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Lesson 21
William S. Hart and
the early 'Western' film
威廉.S. 哈特和早期限的‘西部’影片
How did William Hart's childhood prepare him for his acting role in Western
films?
William S. Hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, for unlike
Gary Cooper and John Wayne he appeared in nothing but Westerns. From 1914 to
1924 he was supreme and unchallenged. It was Hart who created the basic formula
of the Western film, and devised the protagonist he played in every film he
made, the good-bad man, the accidental-noble outlaw, or the honest-but-framed
cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip; in short, the individual
in conflict with himself and his frontier environment.
Unlike most of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hart actually knew
something of the old West. He had lived in it as a child when it was already
disappearing, and his hero was firmly rooted in his memories and experiences,
and in both the history and the mythology of the vanished frontier. And although
no period or place in American history has been more absurdly romanticized, myth
and reality did join hands in at least one arena, the conflict between the
individual and encroaching civilization.
Men accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indians
were bewildered by politicians, bankers and businessmen, and unhorsed by fences,
laws and alien taboos. Hart's good-bad man was always an outsider, always one of
the disinherited, and if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or rob a bank
along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and forgive,
especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking Indians.
Audiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to
escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. We still do;
living in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery,
anarchy and impending immolation are part of our daily lives, we all want a code
to live by.
CARL FOREMAN Virtue and a Fast Gun from The Observer
New words and expressions 生词与短语
Supreme
adj. 首屈一指
protagonist
n. 主角
outlaw
n. 逃犯，亡命之徒
framed
adj. 遭到陷害的
vicious
adj. 恶毒的
mythology
n. 神话
vanished
adj. 消失了的
absurdly
adv. 荒诞地
arena
n. 竞技场在
encroaching
adj. 渐渐渗入的
Indian
n. 印第安人
bewilder
v. 使手足无措
alien
adj. 外来的
taboo
n. 戒律
disinherit
v. 剥夺...继承权
undeclared
adj. 未经宣布的
hypocrisy
n. 伪善
chicanery
n. 诈骗
impending
adj. 迫近的，近在眉睫的
immolation
n. 杀戮
code
n. 准则
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发表于 2016-7-11 22:47:49