晴朗的日子里你能看见永远

Bookended by psychedelic opening/close credit sequences, ON A CLEAR DAY… is Minnelli’s penultimate feature, and rightfully captures the era’s fantastical ethos, based on Alan Jay Lerner’s own musical, it is basically a two-hander between a chain-smoking ingénue Daisy Gamble (Streisand) and a psychiatrist Prof. Marc Chabot (Montand), from whom the former seeks help to cure her nicotine addiction through hypnotherapy, which only opens a hornets’ nest laced with other parapsychological components like ESP and reincarnation.

Yes, Daisy is a clairvoyant, endowed with a magical green thumb and subconsciously remembers all her reincarnations (including future ones), and Chabot is increasingly fascinated by one of her previous incarnations as Lady Melinda Tentrees of the Regency era, who prospers a rags-to-riches ascendancy but eventually is betrayed by her husband and condemned for her “otherness”. Meantime, Daisy, who is kept from the acknowledgement of her preternatural condition, becomes smitten with an urbane Chabot, which threats the relationship with her bien-pensant fiancé Warren (Blyden). When the cat is let out of the bag, again, it is a persistently telepathic calling (when Montand crooning COMING BACK TO ME) that brings the pair together and squares up their respective disillusions, with Chabot perceiving a piece of tidings from the future to salve his compunction.

It is amusing to think that anyone is able to fall under the hypnotic spell of Montand’s English elocution with his thick French accent, and Minnelli’s cavalier direction of it doesn’t mitigate any skeptical glances, yet, Streisand is exceptionally versatile in her two roles, gussying and glamorizing herself up as she enchants us with those Burton Lane-penned melodies with such facility and emotion, they might sound a shade treacly, passé and over-sentimental, however, the timbre of her voice is supernal, and her unconventional beauty is emblazoned in such a florid fashion that can keep aesthetic fatigue at bay. Nonetheless, the underlined every-girl-fancies-herself-as-a-glamor-puss propensity feels antiquated.

A product of its own time, ON A CLEAR DAY… is unique in melding an above-board romance with the counterculture of parapsychology, but with a simper rather than a bang, too tame and cutesy for its own good (Jack Nicholson’s character is ruefully underutilized, he is supposed to be the right match for Daisy, right?), Minnelli’s picture tepidly sails through the less fathomed waters.

referential entries: Gene Kelly’s HELLO, DOLLY! (1969, 7.3/10); George Cukor’s MY FAIR LADY (1964, 7.8/10).

8.5。

明奈利最后一部歌舞片，浪漫得一塌糊涂，并且带有一些新好莱坞的痕迹。

美术上，常见的是还原时代或完全架空，这里却将1900s前后，英国新艺术运动中“平面”领域流行的比亚兹莱风格，自然地融进1810s英国摄政时代的“立体”世界，非常震撼的体验。（新艺术运动中，欧美艺术家与设计师积极展开了对旧日的综合回顾，及对未来的前卫探索，最终因无法真正适应现实需求，而被现代主义理念所取代。可以说是前现代主义时期的一场艺术梦吧。所以，正因为它的综合性，它天然地适合被施用美化到各个时代，其实也呼应了六七十年代之交，新旧好莱坞电影的境遇）虽然偶尔也能察觉到剧组缺经费。

表演。史翠珊的歌技与歌唱的表现力是真好，演技与念白与形体在这里也是真糟（她甚至对不上口型！）。或许staff里多几名给力的编舞和舞蹈教练能抢救一下糟糕的表演。回头发现，音乐剧原作导演兼编舞是Herbert Ross，难怪结构上有种强烈的《Pennies from Heaven》（正好也是米高梅最后一部旧制歌舞片）既视感。于是更加痛心疾首——要是后者的导演是明奈利；要是前者的cast有后者的水准……也或许导演在为式微的歌舞片融入新好莱坞运动风尚的尝试中，对表演指导尚有些许迷茫。

剧情，略微拧巴的感情发展，朦胧的gay文本。常见的转生题材多是恋人相约相守生生世世（阻碍多来自客观），这里却很特别的将今生不足的缘份寄期于某次前生或来世（阻碍多来自主观）。电影版中的男主唱给女主的Come Back to Me唱段直接增加了一段"Come in pain or in joy, As a girl, as a boy"的唱词。后来的部分音乐剧复排版本干脆将女主改写成了gay主。很可能深柜的明奈利导演，这部难得深情的《on a clear day you can see forever》会有几分他的内心投射吗？

回到戏外现实世界的时间轴，电影于69年1～5月拍摄，6月，朱迪嘉兰意外早世，紧接着石墙暴动，8月补拍，70年6月11日电影试映版时长143分钟，17日首映版削掉所有据说是制作上最精致的来世戏份，时长减至129分钟。而传说中的14分钟就这么走过了导演去世，吊着影迷的胃口，失踪到了今天……