選一部影片，代表你心目中的紐約

According to City Hall, on any given day there are around 120 film and television projects in production in New York. About 12,000 permits are issued a year, resulting in the intermittent irritation of non-industry-connected residents as we try to park our cars or push our strollers. We might complain, but really we wouldn’t want it any other way. Trailers, craft service tables and production assistants policing sidewalks with clipboards and walkie-talkies have long been fixtures of New York life.

據(jù)市政廳的說法，每天在紐約有約120個影視項目處于制作過程中。每年發(fā)放的許可約有1.2萬個，導致我們這些與該行業(yè)無關的居民在試圖停車或推嬰兒車時常常覺得很煩。我們或許抱怨連連，但其實并不希望事情有所改變。拖車、后勤工作臺，還有拿著筆記板和對講機在人行道上維持秩序的制片助理，早已是紐約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.

他們還是一座虛擬城市的基石——這虛擬之城是另一個大都市，它抽取自真實的紐約，并與之共存共生。不論是本地人、移民還是游客，都很難判定真實的紐約從哪里消隱，它的影視分身又從哪里開始。也絕無可能僅拿一部電影來總結與這座城市有關的體驗。不過，做這樣的嘗試或許會很有趣。

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.

日常生活與斑駁記憶中的影像和著名臺詞相互交融。昆斯博羅橋(Queensboro Bridge)是《曼哈頓》(Manhattan)中最美的景致。韋拉札諾海峽大橋(Verrazano)讓人想起《周末夜狂熱》(Saturday Night Fever)。時報廣場讓人想起《午夜牛郎》(Midnight Cowboy)和《成功的滋味》(Sweet Smell of Success)(或許還有《香草天空》[Vanilla Sky])。帝國大廈屬于《金剛》(King Kong)和安迪·沃霍爾(Andy Warhol);Katz’s熟食店屬于《當哈利遇到莎莉》(Harry and Sally，主要是莎莉);格林堡(Fort Greene)和貝德福德-斯圖文森(Bed-Stuy)屬于斯派克·李(Spike Lee)。我們的當?shù)孛藟ι系拿謹?shù)不勝數(shù)，其中很多人都是虛構出來的。魯珀特·帕普金(Rupert Pupkin)。安妮·霍爾(Annie Hall)。電影配樂和畫外音在腦海深處回蕩。“一朝加入噴氣機幫，永世都是噴氣機幫的人。我熱愛這骯臟的城市。終有一天大雨會傾盆而下。勇士們，出來玩吧。”

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.

我當然還可以列舉下去。而你也可以反駁我，列舉出你自己的諸多見聞，其標準取決于你的年齡、品味、背景和所在的社區(qū)。你或許會把紐約系于上世紀中葉由洛克·哈德森(Rock Hudson)和多麗絲·戴(Doris Day)演繹的那些愛情片的醉人魅力，抑或戰(zhàn)后初年的黑色陰影，又或者是經(jīng)典喜劇片中的頂層公寓和有軌電車。或許最讓你感到熟悉的是希德尼·魯邁特(Sidney Lumet)和馬丁·斯科塞斯(Martin Scorsese)在1970年代刻畫的腐敗、失能和欲望?；蛟S你喜歡當前涌現(xiàn)的這些與往不同的喜劇片，講述住進士紳化街區(qū)的時髦青年的故事，他們尋找著愛情，在那些不再惡狠狠、連略帶冷漠都談不上的街頭，遭遇尷尬事。

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.

當然了，任何的片目都只能觸及表面，并被用于供養(yǎng)這座對自身影像貪得無厭的城市。只要一涉及電影，我們最具辨識度的城市特質中的傲慢和自我就變得合情合理。全世界所有城市當中，或許只有巴黎在鏡頭中看起來比紐約更美。此外，雖然在洛杉磯取景的電影更多，但那座城市常常更像是性格演員而非明星，自覺自愿地把自己偽裝成其他地方的樣子，其中包括紐約。

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.

