2022.02.10 情人节 三角关系

shiyi18

VALENTINE’S DAY
Love triangles, from King Arthur to Beyoncé
Affairs of the heart are sometimes spiky



Feb 10th 2022
BY MATTHEW SWEET

In love, three is a magic number. Depending on the circumstances, that adds up to lies and betrayal, or the possibility of a brave new romantic world. Noël Coward gave us perfect proof of both sums. The first, “Brief Encounter” (1945), revolved around Laura, an English housewife, alienated, unsatisfied and deep in a crisis she can’t quite articulate. The other parts of the equation were Alec, a serious young medic, unexpectedly in love with a married woman, and Laura’s husband, Fred, sitting at home with the crossword unaware that his wife was listening to her doctor friend make a speech about lung diseases as if he were telling her that he loved her passionately, devotedly, hopelessly – because he does, and he is.

The film is now the textbook three-hanky weepie, though the test audience was less enthusiastic. (“Why doesn’t he just f**k her?” shouted one dissatisfied customer, according to one of the movie’s producers, Ronald Neame.)

The other sum is illustrated above. Coward, sprawled on the sofa with actors Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, is laughing the way they laughed a decade before, when they were struggling together in 1920s New York, and Coward promised that one day he would write a play for the couple. It was a clever promise: Fontanne and Lunt were so dependent on each other’s talents that, after 1928, they never worked separately again.


“Design for Living” (1932) is a battle report on the merry warfare between the combatants in a Bohemian ménage à trois comprising a painter, Otto (Lunt), his writer mate Leo (Coward) and Gilda (Fontanne), an interior designer who keeps both men close, but only so close. “It’s a gentleman’s agreement,” we’re told. The play produced such a crackle that parodies soon sprang up: “Duets are made for the bourgeoisie – oh, but only God can make a trio,” sang the cast of a Broadway revue “Life Begins at 8.40”.

The curtain of “Design for Living” falls on a scene much like the image above. What happens next? The play is coy about that. Such trios rarely get played through to the end. And if they are, as the following examples suggest, the final notes are often melancholy.


See you in court King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot

The Round Table didn’t have corners, but it did produce a triangle. It took a while, though. In the ninth-century versions of his story, King Arthur charged around, apparently carelessly single. Guinevere turned up in 1136, as a heroine of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain”, in which, disappointingly, her only job was to be a damsel, distressed by the villainous Mordred.

The Round Table was delivered in 1155, in Wace of Jersey’s “Roman de Brut”, with the customary, hr-approved explanation that meetings structured in this way encourage a feeling of equality. Then, a couple of decades later, Sir Lancelot galloped in – from a French source, Chrétien de Troy’s “Le Chevalier de la Charrette” (published around 1170) – to disrupt married life at Camelot. From this point, it all goes a bit “Jules et Jim”. By the time Thomas Malory produced his “Le Morte D’Arthur” (1485), the affair, with an emphasis on Guinevere’s unfaithfulness, had become so conventional that he spiced things up by adding another lover for Lancelot, called Elaine.


We needn’t worry about Elaine. Lancelot (virile, young, tempted), Guinevere (regal, untrustworthy), Arthur (ageing warrior, cuckolded) are the fixed vertices of this story. But Guinevere’s bad reputation should give us pause for thought. Much like Eve disrupting the bromance between God and Adam, the Queen of Albion is a very early example of a female figure who apparently makes alliances between men harder.

Not everyone used the Lancelot story to have a go at women. When Dryden and Purcell wrote “King Arthur” (1691), an allegorical work in praise of the joint sovereigns William III and Mary II, they dropped Guinevere and replaced her with a character of their own invention: Emmeline, a virtuous blind girl who gets lost in the forest. Casting aspersions on a mythical queen is one thing – implying to a real one that women aren’t up to the job of royal office has consequences.


Mortal wombat Jane Morris, Dante Rossetti and Top

If you wanted to be great mates with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Victorian poet, painter and high priest of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, there were rules you had to follow. “Rossetti was the planet around whom we revolved,” enthused an Oxford student in his orbit. “We copied his way of speaking. All beautiful women were ‘stunners’ with us. Wombats were the most beautiful of God’s creatures.”

