocks of a virtual city, a second metropolis extracted from and existing alongside the real one. For natives, transplants and tourists alike, it can be hard to tell where the actual New York leaves off and its cinematic doppelgänger begins. And it would be downright impossible to pick just one movie that sums up the experience of the city. Still, it might be interesting to try.
他们还是一座虚拟城市的基石——这虚拟之城是另一个大都市，它抽取自真实的纽约，并与之共存共生。不论是本地人、移民还是游客，都很难判定真实的纽约从哪里消隐，它的影视分身又从哪里开始。也绝无可能仅拿一部电影来总结与这座城市有关的体验。不过，做这样的尝试或许会很有趣。
Everyday life entwines with half-remembered images and catchphrases. The Queensboro Bridge is the most beautiful shot in “Manhattan.” The Verrazano recalls “Saturday Night Fever.” Times Square evokes “Midnight Cowboy” and “Sweet Smell of Success.” (Or maybe “Vanilla Sky.”) The Empire State Building belongs to King Kong and Andy Warhol; Katz’s Delicatessen to Harry and Sally (mostly Sally); Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy to Spike Lee. Our local wall of fame bursts with characters, many of them fictitious. Rupert Pupkin. Snake Plissken. Annie Hall. Consciousness is layered with soundtrack music and voice-over narration. When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way. I love this dirty town. Someday a real rain will come. Warriors, come out to play.
日常生活与斑驳记忆中的影像和著名台词相互交融。昆斯博罗桥(Queensboro Bridge)是《曼哈顿》(Manhattan)中最美的景致。韦拉札诺海峡大桥(Verrazano)让人想起《周末夜狂热》(Saturday Night Fever)。时报广场让人想起《午夜牛郎》(Midnight Cowboy)和《成功的滋味》(Sweet Smell of Success)(或许还有《香草天空》[Vanilla Sky])。帝国大厦属于《金刚》(King Kong)和安迪·沃霍尔(Andy Warhol);Katz’s熟食店属于《当哈利遇到莎莉》(Harry and Sally，主要是莎莉);格林堡(Fort Greene)和贝德福德-斯图文森(Bed-Stuy)属于斯派克·李(Spike Lee)。我们的当地名人墙上的名字数不胜数，其中很多人都是虚构出来的。鲁珀特·帕普金(Rupert Pupkin)。安妮·霍尔(Annie Hall)。电影配乐和画外音在脑海深处回荡。“一朝加入喷气机帮，永世都是喷气机帮的人。我热爱这肮脏的城市。终有一天大雨会倾盆而下。勇士们，出来玩吧。”
I could go on, of course. And you could counter with your own roster of sights and sounds, a canon dependent on your age, taste, background and neighborhood. Maybe you associate New York with the fizzy glamour of those midcentury Rock Hudson-Doris Day romances, with the noir shadows of the immediate postwar years or with the penthouses and streetcars of classic studio comedies. Maybe you feel most at home in the seedy, grainy, sulfurous cityscapes of corruption, dysfunction and need mapped by Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese in the 1970s. Or maybe you like the current wave of diffident comedies about young gentrifiers looking for love and risking embarrassment on streets that aren’t so much mean as mildly inconsiderate.
我当然还可以列举下去。而你也可以反驳我，列举出你自己的诸多见闻，其标准取决于你的年龄、品味、背景和所在的社区。你或许会把纽约系于上世纪中叶由洛克·哈德森(Rock Hudson)和多丽丝·戴(Doris Day)演绎的那些爱情片的醉人魅力，抑或战后初年的黑色阴影，又或者是经典喜剧片中的顶层公寓和有轨电车。或许最让你感到熟悉的是希德尼·鲁迈特(Sidney Lumet)和马丁·斯科塞斯(Martin Scorsese)在1970年代刻画的腐败、失能和欲望。或许你喜欢当前涌现的这些与往不同的喜剧片，讲述住进士绅化街区的时髦青年的故事，他们寻找着爱情，在那些不再恶狠狠、连略带冷漠都谈不上的街头，遭遇尴尬事。
Any list would only scratch the surface, of course, while also feeding the city’s insatiable appetite for images of itself. The arrogance and self-absorption that are among our most recognizable civic traits are justified when it comes to movies. Of all the cities in the world, maybe only Paris looks better on camera. And while more movies have been shot in Los Angeles, that city is often more character actor than star, obligingly counterfeiting itself to resemble other places, including New York.
