There is a curious sequence towards the end of the first episode of Babylon Berlin (Sky1, Das Erste, 2017– ), when Detective Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) exits his office at the Police Headquarters, Rote Burg, Alexanderplatz.1¹ On the street, the low chatter of pedestrians and thrum of traffic reflect Berlin’s vibrant nightlife. Employing film noir’s iconography, street lamps partially illuminate the scene, leaving the pockets between them in deep shadow.2² Gereon’s appearance – as he dons a fedora and matching camel trench coat – recalls Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, the classic noir detectives played by Humphrey Bogart, although Gereon’s demeanour is decidedly less hardboiled. Suddenly something just left of the frame attracts his attention. Slowly the camera pans left in an eyeline match, to reveal nothing more than an innocuous tourism poster pasted to a Morris column, reading ‘Jeder einmal in Berlin’ – ‘Everyone should visit Berlin at least once’. The camera pans back to Gereon, who for some reason pauses to read the slogan aloud, to no-one but himself. He smiles and continues towards his hotel lodgings. Focusing intently on a tourism poster for a city in which the series is already clearly set is certainly intriguing, and not just because Gereon’s reaction delivers the incongruous image of a cheerful noir detective. The oddest aspect of this sequence is that it serves no clear narrative purpose. The cinematographic and editing strategies, coupled with Gereon’s vocalization of its slogan to no-one within the diegesis, indicates that the viewer should pay acute attention to this detail. Such a poster should, ordinarily, constitute an important piece of narrative information;3³ yet it is not the missing piece in any unsolved mystery plot, nor does it divulge any hitherto unknown aspects of Gereon’s traits or motivations. What, then, is its function?

中文翻译：

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巴比伦柏林的双焦点凝视

巴比伦柏林第一集（Sky1，Das Erste，2017-）的结尾有一个奇怪的序列，当时警探 Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) 离开了他位于亚历山大广场 Rote Burg 警察总部的办公室^{。1 1}在街道、行人的低声交谈和车流声反映了柏林充满活力的夜生活。采用黑色电影的肖像画，路灯部分照亮了场景，使它们之间的口袋陷入了深深的阴影。^{2 2}Gereon 的外表——当他穿着一顶浅顶软呢帽和相配的驼色风衣时——让人想起 Humphrey Bogart 饰演的经典黑色侦探 Philip Marlowe 和 Sam Spade，尽管 Gereon 的举止显然没有那么冷酷。突然，框架左侧的某个东西引起了他的注意。镜头慢慢地在视线匹配中离开，只露出一张贴在莫里斯专栏上的无害旅游海报，上面写着“柏林的 Jeder einmal”——“每个人都应该至少访问一次柏林”。镜头转回 Gereon，他出于某种原因停下来大声朗读标语，除了他自己之外没有任何人。他微笑着继续朝他的旅馆住处走去。专注于该系列已经明确设置的城市的旅游海报当然很有趣，不仅仅是因为 Gereon 的反应传达了一个开朗的黑色侦探的不协调形象。这个序列最奇怪的方面是它没有明确的叙述目的。电影摄影和剪辑策略，再加上 Gereon 在剧情中对无人发声的口号，表明观众应该密切关注这个细节。此类海报通常应构成重要的叙述信息；3³然而，它并不是任何未解之谜情节中的缺失部分，也没有透露 Gereon 特征或动机的任何迄今为止未知的方面。那么，它的功能是什么呢？