These twin passions were hard to disentangle. Rossetti spent hours gazing into the “Wombat’s Lair” at London Zoo. In 1869 he acquired some snub-nosed Australian quadrupeds of his own, bought from Charles Jamrach, an East End animal dealer who kept Victorian England furnished with exotic beasts.

His favourite wombat, Top, became a tool of seduction. Rossetti had an intense attachment to an embroiderer called Jane Morris, who was the sullen, strong-jawed model for many of his paintings and wife of his fellow Pre-Raphaelite, William Morris. He drew her as a suffering saint, leading a wombat that represented her fuzzy cuckolded husband. (The relationship, among the most important of Rossetti’s life, may never have been consummated.)

As a pet-owner, Rossetti was more addict than expert. The register of deaths at his home on Cheyne Walk was compendious. Jessie the owl had her head bitten off by a raven. The armadillos burrowed into the neighbours’ garden, where they were poisoned by prussic acid. Two parakeets, a salamander, a lizard, a dormouse, a tortoise, a rabbit and two pigeons escaped, expired or were killed by jittery servants. But when a wombat went, it was properly mourned. Sometimes in verse.

“I never reared young Wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye
But, when he was most sweet & fat
And tail-less, he was sure to die!”

It’s not the greatest poem the 19th century ever produced. But it does express something rare. The kind of love that only a man and a marsupial can know.

Jane Morris received no such tribute. She left Rossetti in 1876, dismayed by his more mundane obsessions. You didn’t need to go to Jamrach’s to buy chloral hydrate, an unhealthy addiction Rossetti shared with many Victorians. It was available over the counter at every branch of Boots the Chemist.


Oh Daddy, you shouldn’t have Duncan Grant, Angelica Garnett and Bunny Garnett

The Bloomsbury Group, said Dorothy Parker, lived in squares and loved in triangles. But some triangles have sharp edges, and some sexual radicals can be as hurtfully secretive as the generation they rebel against, as the life of mosaic-maker Angelica Garnett shows. In the summer of 1937, when she was 18, Angelica’s mother, painter Vanessa Bell, took to her one side and explained that her real father was not the critic Clive Bell, but her lover and Fitzroy Square neighbour, artist Duncan Grant. This information did not produce a great family realignment: Vanessa advised her daughter not to discuss it with Clive; Angelica never raised the matter with Grant.


A year later, another layer of secrets started to be overlaid. Angelica began an affair with a married family friend, David Garnett, nicknamed “Bunny” after a rabbit-skin cloak he wore as a child. He soon became a widower. In 1942 Angelica became his wife and one of the few people in their immediate circle who didn’t know that the groom had once been the lover of Duncan Grant and had even tried it on with Vanessa Bell. Incredibly, Garnett had been present at Angelica’s birth. When the baby was weighed in a shoebox on the kitchen scales, Garnett wrote to Lytton Strachey: “Its beauty is the remarkable thing…I think of marrying it; when she is 20 I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous?” It wasn’t, because nobody really talked about it.

One of the key stories of Bloomsbury lore asserts that the modern world began on a spring evening in 1908, in a flat on Gordon Square. Lytton Strachey walked into the drawing room and pointed at a white mark on Vanessa Bell’s dress. “Semen?” he asked. “With that one word”, wrote Virginia Woolf, “all barriers of reticence and reserve went down…It was, I think, a great advance in civilisation.” The anecdote remained unpublished until 1976, once everyone in the room that day was safely and unembarrassably dead.


Death Stars Pamela Ostrer, Roy Kellino and James Mason

Some affairs leave little trace: others are captured on film. “I Met a Murderer” (1939) isn’t a well-known movie. It’s a modest British indie suspense caper made entirely on location, because that was cheaper than hiring a soundstage, and funded from the savings of those involved. The director, Roy Kellino, was an up-and-coming talent who seemed to have guaranteed his future by marrying Pamela Ostrer, the smart, spoilt and sexy offspring of the boss of Gainsborough studios. Mrs Kellino was the I in “I Met a Murderer”. The murderer was James Mason, not quite yet the smoky-voiced, faintly sadistic leading man of the British screen, but already Mrs Kellino’s lover.