在搜索引擎中輸入“New York movies”(紐約電影)，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)一個像這座城市本身一樣巨大而又多樣的影片寶藏，里邊無所不包：罪案故事;浪漫喜劇;講述移民的奮斗和種族沖突的作品;刻畫殘酷的貧窮和不可思議的富有的作品;令人陶醉的歌舞;辛辣的諷刺;反烏托邦的幻想。但如果你只想取其一，挑出一部能讓全城人共同觀看的電影，會怎么樣?這就是紐約市長媒體娛樂辦公室的“同一部影片，同一個紐約”(One Film, One New York)項目背后的點子，一個以最具紐約特色的傳統(tǒng)為靈感之源的瘋狂點子。幾個月前，我和我的一些同事，跟電影及媒體專員朱莉·梅尼(Julie Menin)以及她的一些同事坐到一處，我們接到了一個不同尋常而又難以抗拒的任務：挑出五部電影用于投票。得票最多的那部影片隨后將于某個晚上在每個行政區(qū)的公園和影院里放映。

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.

美國的很多城市此前都做過類似的事情，不過它們選的是書。今年，紐約人把奇瑪曼達·戈茲·阿迪切(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)的《美國史跡》(Americanah)選為他們共同的讀物，供其選擇的名單上還有塔-奈西希·科特斯(Ta-Nehisi Coates)、朱諾·迪亞斯(Junot Díaz)、保羅·貝蒂(Paul Beatty)和貝蒂·史密斯(Betty Smith)的作品。全都是很好的選項。選出像這些書籍一樣能吸引到足夠廣泛和多樣化的人群的電影，肯定也很簡單。

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.

然而根本不簡單。有時還很痛苦。繼今春挑選出21世紀25部最佳影片后，我和電影批評同仁瑪諾拉·達爾吉斯(Manohla Dargis)把今年的初夏用在了又一輪的片目修訂上。在銀幕上縱覽紐約歷史，對片目進行甄選與平衡，分享自己的偏好，闡明取舍的理由，這些都是樂事。唯一真正意義上的約束是，這份片目必須能在一個公園里，面向所有年齡層的觀眾放映——不一定要是“一般觀眾”級(在紐約找不到什么“一般”級的東西)，但也不能太過露骨或重口味。換句話說，《午夜牛郎》、《出租車司機》(Taxi Driver)或《為所應為》(Do the Right Thing)就免了，雖說這些都是偉大的影片。

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.

最終我們選中的五部電影，肯定會引起議論。這是不可避免的，也是樂趣所在。任何選擇都不會是絕對權威或全面的，但是我認為，我們將銀幕紐約的風格、群落和敘事跨度成功地體現(xiàn)了出來，同時也把一些理應得到更多認可的精彩電影呈現(xiàn)給世人。

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.

對于斯科塞斯，我們沒有選《窮街陋巷》(Mean Streets)——或《華爾街之狼》(The Wolf of Wall Street)或《下班后》(After Hours)或《憤怒的公牛》(Raging Bull)或《純真年代》(The Age of Innocence)——而是選了《紐約，紐約》(New York, New York，1977)，莉莎·明內利(Liza Minnelli)和羅伯特·德尼羅(Robert De Niro)飾演兩位不得志的音樂人，在戰(zhàn)后紐約演藝業(yè)的聲色犬馬中打拼。斯科塞斯對那個年代的紐約的追憶，帶著一點不齒的態(tài)度，但他對當時的創(chuàng)造力的敬意，卻和斯坦利·多南(Stanley Donen)與吉恩·凱利(Gene Kelly)的1949年歌舞片《錦城春色》(On the Town)一樣誠摯而熾烈。斯派克·李的《克魯克林》(Crooklyn，1994)對1970年代褐沙石樓林立的布魯克林街頭表達了另一種緬懷，影片的劇本、布景和服裝，對那個年代做出了精心的呈現(xiàn)。蘇珊·塞德爾曼(Susan Seidelman)的1985年影片《尋找蘇珊》(Desperately Seeking Susan)，是對曼哈頓下城波西米亞文化的一次探尋，會讓某一部分X世代紐約人鼻子一酸，而找不到任何星巴克、全食超市(Whole Foods)和名廚的下城，會讓年輕一些的觀眾驚訝不已。當時正從流行樂異類向著文化巨擘發(fā)展的麥當娜也在片中出現(xiàn)。

“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》溫和而敏銳，是一部“前同性婚姻”時代的同性婚姻喜劇，贊美了這座城市的包容力，它可以吸納來自不同文化、奉守不同價值觀的人，并促使他們達成一種粗糲而復雜的和諧。和其他四部影片一樣，《囍宴》捕捉了紐約歷史的一個特定瞬間，將它的某種永恒而根本的東西提煉了出來。

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的投票將持續(xù)至8月31日。獲選影片將在9月13日展映。會有許多值得討論的話題。