当然了，任何的片目都只能触及表面，并被用于供养这座对自身影像贪得无厌的城市。只要一涉及电影，我们最具辨识度的城市特质中的傲慢和自我就变得合情合理。全世界所有城市当中，或许只有巴黎在镜头中看起来比纽约更美。此外，虽然在洛杉矶取景的电影更多，但那座城市常常更像是性格演员而非明星，自觉自愿地把自己伪装成其他地方的样子，其中包括纽约。
Type “New York movies” into a search engine and you will open up a cinematheque as vast and varied as the city itself, containing multitudes: crime stories; romantic comedies; tales of immigrant striving and racial conflict; of cruel poverty and impossible wealth; swooning musicals; acid-etched satires; dystopian fantasies. But what if you wanted to just pick one: a single movie that the whole city could watch together? That is the idea — inspired and insane in the best Gotham tradition — behind One Film, One New York, an initiative of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in which The New York Times is taking part. A few months ago, some of my colleagues and I sat down with the commissioner of film and media, Julie Menin, and some of her colleagues, and we left with an unusual and irresistible assignment. We were asked to select five movies that would be put to a vote. The winner would then be shown on a single evening in parks and movie theaters in every borough.
在搜索引擎中输入“New York movies”(纽约电影)，你会发现一个像这座城市本身一样巨大而又多样的影片宝藏，里边无所不包：罪案故事;浪漫喜剧;讲述移民的奋斗和种族冲突的作品;刻画残酷的贫穷和不可思议的富有的作品;令人陶醉的歌舞;辛辣的讽刺;反乌托邦的幻想。但如果你只想取其一，挑出一部能让全城人共同观看的电影，会怎么样?这就是纽约市长媒体娱乐办公室的“同一部影片，同一个纽约”(One Film, One New York)项目背后的点子，一个以最具纽约特色的传统为灵感之源的疯狂点子。几个月前，我和我的一些同事，跟电影及媒体专员朱莉·梅尼(Julie Menin)以及她的一些同事坐到一处，我们接到了一个不同寻常而又难以抗拒的任务：挑出五部电影用于投票。得票最多的那部影片随后将于某个晚上在每个行政区的公园和影院里放映。
This kind of thing has been done with books before, in cities across the nation. This year, New Yorkers chose Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah” as their common reading assignment, selecting it from a list that included works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Junot Díaz, Paul Beatty and Betty Smith. Great choices, all. Surely it would be simple enough to find films that could appeal as widely and variously as those books.
美国的很多城市此前都做过类似的事情，不过它们选的是书。今年，纽约人把奇玛曼达·戈兹·阿迪切(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)的《美国史迹》(Americanah)选为他们共同的读物，供其选择的名单上还有塔-奈西希·科特斯(Ta-Nehisi Coates)、朱诺·迪亚斯(Junot Díaz)、保罗·贝蒂(Paul Beatty)和贝蒂·史密斯(Betty Smith)的作品。全都是很好的选项。选出像这些书籍一样能吸引到足够广泛和多样化的人群的电影，肯定也很简单。
It wasn’t simple at all. At times it was painful. Having spent the spring selecting the 25 best films of the 21st century, my fellow critic Manohla Dargis and I spent the first part of the summer in another round of list-making. It was fascinating to sift through the history of New York onscreen, to winnow and balance the list, to share favorites and argue about choices. The only real constraint was that the selections had to be appropriate for an all-ages audience in a public park — not necessarily G-rated (not much in New York is G-rated), but also not too graphic or hard-edged. No “Midnight Cowboy” or “Taxi Driver” or “Do the Right Thing,” in other words, great as those movies are.
然而根本不简单。有时还很痛苦。继今春挑选出21世纪25部最佳影片后，我和电影批评同仁玛诺拉·达尔吉斯(Manohla Dargis)把今年的初夏用在了又一轮的片目修订上。在银幕上纵览纽约历史，对片目进行甄选与平衡，分享自己的偏好，阐明取舍的理由，这些都是乐事。唯一真正意义上的约束是，这份片目必须能在一个公园里，面向所有年龄层的观众放映——不一定要是“一般观众”级(在纽约找不到什么“一般”级的东西)，但也不能太过露骨或重口味。换句话说，《午夜牛郎》、《出租车司机》(Taxi Driver)或《为所应为》(Do the Right Thing)就免了，虽说这些都是伟大的影片。
The five we settled on are guaranteed to provoke second-guessing. That’s inevitable, and part of the fun. No selection will ever be definitive or exhaustive, but I think we succeeded in representing something of the stylistic, demographic and storytelling range of the city on film, and also in bringing attention to some wonderful movies that are not as well known as they should be.