In the film, Mason plays a farmer whose poisonous spouse kills his faithful collie out of spite. He digs a grave for the dog, fills it with his wife’s freshly slaughtered body, and goes on the run – where he meets a young caravanner, a thriller-writer desperate for new material for her latest page-turner. The film is full of wit and strangeness. Mason avoids detection by lying in a haystack with the corpse as if it were his paramour. When he strips to the waist for a swim, Kellino’s camera seems besotted: it drinks in the lines of his torso.

Their ménage à trois was established in 1936. Mason would turn up at the Kellinos’ mansion flat near Baker Street station and enthuse about the movies. They made plans, worked on their script, took seaside holidays together and walked down the promenade in a manner that caused onlookers to question who was married to whom. Once filming on “I Met a Murderer” was complete, the triangle turned. Roy Kellino moved into Mason’s bachelor flat in Marylebone; Mason took up residence on Baker Street. An intercom was installed, so messages could be left for either man without attracting suspicion.

When the divorce came, Roy Kellino suddenly discovered his own anger and named Mason as correspondent. The anger didn’t last. He gave his ex-wife away at her wedding to Mason in 1940 and directed the pair in “Charade” (1953). But not everyone in Hollywood found Pamela Mason instantly charming. One wit suggested that she had been “vaccinated with a phonograph needle”. Perhaps Roy Kellino was glad to get the tune out of his head.


Play it again “Casablanca” with Rick, Ilsa and Victor

Love depends on chance meetings, frail coincidences. So does cinema. “Casablanca” (1942) went into production because Jack Warner wanted his film studio to be aligned against Hitler. Its hero, Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine, a cynical bystander in neutral French Morocco, is on the journey that Warner wanted for America. “I stick my neck out for nobody,” Rick declares, early in the movie. Then his old flame Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and her antifa husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) arrive like a two-person Pearl Harbour.

Rick’s and Ilsa’s song, “As Time Goes By”, was an old Herman Hupfield number that featured in the stage play on which the script was based. The film’s composer, Max Steiner, wanted to replace it. But the piano scenes were already shot and Bergman had cut her hair short to play the lead in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, so Steiner swallowed his pride and incorporated “As Time Goes By” into his score. One verse hit the floor, in which Hupfield expresses his “apprehension” about the “fourth dimension”. (“We get a trifle weary”, he says, “with Mr. Einstein’s theory.”)


It’s the lost key to the story of Rick, Ilsa and Victor. “As Time Goes By” is a song that rejects both general relativity and moral relativism – in the context of a story that demonstrates that some principles are too important, too fundamental, to compromise. Rick and Ilsa sacrifice their personal happiness for the good of the war effort. That’s what makes the movie so powerful.

But the universe had already rewarded them for their selflessness. In the first year of the conflict, they fell in love in France. (“The Germans wore grey,” recalls Rick. “You wore blue.”) Their memories of that affair are unassailable, eternal, sealed up in that famous flashback sequence. France may have fallen to the Nazis, but Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris.


Three’s a crowd Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Camilla

Martin Bashir’s interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1995 was obtained through forgery. But it did produce something genuine: the accurate headcount of a royal marriage. In the footage, the bbc reporter asks her if “Mrs Parker-Bowles” – a phrase as formal as anything that ever chilled the air of a divorce court – had been “a factor” in the breakdown of her relationship with her husband.

“Well”, she replies, smiling the stoical smile that many women of her class learned from their mothers, “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” But the real moment of revelation comes immediately after. Diana drops her eyes, releases a breath that fails to build to a rueful laugh, then stops. The humour drains from her features. She is looking at the floor, like you look at the floor of the therapy room. Desolately.

Crowded. Diana chose the right adjective; one that suggested that she felt robbed of necessary solitude in her private as well as her public life. On the street, clamour, bouquets, paparazzi; at home, other unwelcome forms of proximity. Crowds materialised at her death, too. Bystanders hurled flowers at the cortège. A vast congregation gathered in Hyde Park to hear the live relay from Westminster Abbey. When Diana’s brother delivered an angry eulogy, a shiver went through that body of people: was this Catholic England stirring? Only briefly. In the end, Diana’s tomb failed to become the locus for a Catholic comeback; Charles and Camilla were married in 2005.

