朱门巧妇

因为工作的关系，昨天是我值班，因为我没有女朋友和老婆，所以今天还是我值班。

原本只觉得伊丽莎白泰勒一个人撑起了《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》，现在想来，当时一个人在无人的教室里看完这部电影，觉得男主角真是帅的彻底，古典的美，罗马角斗士的气质，混合在他脸上像湖面上吹过的吻。

美好难得，所以容易遗忘，倒是更加大众的美丽现在还挂在杂志内页里发挥着商业价值。

英雄白头并不可怕，乔治克鲁尼53岁结婚的时候，样貌和20年前操起老本行在《老友记》里扮演的医生并无什么差别，结婚后第三年就生了一对龙凤胎，谁说长得好看的男人不好用的？那是狐狸劝退人的把戏而已。同样的，保罗纽曼哪怕是上了年纪，外貌竟然依旧迷人，好看的DNA真是连皱纹都好看。

Paul Newman，要不是昨天突然想起伊丽莎白泰勒，接着想到《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》，再想到这部电影里还有一位男主的话，我可能不会想到这个男演员。情人节的今天，我才发现，原来大学时候一个人看的《欲望号街车》和《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》均出自同一位剧作家田纳西威廉斯，而他，长这样。

编剧出生于同性恋身份不被接受的上世纪中叶，一直在剧本中设计隐晦的同性恋情节用以保护自己和反映社会。这也可以理解，当完全异性恋化的剧本改编电影获得巨大成功的同时，编剧却一直对这部电影不满意的原因。要知道，开场前导演演员对这部电影可是信心满满，最后奥斯卡开奖却是7提0中，不得不说连伊丽莎白都感到沮丧，要知道她当时可是放下家中的三个孩子，在丧偶的阴影下出色完成了女主角的表演。不过之后的《骗中骗》则很好扳回了一城。

保罗纽曼不同于一出场一身肌肉撑开白色汗衫的马龙白兰度，后者时常无法控制自己，后半生不断毁灭自己，保罗纽曼则自持而内敛，但是《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》又让大家看到了一个咆哮又歇斯底里的过气男运动员，电影虽然把男主角与原作中的同性恋情结完全阉割，但是留给观众的想象空间还是很大的。

片中的绝对主角很难讲是伊丽莎白还是纽曼，他们两个之间的对手戏贯穿片子始终，伊丽莎白26岁曼妙的身姿搭配34岁的保罗纽曼，两者之间看不出年龄差距。纽曼始终低着下巴，以读不懂的眼神表演男主角复杂矛盾的内心，一个人在体育场跨栏跑步，夜色浸透他的衣服，夏日的盛情却从画面里氤氲而出，他身上渗透出了那股热气。热铁皮屋顶上的猫不止伊丽莎白一个，而完全不知所措的又岂止是一只猫。

保罗纽曼早已去世，但他留给后人的财富却是巨大的，不管是他一生都在坚持的慈善事业，还是他留给好莱坞的胶卷，他都称得上是完美的情人节情人。

谢谢这位男演员今天的陪伴。

Damn the Hays Code, Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer-winning play is bowdlerized on its way from Broadway to the silver screen, where all its homosexual reference is tactlessly papered over. That said, riding on the strength of its top-line ensemble cast, Richard Brook’s exquisite film adaptation still dazzles and hurtles upon a Southern family’s trouble waters.

The crises of the Pollitt family, an affluent rags-to-riches Mississippi empire of cotton plantation built by the patriarch Harvey aka. Big Daddy (Ives, reprises his role from the stage), are multifarious: his youngest son Brick (Newman), a former athlete who abuses himself with alcohol and despondency in the wake of the suicide of his best friend Skipper, and doesn’t want to have any physical intimacy with his sultry wife Maggie (Taylor); then their is the ominous dread of Big Daddy’s doom, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and has less than one year to live, but Dr. Baugh (Gates) fabricates a lie to appease him and his wife Ida aka. Big Mamma (Anderson), only the cat will finally get out of the bag, and its theme of dual courage (for Brick to face life and for Big Daddy, death) plays out with elemental emotional upheaval on the eve of Big Daddy’s 65-year-old birthday, which occupies 99% of the time-frame and takes place entirely in their sumptuous family manor.

The nexus here is the raison d’être behind Brick’s indifferent attitude and self-abandoning intemperance that puts himself against everyone else, since homosexuality is off the table, Brooks and James Poe’s script has to scrape the bottom of the barrel and leaves it mostly to the rage of being (presumably) two-timed, when that proves to be not the case, the barrier causes Brick’s connubial inaction naturally vanishes, ergo, that inconsolable guilt and grieve derived from losing a loved one in Williams’ original play is pitifully deadened to conceive a perfectly heteronormative ending, with a dated, self-congratulatory whiff of natalism (especially grating after hammering home what kerfuffle a band of bratty, insolent kids can engender).

Doused in booze and whose mobility is impeded by a crutch, Newman is magnificent and passionately engaged from A to Z and rightfully receives his first Oscar nomination for a very difficult and complex role. Underneath his Adonis appearance, Newman unleashes Brick’s harrowing obduracy to the hilt, he is self-centered enough to submerge himself entirely in his existential cynicism and doesn’t give a damn about the whole world after what he suffers, not even his father’s death knell, but deep down, he is merely a love-wanting child borne out of a poor rich boy’s misery and destructively waging war on the mendacity of the world, a tour de force loaded with fiery explosion.

An Oscar-nominated Taylor, adorned only by two pieces of finery and a pearl choker, also utterly takes our breath away with her ineffable beauty, a refined southern belle locution and superbly lived-in performance, whenever she and Newman are on screen together, they are the perfect specimen of what divine human gorgeousness looks like, for that reason alone, the film should be included in any film buff’s must-see list. Her Maggie is a valiant fighter, a can-doer, a go-getter, and her heart-stopping allure is fiendishly counterpoised by her super-fertile sister-in-law Mae (a plain-looking Sherwood), the wife of Brick’s elder brother Cooper (Carson, walking a fine line between grasping and subservient), fanatically battling a losing game to earn affection from Big Daddy with all her pesky tailed assets, Williams’ misogynistic partiality is quite revealing.

Performance extraordinaire suffuses the rest of the ensemble, in the co-leading role, Burl Ives’ larger-than-life bravura as Big Daddy is equally impressive, delivering Williams’ florid texts with resounding decibel, and brings about incredible gravitas and compassion in the third act when reconciliation shapes up during a barnstorming tête-à-tête between a befogging father and his prodigal son. Then there is the ever-forbidding Anderson, refuses to give Big Mamma a simple caricatural veneer, and finds her disparaged yet supportive wife a strong purchase in the catharsis-inducing chamber drama that is worthy of Williams’ name, regardless of the compromises inflicted by an odious force majeure.

referential entries: Mike Nichols’ WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966, 8.2/10); Martin Ritt’s THE LONG, HOT SUMMER (1958, 6.3/10); Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959, 7.4/10).