探长来访

One must appreciate the brevity of AN INSPECTOR CALLS, running a breathless 80 minutes and directed by future 007 helmer Guy Hamilton, the whole story is condensed into one single night in 1912, the Birlings, a silk-stocking British family celebrates the engagement of Sheila (Moore) and Gerald Croft (Worth), with the presence of her parents Arthur (Young) and Sybil (Lindo), and her already tipsy brother Eric (Forbes).

The festivity is precipitately interrupted by the advent of Inspector Poole (Sim), who simply materializes out of thin air in the dining room (instead of coming from the main entrance, which is differed from J.B. Priestley’s source play), attendant with an ominous score, which foreshadows something that turns out to be rather surreal. Poole claims that he is investigating an apparent suicidal case of a young woman named Eva Smith (Wenham, first wife of Albert Finney), and in a sequential order, he tactically and competently proves that Arthur, Sheila, Gerald, Sybil and Eric, to different extents, all should be answerable for Eva’s despondency and her ultimate demise, but cagily, he only shows the picture of Eva (who later rechristened as Daisy Renton) to one individual a time.

Flashback is concisely interspersed to reveal each of the quintet’s respective involvement in Eva’s downward spiral, to them, she is a recalcitrant employee, an impudent shop assistant, a low-hanging damsel in distress, an insolent charity seeker and a good-hearted sympathizer who cannot resist boyish charm. Subjugated to iniquity and cruelty (a cocktail of sexual agendas, moral haughtiness, peer jealousy, capitalistic cupidity and lack of empathy), Eva/Daisy represents the countless, down-trodden have-nots whose misfortune is cumulatively (if unintentionally) sealed by bias, selfishness, wantonness of those well-to-do members of the society, this message is bluntly blurted out by Sheila in a later stage, which shows Priestley’s lenient stance towards the younger generation’s repentance and malleability, at the same time counterpoises the older one’s fossilized intractability.

But bewilderment remains, apart from whether Eva/Daisy is the same person, or even if she really exists at all, once Poole’s identity is being challenged, and screenwriter Desmond Davis fine-tunes the play’s ending by doubling down the mystical impact, not just Poole might be a compassionate soothsayer, also suggested by his entrance and attested by his egress, he might be entirely the figment of the Birlings’s consciousness.

Performance wise, the core cast is solid if nothing too spectacular to bowl audience over, mainly thanks to the rote dialogue and narrative development (except that shark-jumping ending), Priestley has good conscience and intention, but his wording, more often than not, feels prosaic and didactic. Among them, Sim’s gravitas vehemently holds sway; future director Forbes exudes a disarming facet that might alleviate Eric’s cardinal foibles a bit; Lindo’s matriarchal Sybil is a grand dame, but all things considered, her moral superiority is the least deplorable attribute in the context (where a lippy Eva doesn’t pass muster as a sympathetic beseecher), yet, she has to take the blow for being a mollycoddling mother, a faint whiff of sexism plumes out inadvertently. Last but not the least, it is Wenham’s embodiment of Eva’s throbbing vulnerability that stands out, a young woman whose self-knowledge and kindness cannot save her from perdition, right from her hearty laughter in the very first scene to a misty-eyed dejection in the very last one, she is the soul of this approachable parable, proselytizing us to heed the collateral damage of our day-to-day comportment.

referential entries: Hamilton’s GOLDFINGER (1964, 6.4/10), THE MIRROR CRACK’D (1980, 6.2/10).

我发现我喜欢啥了

一定得有一个固定的“主体空间”，再有别的次要小空间；是喜剧的核，配上镜头语言的调度。

一步步拆穿女孩的谎言很有意思

晚饭一定要自己做，有烛光，古典音乐和酒，罗曼蒂克的超杀模式。

房间里所有的人和一个人有联系，又一个经典的故事模版。【这个故事模版很容易造好看的电影，因为戏剧冲突太强了，虽然是强拉的，但只要表演过关，就不成问题，我能想到的是《如月疑云》，后来完全翻拍的《罪恶之家》，《雷雨》是不是比这个早啊，看来《雷雨》是鼻祖？】

麦格芬人物必须是死了对么，有没有别的可能？比如失踪？比如犯了大事关进监狱？我想到“上街女孩”那个本子，跟这个似乎有点像，但好像粗制滥造，当时也觉得有点强拉关系，但观众似乎就是想看能强拉出怎样的关系。

戏剧啊，某种意义上，就是无限的巧合形成了一个圆。

人数一定要是5个么？还是说5个为最佳，符合时间，突然想起来《如月疑云》的改变在于没有探长，更加简化，其实确实可以去掉探长这个角色，他只是一个连接点，提供更进一步的信息，这个信息确实可以由角色们自己发现。

最后儿子的部分确实能展现麦格芬女孩伊娃的好（帮他付钱），但别的部分却不能（母亲的部分不明显），只有每一个部分都展现好才能一路共情吧？还是要的就是克制共情？不应该啊，我觉得父亲和女儿的部分设计的太弱化，还是说专门就这么设计，由浅入深，但总应该在这两个部分突出以娃的好～

“你并不爱我，你只是孤独而已，我也一样。”

只有在不孤独的时候，才算是爱嚒...

这也许就是射手座的根了，似乎，除了那一年四月的两周，与极少数的某些时刻，一直都很孤独；【喜欢不喜欢自己的人原来是个虚假的概念，真正背后的意义是，一直都很孤独。】

《如月疑云》没有蝴蝶效应，这个还多了一层蝴蝶效应在里面，各有取舍吧，可以和不同的套路做结合。

不过话说回来了，三观有问题，资本家又做错了什么呢？他们难道不是靠自己的努力才获得了资源？

MGB我就知道最后人会消失！！！那个演员的眼神就不对，他对于一切都那么平静，没有感情，就不像是活人...（活人都是有喜怒哀惧的），最后这结尾真是神来之笔...5星5星...双重麦格芬，强拉虚拟魔幻处理。

阿拉斯塔尔·西姆、亚历克·吉尼斯，英国真是出些这种怪才演员。

其实还有另一重东西在里面，就是连续巧合的合理性，直到最后才开始怀疑，也不过蜻蜓点水提了一笔。