Recently, however, fiction has revived the cult of Diana. The 2020 series of “The Crown” made her a tragic soap opera heroine. (She returns this year.) “Diana the Musical” (2021) became a kitsch Netflix hit. Pablo Larraín’s astonishing “Spencer” (2021) – a dreamlike, stylised opera without singing – raised her pale ghost in the cinema. She is back in the conversation, making her presence felt. Her turn to chill the room, perhaps.


Good hair day Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Becky

In “The Death of the Author” (1967), French literary theorist Roland Barthes warned that it was a mistake to treat literary works as a form of biography. When we read Balzac, he asked, whose voice are we hearing? We can’t know. Barthes’s own death came in 1980, when he was run over by a laundry truck – which is just one reason why he was unable to remind us of this in 2016, when critics and commentators scrambled to discover the identity of “Becky with the good hair” in Beyoncé’s album “Lemonade”.

In “Sorry”, the most talked-about track on Queen B’s sixth studio album, the speaker addresses a cheating husband, assuring him that his infidelities are meaningless to her. (“Stop interrupting my grinding”, she sings, “I ain’t thinking ‘bout you.”) The song ends with a pay-off as sharp as anything you’ll find in the flyting tradition of the 15th-century Scottish court. She sees boppers (groupies) sneaking off the premises and, concluding that her partner desires her only in her absence, advises him to call Becky.

No use looking for anyone of that name. It’s a pejorative American slang term, defined by the New Statesman (that well-known authority on such matters), as “a white girl who loves Starbucks and Uggs and is clueless about racial and social issues” – and who probably posts photographs of her Frappuccino. But that didn’t stop the showbiz media in America trying to hunt down an original, assuming her to be the mistress of Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z. Was she Rita Ora? (No.) Was she the fashion designer Rachel Roy? (Apparently not, despite her teasing Instagram caption suggesting as much.) Was she Gwyneth Paltrow? (“Completely absurd,” said the seller of vagina-scented candles.)

Jay-Z has confessed to infidelity during his marriage, but the couple remain together. Perhaps the song itself is telling us not to overestimate the overlap between life and art. “Suck on my balls,” says Beyoncé’s unbowed narrator. Not Balzac, but close.■

Matthew Sweet is a regular contributor to 1843 magazine, and a writer and broadcaster in London

images: getty, bridgeman images/dacs, the charleston trust, national portrait gallery, london, splash




情人节
三角关系，从亚瑟王到碧昂斯的三角关系
心灵的事务有时是尖锐的



2022年2月10日
作者：马修-斯威特

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在爱情中，三是一个神奇的数字。根据不同的情况，这就意味着谎言和背叛，或者是一个勇敢的新浪漫世界的可能性。诺埃尔-考沃德为我们提供了这两个数字的完美证明。第一部是 "短暂的邂逅"（1945年），围绕着劳拉，一个英国家庭主妇，被疏远，不满足，深陷于她不能完全表达的危机。等式的其他部分是阿莱克，一个严肃的年轻军医，意外地爱上了一个已婚妇女，以及劳拉的丈夫弗雷德，他坐在家里做填字游戏，不知道他的妻子正在听她的医生朋友做关于肺部疾病的演讲，好像他在告诉她，他热情地、执着地、无可救药地爱着她--因为他确实如此，而且他就是如此。

这部电影现在是教科书式的三段式哭泣片，尽管测试观众的热情不高。(据电影制片人之一罗纳德-尼姆（Ronald Neame）说，"他为什么不直接和她做爱？"一位不满意的顾客喊道）。

另一笔是在上面说明的。科沃德与演员林恩-方坦（Lynn Fontanne）和阿尔弗雷德-伦特（Alfred Lunt）一起躺在沙发上，正像十年前他们所笑的那样，当时他们在1920年代的纽约一起奋斗，科沃德承诺有一天他会为这对夫妇写一部剧本。这是一个聪明的承诺：丰塔纳和伦特是如此依赖对方的才能，以至于在1928年之后，他们再也没有分开工作。


