2021年经济学人 传奇影星葛丽泰·嘉宝的两幅面孔（在线收听）

Books and Arts -- Book Review

文学与艺术——书评

Cinema royalty -- Two faces of a star

电影皇族——一个明星的两面

Garbo. By Robert Gottlieb.

《嘉宝》，作者：罗伯特·戈特利布。

She was everything on screen and not much off it.

她在银幕上光芒万丈，但在银幕外就不是这样了。

That is the conclusion to be drawn from Robert Gottlieb’s biography of Greta Garbo, the legendary film star of the 1920s and 1930s.

这是从罗伯特·戈特利布为20世纪二三十年代传奇影星葛丽泰·嘉宝撰写的传记中得出的结论。

“Was she even an actress, or was she merely a glorious presence?” he asks.

“她真的能算是个演员吗，还是说，她仅仅是一种光彩夺目的存在？”他问道。

Readers’ assessments of her glory may depend on their view of how much personal morality matters.

读者对她的辉煌成就的评价可能取决于他们认为个人道德有多重要。

A millionaire many times over, on her death in 1990 Garbo bequeathed a pittance to her live-in maid; she failed to increase her annual tip to the doorman of her building in Manhattan for 37 years.

嘉宝曾多次成为百万富翁，而在1990年离世时，嘉宝给她的住家女佣留下了一笔极其微薄的遗产；住在她曼哈顿公寓的37年来，她一直未曾给门卫增加新年小费。

Luxuriously attired as Anna Karenina or Mata Hari, Garbo shone for the camera.

嘉宝奢华地打扮成安娜·卡列尼娜或玛塔·哈里的模样，在镜头前闪闪发光。

She swooned, she wept, she ravishingly died, a vision of unknowable Swedish beauty.

她昏倒了，她哭泣了，她令人神魂颠倒地死去了，这是一种道不明的瑞典之美。

The costumier at MGM remarked that no one else wore gowns with such ease.

米高梅的服装师说，没有人能像她那样如此自在地穿着礼服。

Her grey-blue eyes were her best feature and dazzled even in black and white.

她那灰蓝色的眼睛是她五官中最漂亮的一处，即使是在黑白照片中也令人倾倒。

As a teenager she beguiled the director Mauritz Stiller, who helped make her famous.

十几岁的时候，她曾骗过帮助她成名的导演莫里茨·斯蒂勒。

“There is something quite extraordinary about that girl,” he said. “I must discover what it is.”

他说：“那个女孩身上有一些非常特别的东西。”“我必须弄清楚那是什么。”

Mr Gottlieb, a former editor of the New Yorker and a distinguished book publisher, is a trenchant critic and not easily impressed.

戈特利布是一位尖锐的批评家，不易被打动，他曾是《纽约客》的编辑，也是一位杰出的图书出版商。

He listened to surreptitious recordings of Garbo’s phone calls “until I was so bored I couldn’t bear to go on”.

他偷听嘉宝的电话录音，“直到我无聊到无法继续听下去”。

Yet Garbo herself makes him giddy.

然而嘉宝本人却让他兴奋陶醉。

She reminds him “that life is not only difficult and painful but also worth living”.

她提醒他“生活不仅是艰难和痛苦的，而且是值得活下去的”。

That is high praise from the editor of Toni Morrison’s novels and the biographer of Balanchine, a choreographer of genius.

这是来自托尼·莫里森小说的编辑和天才编舞巴兰钦的传记作者的高度赞扬。

A paradox runs through this astute and entertaining book.

在这本机敏而有趣的书中贯穿着一个悖论。

It is a portrait of a celebrated actor whose films are mostly terrible.

它描绘了一位著名的演员，而她的电影大多很糟糕。

“Susan Lenox” is a “hodgepodge of nonsense”, says Mr Gottlieb; “Two-Faced Woman” is “a ghastly mess”.

戈特利布说，《苏珊·伦诺克斯》是“胡言乱语的大杂烩”；《两面派女人》是“一个可怕的烂摊子”。

Only “Camille” and “Ninotchka” receive enthusiastic praise—but even Garbo’s best films now come across as gauzy melodramas at best, camp spectacles at worst.

只有《卡米尔》和《尼诺奇卡》受到了热烈的赞扬——但即使是嘉宝最好的电影，往好了说是平平无奇的情节剧，往坏了说就是一些做作的表演。

She is the main reason to watch any of them.

人们观看这些电影的主要原因就是为了看她。

Even in an account as engaging as this, though, she appears vapid in her private life.

然而，即便是在如此动人的叙述中，她的私生活也显得索然无味。

She lacked intellectual curiosity, the author reports, and was not especially witty.

作者写道，她缺乏求知欲，也不是特别风趣。

She collected Renoirs but kept them wrapped in cheesecloth.

她收集雷诺阿的作品，但她把它们包在粗棉布里。

Her friends and lovers (reputedly of both sexes) were tossed away like handkerchiefs.

她抛弃朋友和情人（据说男女都有）像扔手绢一样随意。

Mr Gottlieb’s judgment is questionable in its generosity: “Certainly she used people ruthlessly, but people wanted to be used by her.”

戈特利布的评判过于宽容值得怀疑：“虽然她无情地利用人们，但人们希望被她利用。”

After professing an interest in the UN she was given a private tour, during which she opined on the colour of the carpets.

在声称对联合国感兴趣后，她被安排了一次私人参观，期间她对地毯的颜色评判了一番。

Tellingly, Mr Gottlieb compares Garbo to two other movie stars: Marilyn Monroe and Meryl Streep.

值得注意的是，戈特利布将嘉宝与另外两位电影明星相比较：玛丽莲·梦露和梅丽尔·斯特里普。

Although he praises Garbo’s acting, today anyone watching her embrace a bouquet of flowers in “A Woman of Affairs” may think she was overdoing it.

虽然他称赞嘉宝的演技，但今天任何人看到嘉宝在《风流韵事的女人》中抱着一束鲜花的表演，都会认为她演过头了。

She seems better paired with Monroe, remembered most for her allure and mystique, than with Ms Streep, a masterful thespian with chameleonic powers.

与斯特里普女士相比，她似乎更适合与梦露相比较，梦露最为人所熟知的是她的魅力和神秘感，而斯特里普女士则是一位拥有变色龙能力的大师级演员。

Garbo was an icon rather than an artist, famous for who she was rather than what she did.

嘉宝是一个偶像而不是一位艺术家，她出名是因为她是谁，而不是因为她做了什么。

“Maybe she wasn’t really very interesting,” Mr Gottlieb concludes of his elusive subject. “Who could tell?”

“或许她并不是特别有趣，”戈特利布在总结这个难以捉摸的话题时说道。“但谁又能搞清楚呢？”