最终我们选中的五部电影，肯定会引起议论。这是不可避免的，也是乐趣所在。任何选择都不会是绝对权威或全面的，但是我认为，我们将银幕纽约的风格、群落和叙事跨度成功地体现了出来，同时也把一些理应得到更多认可的精彩电影呈现给世人。
Instead of “Mean Streets” — or “The Wolf of Wall Street” or “After Hours” or “Raging Bull” or “The Age of Innocence” — we picked Mr. Scorsese’s “New York, New York” (1977), starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro as star-crossed musicians making their way through the city’s show-business demimonde in the years after World War II. The nostalgia of Mr. Scorsese’s vision of that era in the city is edged with cynicism, but his tribute to the creativity of the moment is as heartfelt and exuberant as “On the Town,” Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s 1949 musical. Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn” (1994) sighs with a different kind of nostalgia, for the brownstone-lined streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s, an era lovingly created in the film’s script, production design and costumes. “Desperately Seeking Susan,” Susan Seidelman’s 1985 adventure into the bohemia of Lower Manhattan, will make New Yorkers of a certain Gen-X vintage a bit misty-eyed, as younger viewers marvel at a downtown innocent of Starbucks, Whole Foods and celebrity chefs. Madonna is in it, too, in the midst of her rise from pop curiosity to cultural juggernaut.
对于斯科塞斯，我们没有选《穷街陋巷》(Mean Streets)——或《华尔街之狼》(The Wolf of Wall Street)或《下班后》(After Hours)或《愤怒的公牛》(Raging Bull)或《纯真年代》(The Age of Innocence)——而是选了《纽约，纽约》(New York, New York，1977)，莉莎·明内利(Liza Minnelli)和罗伯特·德尼罗(Robert De Niro)饰演两位不得志的音乐人，在战后纽约演艺业的声色犬马中打拼。斯科塞斯对那个年代的纽约的追忆，带着一点不齿的态度，但他对当时的创造力的敬意，却和斯坦利·多南(Stanley Donen)与吉恩·凯利(Gene Kelly)的1949年歌舞片《锦城春色》(On the Town)一样诚挚而炽烈。斯派克·李的《克鲁克林》(Crooklyn，1994)对1970年代褐沙石楼林立的布鲁克林街头表达了另一种缅怀，影片的剧本、布景和服装，对那个年代做出了精心的呈现。苏珊·塞德尔曼(Susan Seidelman)的1985年影片《寻找苏珊》(Desperately Seeking Susan)，是对曼哈顿下城波西米亚文化的一次探寻，会让某一部分X世代纽约人鼻子一酸，而找不到任何星巴克、全食超市(Whole Foods)和名厨的下城，会让年轻一些的观众惊讶不已。当时正从流行乐异类向着文化巨擘发展的麦当娜也在片中出现。
“The Wedding Banquet,” Ang Lee’s gentle and shrewd 1993 pre-gay-marriage comedy of gay marriage, celebrates the capacity of the city to absorb people from different cultures, with different values, and to nudge them into a rough and complicated state of harmony. Like the other four films, it both captures a particular moment of New York history and distills something permanent and essential about this place.
李安的1993年作品《囍宴》温和而敏锐，是一部“前同性婚姻”时代的同性婚姻喜剧，赞美了这座城市的包容力，它可以吸纳来自不同文化、奉守不同价值观的人，并促使他们达成一种粗粝而复杂的和谐。和其他四部影片一样，《囍宴》捕捉了纽约历史的一个特定瞬间，将它的某种永恒而根本的东西提炼了出来。
Voting continues through Aug. 31 at nyc.gov/onefilmny. The winning film will be shown on Sept. 13. There will be plenty to argue about.
在nyc.gov/onefilmny的投票将持续至8月31日。获选影片将在9月13日展映。会有许多值得讨论的话题。