"生活设计》（1932年）是一份关于波西米亚三人行中的战斗人员之间的欢乐战争的报告，三人行包括画家奥托（伦特）、他的作家伙伴利奥（考华德）和吉尔达（方塔娜），她是一名室内设计师，让两个人都很亲密，但也只是如此亲密。"这是一个绅士的协议，"我们被告知。这部剧产生了如此大的反响，以至于很快就出现了模仿者。"二重唱是为资产阶级量身定做的--哦，但只有上帝才能做出三重唱，"百老汇剧团 "生活从8.40开始 "的演员唱道。

生活的设计》的幕布落在一个很像上面图片的场景上。接下来会发生什么？这部剧对这个问题避而不谈。这样的三重奏很少能演到最后。即使有，正如下面的例子所示，最后的音符往往是忧郁的。


法庭上见 亚瑟王、圭尼维尔和兰斯洛特

圆桌没有角，但它确实产生了一个三角形。不过，这需要一段时间。在第九世纪的故事版本中，亚瑟王四处冲杀，显然是漫不经心的单身。吉娜薇在1136年出现，是蒙茅斯的杰弗里的《不列颠国王史》中的女主角，令人失望的是，在该书中，她唯一的工作就是做一个被邪恶的莫德雷德所困扰的女郎。

圆桌会议于1155年在泽西的韦斯（Wace of Jersey）的 "Roman de Brut "中提出，并按照惯例作出解释，说以这种方式组织的会议鼓励平等的感觉。然后，几十年后，兰斯洛特爵士飞奔而来--来自法国的资料，克雷蒂安-德-特洛伊的 "Le Chevalier de la Charrette"（约1170年出版）--破坏了卡美洛的婚姻生活。从这一点来看，一切都有点 "朱尔斯和吉姆 "的味道。到了托马斯-马洛里创作《亚瑟王之死》（1485年）的时候，这段强调吉尼维尔不忠的风流韵事已经变得如此传统，以至于他为兰斯洛特增加了另一个情人，叫做伊莱恩，使事情变得更加精彩。


我们不需要担心伊莱恩。兰斯洛特（阳刚、年轻、受诱惑）、关妮薇儿（高贵、不值得信赖）、亚瑟（年老的战士、被戴绿帽子）是这个故事的固定顶点。但关妮薇儿的坏名声应该让我们暂停思考。就像夏娃破坏了上帝和亚当之间的情谊一样，阿尔比恩女王是一个非常早期的例子，她的女性形象显然让男人之间的联盟变得更加艰难。

并非所有人都利用兰斯洛特的故事来抨击女性。当德莱登和珀塞尔写《亚瑟王》（1691年）时，这是一部赞美威廉三世和玛丽二世联合君主的寓言作品，他们放弃了吉尼维尔，用他们自己发明的人物取代她。艾美琳，一个在森林中迷路的贤惠的盲女。对一个神话中的女王进行诽谤是一回事--对一个真实的女王暗示女性不能胜任王室的工作是有后果的。


凡夫俗子简-莫里斯、但丁-罗塞蒂和托普

如果你想和但丁-加布里埃尔-罗塞蒂--维多利亚时代的诗人、画家和拉斐尔前派兄弟会的大祭司成为好朋友，你必须遵守一些规则。"罗塞蒂是我们围绕的星球，"他身边的一位牛津学生兴奋地说。"我们模仿他说话的方式。所有漂亮的女人在我们这里都是'尤物'。袋熊是上帝创造的最美丽的生物。"

这对双胞胎的激情难以割舍。罗塞蒂花了几个小时凝视伦敦动物园里的 "袋熊巢穴"。1869年，他获得了一些他自己的澳大利亚四足动物，这些动物是从查尔斯-贾姆拉赫那里买来的，贾姆拉赫是东区的一个动物经销商，他让维多利亚时代的英国充满了奇异的野兽。

他最喜欢的袋熊 "托普 "成了诱惑的工具。罗塞蒂对一个叫简-莫里斯的刺绣师有着强烈的依恋，她是他许多画作的模特，也是他的拉斐尔前派成员威廉-莫里斯的妻子，性格沉闷、下巴强硬。他把她画成一个受苦的圣人，领着一只袋熊，这只袋熊代表她那被戴了绿帽子的模糊丈夫。（这段关系是罗塞蒂一生中最重要的关系之一，可能从未完成。）

