5.《少年福尔摩斯》
Young Sherlock Holmes was not the first movie to feature computer animation, but it was the first to feature a hyper-realistic CGI character that had to be both scanned and painted onto the film. In retrospect, the scene may seem relatively simple: Sherlock Holmes battling a glass figure that comes alive out of a stained glass illustration. However, without this scene, we may never have had the denizens of future hits Toy Story and Frozen.
《少年福尔摩斯》不是第一部使用电脑动画的电影，但它是第一部使用超现实CGI人物的电影，这些人物必须扫描并绘制到胶片上。现在看来，这些场景未免相对简单：一个玻璃人从一幅着色玻璃插画里走出来，夏洛克·福尔摩斯与他搏斗。但是，如果没有这个场景，我们可能看不见后来大片《玩具总动员》（Toy Story）和《冰雪奇缘》（Frozen）里特有的居民。
This simple scene showed that CGI was not just useful for the SFX spectacle of films such as Star Trek—it could be used to create characters entirely. Without this movie, we would never have such icons of CGI achievement as Gollum from the Lord of the Rings series. More interestingly, the stained-glass knight character was animated by no other than John Lasseter, who would go on to found Pixar and create memorable characters such as Woody and Buzz Lightyear before the company was acquired by Disney.
这个简单场景表明，CGI不只对《星际迷航》（Star Trek）这些电影的特效景象有用——它可以用来创造完整的角色。没有这部电影，我们可能永远不会有凭借CGI成功塑造的形象，比如《指环王》系列的咕噜（Gollum）。更有趣的是，着色玻璃骑士正是由约翰·拉塞特（John Lasseter）制作的；约翰后来创建了皮克斯，还创造了家喻户晓的角色，比如胡迪（Woody）和巴斯光年（Buzz Lightyear），后来这家公司被迪斯尼并购了。
4.《一个国家的诞生》
D.W. Griffith's landmark film occupies a dubious place in history. On the most basic level, it's notable for being the first full-length movie. The success of the three-hour film showed that movies could be more than just simple clips and instead tell an expansive story. Unfortunately, the story Griffith chose to tell is horrifically racist.
D·W·格里菲斯（D.W. Griffith）标志性的电影在历史上的地位很不稳固。就最基本的层面而言，其出名的原因在于它是第一部长度完整的影片。这部时长3小时的电影成功了，说明电影不仅仅是简单的镜头集合，还可以讲述叙事空间广大的故事。可惜的是，格里菲斯挑选的故事带有严重的种族偏见。
The film's original title, The Clansman, is much more honest about what the film portrays. While the plot concentrates on two families after the Civil War, the alternately lazy, dangerous, and lecherous black characters played by white actors in blackface steal the show. These despicable figures threaten to overrun the South until the heroic Ku Klux Klan saves the day. Thankfully, Hollywood sought to emulate the film's artistic achievements (the idea of multiple plots, pacing, structure, and groundbreaking camera work) and not its shocking content.
最初的片名，《宗族》（The Clansman），更忠实于影片的内容。尽管情节集中于美国内战后的两个家庭，但是由白人演员扮演的黑人角色带有某些问题——比如懒散、危险或者好色，却喧宾夺主。这些遭到憎恶的人威胁要占领南部地区，直到英勇的3K党力挽狂澜。幸运的是，好莱坞希望能复制这部电影的艺术成就（多重情节的想法、节奏、结构，还有全新的摄影工作），而不是它惊人的内容。
3.《午夜牛仔》
Today, most of us wouldn't be shocked by the sex, drugs, and nudity portrayed in Midnight Cowboy, allowing us to focus on its message about the bond forged between outcasts in an oppressive and uncaring world. In 1969, however, the Motion Picture Association of America sang a different tune when they gave this non-pornographic movie an “X” rating.
现在，大部分人不会为《午夜牛仔》展现的性、毒品和裸体感到惊讶，更能把注意力集中到这部影片表达的信息上——罪犯之间的关系，这些罪犯生活在一个充满压迫、彼此漠不关心的世界里。但是，1969年，美国电影协会发出了不同的声音，把这部非色情影片定位为“X”级。
An X rating is normally a death sentence for a movie. However, Midnight Cowboy managed to transcend that barrier, remaining the only X-rated movie to receive the Best Picture Oscar. In total, it was nominated in seven categories at that year's Academy Awards and won three of them. The next year, the movie's rating was downgraded to an R.The movie's artistic legacy is no small achievement. It created an ongoing conversation about the divide between pornography and art, forcing the audiences of future decades not to dismiss a movie's artistic value due to its adult content. It also helped to soften the rating policies followed by the MPAA, who reluctantly acknowledged that a movie with such widespread appeal and a plethora of Oscar nominations couldn't be considered obscene.
