William S. Hart and the Early "Western" Film

William S. Hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, for unlike Gary Cooper and John Wayne he appeared in nothing but Westerns. From 1914 to 1924 he was supreme and unchallenged. It was Hart who created the basic formula of the Western film, and devised the protagonist he played in every film he made, the good - bad man, the accidental - noble outlaw, or the honest - but - framed cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip; in short, the individual in conflict with himself and his frontier environment.

Hart actually knew something of the old West. He had lived in it as a child when it was already disappearing, and his hero was firmly rooted in his memories and experiences, and in both the history and the mythology of the vanished frontier. And although no period or place in American history has been more absurdly romanticized, myth and reality did join hands in at least one arena, the conflict between the individual and encroaching civilization.

Men accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indians were bewildered by politicians, bankers and businessmen, and unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. Hart's good - bad man was always an outsider, always one of the disinherited, and if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or rob a bank along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and forgive, especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking Indians or the outlaw gang. Audiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. We still do; living in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy and impending doom seem to be the norm, we all want a code to live by.

Carrying a gun in the city is illegal in most countries, but it was not so in the Old West. Hart's audiences knew that they were watching a film about the Old West when they saw a gun on the screen, and they were able to distinguish between the film world and the real world. But most of them, as they watched Hart, were probably unaware that they were also seeing the creation of a new art form. The Western film has been the most popular genre of American cinema since the early days of the silent era, and it has had a profound influence on the development of cinema around the world.

威廉·S·哈特大概是美国西部电影明星中的佼佼者。他和加里·古柏、约翰·韦恩不同，他只在西部电影中扮演角色。在1914年至1924年期间，他首屈一指，独霸影坛。正是哈特创造了西部电影的基本模式，即在他自己的影片中他所塑造的主人公形象：被认为是坏人的好人，出人意料的高尚的逃犯，诚实却遭陷害的牛仔或因流言蜚语蒙受嫌疑的治安官。总之，主人公是一个自相矛盾，又与他的拓荒环境相冲突的人物。

哈特与美国西部确有某种联系。作为一个孩子他曾在西部生活过，当时西部拓荒生活正在消失。他塑造的英雄人物深深地扎根于他本人的记忆和经历之中，也扎根于有关已经消失的拓荒生活的历史和神话之中。虽然在美国历史上没有任何时期或地区像西部拓荒时期那样被荒谬地浪漫主义化了，但神话和现实至少在某一个舞台上共存，也就是存在于个人与渐渐闯入的文明这两者的冲突之中。

习惯与大自然和印第安人作斗争以求生存的拓荒者被政客、银行家和商人搞得晕头转向，最后被圈地、法律和外来的清规戒律所击败。哈特扮演的被认为是坏人的好人总是一个局外人，总是一个被剥夺继承权的人。如果他认为在进行过程中有必要枪击一个治安官或抢劫一家银行，他的早期观众很容易理解和原谅他，特别是当哈特最后战胜了前来进攻的印第安人或歹徒的时候。生活在20世纪第二个十年的观众认为，逃到一个即使艰苦但比较简朴的时代中去是件愉快的事，我们今天仍然有这种感觉。如今，不宣而战的侵略、战争、虚伪、诈骗、无政府状态以及即将临头的毁灭似乎成了正常现象，我们都希望有一个赖以生存的行为准则。

在大多数国家，在城市携带枪支是违法的，但在旧西部却不是这样。哈特的观众知道，当他们在银幕上看到一把枪时，他们是在观看一部关于旧西部的电影，他们能够区分电影世界和现实世界。但是，当他们观看哈特的电影时，大多数人可能没有意识到他们也在目睹一种新艺术形式的诞生。西部电影自无声电影时代初期以来一直是美国电影中最受欢迎的类型，并且对世界各地电影的发展产生了深远的影响。