作为一个宠物主人，罗塞蒂与其说是专家，不如说是瘾君子。在他位于Cheyne Walk的家中，死亡登记册上记录了大量的信息。猫头鹰杰西的头被乌鸦咬掉了。犰狳钻进了邻居家的花园，在那里它们被普鲁士酸毒死。两只鹦鹉、一只蝾螈、一只蜥蜴、一只睡鼠、一只乌龟、一只兔子和两只鸽子逃跑了，或者被紧张的仆人杀死了。但是，当袋熊离开时，它被适当地哀悼了。有时是用诗句。

"我从未养过小袋熊
用他的针孔眼让我高兴
但是，当它最可爱、最胖的时候
没有尾巴的时候，他肯定会死！"

这不是19世纪有史以来最伟大的诗篇。但它确实表达了一些罕见的东西。那种只有男人和有袋动物才能体会到的爱。

简-莫里斯没有得到这样的赞誉。她于1876年离开罗塞蒂，对他更多的世俗迷恋感到失望。你不需要去Jamrach's买水合氯醛，罗塞蒂和许多维多利亚人一样有这种不健康的嗜好。它在博姿药剂师的每家分店的柜台上都能买到。


哦，爸爸，你不应该让邓肯-格兰特、安吉里卡-加内特和邦妮-加内特

多萝西-帕克说，布鲁姆斯伯里集团生活在方块中，爱在三角形中。但有些三角形有锋利的边缘，有些性激进分子可以像他们所反抗的那一代人一样令人痛心地隐瞒，正如马赛克制作者安吉里卡-加内特的生活所显示的。1937年夏天，当她18岁的时候，安吉丽卡的母亲，画家瓦妮莎-贝尔，站在她的一边，解释说她真正的父亲不是批评家克莱夫-贝尔，而是她的情人和菲茨罗伊广场的邻居，艺术家邓肯-格兰特。这一信息并没有产生巨大的家庭调整。瓦妮莎建议她的女儿不要与克莱夫讨论这个问题；安吉丽卡从未向格兰特提出过这个问题。


一年后，另一层秘密开始被叠加起来。安吉里卡开始与一个已婚的家庭朋友大卫-加内特（David Garnett）发生关系，加内特因他小时候穿的一件兔皮斗篷而被昵称为 "兔子"。他很快就成了一个鳏夫。1942年，安吉丽卡成为他的妻子，也是他们身边为数不多的不知道新郎曾是邓肯-格兰特的情人，甚至曾与瓦妮莎-贝尔试过的人之一。令人难以置信的是，加内特在安吉丽卡出生时也在场。当婴儿在厨房的天平上用鞋盒称重时，加内特给莱顿-斯特拉奇写道："它的美丽是最了不起的......我想和它结婚；当她20岁的时候，我就46岁了--这会不会很丑陋？" 不会，因为没有人真正谈论过它。

布卢姆斯伯里传说中的一个重要故事声称，现代世界始于1908年的一个春天的晚上，在戈登广场的一个公寓里。莱顿-斯特拉奇走进客厅，指着瓦妮莎-贝尔衣服上的一个白印。"精液？"他问。"弗吉尼亚-伍尔夫写道："随着这一句话，所有的缄默和矜持的障碍都消失了......我想，这是文明的一大进步。这段轶事直到1976年才被发表，因为那天在房间里的每个人都已经安全地、毫无尴尬地死去了。


死亡之星帕梅拉-奥斯特尔、罗伊-凯利诺和詹姆斯-梅森

有些风流韵事几乎不留痕迹：有些则被拍成了电影。"我遇到了一个杀人犯"（1939）并不是一部著名的电影。它是一部规模不大的英国独立悬疑片，完全在现场制作，因为这比雇佣一个声场要便宜，而且资金来自参与拍摄的人的储蓄。导演罗伊-凯利诺是一个新兴的人才，他似乎通过与帕梅拉-奥斯特拉结婚来保证自己的未来，她是甘斯伯勒工作室老板的聪明、娇气和性感的后代。凯利诺夫人是《我遇到了一个杀人犯》中的I。凶手是詹姆斯-梅森（James Mason），他还不是英国银幕上那个烟熏火燎、略带虐待倾向的男主角，但已经是凯利诺夫人的情人。