X级对电影而言通常就是死刑。然而，《午夜牛仔》成功地翻越了这个障碍，成为唯一一部获得奥斯卡最佳影片的X级电影。总而言之，当年它被提名7项奥斯卡奖项，最后获得其中3项。第二年，本片的级别降至R。这部电影的艺术遗产也很丰富。在区别色情和艺术这个问题上，它创造了一场持续的对话，促使几十年后的观众不会因为色情内容而遗忘一部电影的艺术价值。它还软化了美国电影协会制定的分级政策，协会勉强承认一部吸引力如此广泛的电影和获得多项奥斯卡提名的电影不可能是低级下流的。
2.《欲望》
The common lament of book fans when it comes to film adaptations of their favorite novels is that something always gets left on the cutting room floor. Such truncations are unfortunately necessary, as few moviegoers are willing to sit through four-hour epics. However, the Hollywood powers that be had to learn this lesson the hard way, and they did so largely because of Eric Von Stroheim's 1924 film Greed.
当最爱的小说改编为电影时，书迷常常遗憾剪辑总会损失一些东西。不幸的是，这样的浓缩是必要的，因为少有观众愿意一直坐4个小时。但是，好莱坞有权者被迫艰难地学过这个教训，他们这样做，很大程度上是因为艾瑞克·凡·斯特劳亨（Eric Von Stroheim）1924年的电影《欲望》。
Von Stroheim decided that not a single detail from the page could be omitted from the screen in this adaptation of the American novel McTeague. The eccentric director spent over two years working on the bloated film, which primarily took so long to film because he eschewed Hollywood studios in favor of real locations ranging from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Death Valley.The result was a film nearly eight hours long. After the studio balked at its length, he managed to cut it in half, but not even that was sufficient. The studio would later order it to be further trimmed down to about two hours and fifteen minutes by someone who had never read the book on which it was based. The extra reels of film—a whopping 32 edited negatives—were melted down for their silver nitrate. A costly lesson was learned, and Hollywood never forgot it. Today, adaptations from books generally do not seek to fully recreate the books on which they are based.
凡·斯特劳亨认为，在美国小说《麦克提格》（McTeague）改编的剧本中，没有哪一页的细节可以从屏幕上移除。这个古怪的导演花了两年多时间研究大量胶片，最初拍摄它们花了相当长的时间，因为他避开了好莱坞影棚，偏好实情实景，无论是内华达山脉还是死亡峡谷。结果产生了一部近8小时长的电影。影棚不接受这个长度，他成功将其剪辑掉一半，但即使这样都还不够。影棚后来让一位没有读过原书的人将它进一步削减到2小时15分钟。剩下的胶卷——持反对意见的编辑多达32位——被融掉，提取硝酸银。这个教训代价很高，好莱坞从未忘记。今天，对书本的改编一般不要求完全对书本进行再创作了。
1.The Great Train Robbery
1.《火车大劫案》
This 1903 movie is silent and only 12 minutes long, but it completely changed film. First, it told a story, specifically of bandits robbing a train before being gunned down during their escape. This was in stark contrast to previous films, which consisted only of one-off scenes meant to titillate and amuse viewers. For the first time, audiences witnessed realistic violence, including the expected gunplay but also the use of coal as a bludgeon, and rudimentary special effects in the form of a dummy that stood in for a man being thrown from the train.
这部1903年的电影是无声的，只有12分钟，但是它完全改变了电影业。首先，它讲述了一个故事，详细地讲述了强盗抢劫火车，然后在逃跑过程中一路开枪。这与以前的电影完全不同，那些电影只有一个挑逗性的、用来娱乐观众的场景。观众第一次看到真实的暴力，包括期望看到的枪战，还有将煤炭用作武器，以及人体模型的基本特效——用模型代替一个人被扔出火车。
This movie also patented many filming and editing techniques, from the use of multiple locations to panning the camera and using crosscutting to show events that are occurring simultaneously. The popularity of the film at nickel theaters directly contributed to the explosion of movie theaters across America, which paved the way for the entire film industry that followed.
这部电影还拥有很多电影制作专利和剪辑技术，从使用多个位置放置摄影机，到通过交叉剪辑展现同时发生的事件。这部电影在小剧院很受欢迎，直接促使美国各地电影院爆炸式发展，为随后整个电影工业铺好了道路。
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