在影片中，梅森扮演一个农夫，他的有毒配偶出于怨恨，杀死了他忠实的牧羊犬。他为狗挖了一个坟墓，填上他妻子刚被宰杀的尸体，然后开始逃亡--在那里他遇到了一个年轻的大篷车司机，一个急于为她最新的翻页小说寻找新材料的惊悚作家。这部电影充满了智慧和怪异。梅森为了避免被发现，和尸体一起躺在干草堆里，仿佛那是他的姘头。当他脱光衣服去游泳时，凯利诺的摄像机似乎很着迷：它把他的躯干的线条看得很清楚。

他们的 "三人行 "是在1936年建立的。梅森会出现在贝克街车站附近凯利诺家的豪宅公寓里，对电影赞不绝口。他们制定计划，编写剧本，一起去海边度假，并以一种令旁观者怀疑谁是谁的妻子的方式走在海滨大道上。一旦 "我遇到了一个杀人犯 "的拍摄工作完成，三角关系就发生了变化。罗伊-凯利诺搬进了梅森在玛丽波恩的单身公寓；梅森在贝克街住了下来。安装了一个对讲机，因此可以在不引起怀疑的情况下给任何一个人留信息。

当离婚的时候，罗伊-凯利诺突然发现自己的愤怒，并指定梅森为通讯员。这种愤怒并没有持续下去。1940年，他在前妻与梅森的婚礼上把她送走，并在《魅力四射》（1953年）中导演了这对夫妇。但在好莱坞，并不是每个人都觉得帕梅拉-梅森立刻就有魅力了。有一个人建议她 "用留声机针头注射疫苗"。也许罗伊-凯利诺很高兴能把这首曲子从他的脑海中删除。


再次播放《卡萨布兰卡》中的里克、伊尔莎和维克多

爱情取决于偶然的相遇，脆弱的巧合。电影也是如此。"卡萨布兰卡》（1942年）的制作是因为杰克-华纳希望他的电影公司与希特勒保持一致。它的主人公，汉弗莱-鲍嘉饰演的里克-布莱恩，是中立的法国摩洛哥的一个愤世嫉俗的旁观者，正走在华纳希望美国走的路上。在电影的早期，里克宣称："我不为任何人伸出我的脖子"。然后，他的老情人伊尔莎（英格丽-褒曼）和她的反法西斯丈夫维克多-拉斯洛（保罗-亨瑞德）像一个双人珍珠港一样到来。

里克和伊尔莎的歌曲 "As Time Goes By "是赫尔曼-胡菲德（Herman Hupfield）的一首老歌，在剧本所依据的舞台剧中出现。影片的作曲家马克斯-斯坦纳（Max Steiner）想取代它。但钢琴戏已经拍完了，而且褒曼为了演《丧钟为谁而鸣》的主角而剪了短发，所以施泰纳忍痛割爱，把《时光流逝》纳入了他的配乐。有一节打在地板上，胡菲德在其中表达了他对 "第四维 "的 "忧虑"。(他说，"我们对爱因斯坦先生的理论感到有点厌倦"）。


它是里克、伊尔莎和维克多的故事中丢失的钥匙。"As Time Goes By "是一首反对广义相对论和道德相对论的歌曲--在一个证明有些原则太重要、太根本、不能妥协的故事背景下。里克和伊尔莎为了战争的利益而牺牲了他们的个人幸福。这就是这部电影的强大之处。

但是，宇宙已经对他们的无私奉献进行了奖励。在冲突的第一年，他们在法国相爱了。("德国人穿灰色的衣服，"里克回忆说。"你穿蓝色的衣服。")他们对那段恋情的记忆是不可动摇的，是永恒的，封存在那个著名的闪回序列中。法国可能已经落入纳粹之手，但里克和伊尔莎将永远拥有巴黎。


三人行必有我师 查尔斯王子、戴安娜王妃和卡米拉

马丁-巴希尔1995年对威尔士王妃戴安娜的采访是通过造假获得的。但它确实产生了一些真实的东西：王室婚姻的准确人数。在录像中，bbc记者问她，"帕克-鲍尔斯夫人"--这个短语与离婚法庭上的任何东西一样正式--是否是她与丈夫关系破裂的 "一个因素"。

"嗯"，她回答说，露出了她那个阶层的许多妇女从母亲那里学来的坚毅的笑容，"我们这段婚姻中有三个人，所以有点拥挤"。但真正的启示时刻紧接着到来。戴安娜垂下眼帘，释放出一股未能形成毁誉参半的笑声的气息，然后停下来。幽默感从她的五官中流走了。她正看着地板，就像你看着治疗室的地板。怅然若失。

拥挤不堪。戴安娜选择了正确的形容词；一个表明她感到在她的私人和公共生活中被剥夺了必要的孤独。在街上，喧嚣、花束、狗仔队；在家里，其他不受欢迎的接近形式。在她去世的时候，也有很多人围观。旁观者向送葬队伍投掷鲜花。大量的人群聚集在海德公园，聆听来自威斯敏斯特教堂的现场转播。当戴安娜的哥哥发表愤怒的悼词时，一群人不禁打了个寒颤：这个天主教的英国在蠢蠢欲动吗？只是短暂的。最终，戴安娜的坟墓没能成为天主教复辟的场所；查尔斯和卡米拉在2005年结婚。

然而，最近，小说恢复了对戴安娜的崇拜。2020年的《王冠》系列使她成为悲剧性的肥皂剧女主角。(她今年又回来了。）"戴安娜音乐剧"（2021年）成为Netflix的一个俗套的热门。巴勃罗-拉腊因(Pablo Larraín)令人震惊的 "斯宾塞"（2021年）--一部如梦如幻、没有歌唱的风格化歌剧--让她在电影院里的苍白幽灵复活。她又回到了谈话中，让人感受到她的存在。也许轮到她来寒暄了。


好发日碧昂斯、Jay-Z和贝基

在《作者之死》（1967年）中，法国文学理论家罗兰-巴特警告说，把文学作品当作一种传记形式是一个错误。他问，当我们阅读巴尔扎克时，我们听到的是谁的声音？我们不可能知道。巴特自己在1980年去世，当时他被一辆洗衣车碾过--这只是他在2016年无法提醒我们的一个原因，当时批评家和评论家们争相发现碧昂斯的专辑《Lemonade》中 "头发好的贝基 "的身份。

在B女王第六张录音室专辑中最受关注的曲目 "Sorry "中，说话者对一个出轨的丈夫说，向他保证他的不忠行为对她来说毫无意义。(她唱道："不要再打断我的研磨"，"我不是在想你。"）这首歌的结尾，是一个你能在15世纪苏格兰宫廷的飞行传统中找到的尖锐回报。她看到一群人偷偷溜走，并得出结论，她的伙伴只是在她不在的时候才想得到她，建议他给贝基打电话。

找这个名字的人没有用。这是一个贬义的美国俚语，由《新政治家》（关于此类问题的著名权威）定义为 "一个喜欢星巴克和UGG的白人女孩，对种族和社会问题一无所知"--而且她可能会张贴她的星冰乐照片。但这并没有阻止美国的演艺界媒体试图寻找一个原形，认为她是碧昂斯的丈夫Jay-Z的情妇。她是丽塔-奥拉吗？(不是。）她是时装设计师Rachel Roy吗？(显然不是，尽管她在Instagram上的逗趣标题暗示了这一点。）她是格温妮丝-帕特洛吗？("完全荒谬，"卖阴道香味蜡烛的人说。)

Jay-Z已经承认在他的婚姻期间有不忠行为，但这对夫妇仍然在一起。也许这首歌本身就是在告诉我们不要高估生活和艺术之间的重叠。"吸吮我的睾丸"，碧昂斯不屈不挠的叙述者说。不是巴尔扎克，但很接近。

马修-斯威特是《1843》杂志的定期撰稿人，也是伦敦的作家和广播员。

图片：Getty，Bridgeman Images/Dacs，Charleston Trust，National Portrait Gallery，London，splash