April 2012
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The great documentary flagship of FranceTélévisions, Des racines et des ailes, gave us a number on La Rochelle. As always, beautifully filmed, and a voice-over as clear as the words on a page. Here is how the English invented cognac while trying to imvent a sort of wine concentrate.
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La Duchesse was an excellent offering from Arte Télévision. It's a film which captures perfectly the appalling social attitudes of the British aristocracy in the 18th century, and which our Royal Family perpetuate today... It's got all the best people in it, Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, and Charlotte Rampling. Thank you, Arte.
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There is a daytime programme on FranceTélévisions called Nous nous sommes tanr aimés. A gentle little nostalgia series, probably not very interesting to the French who have lived all this television history, but to me fascinating, because one of the things we are doing here is learning about French popular culture. So here is Francis Blanche who is one of the authors of Signé Furax, my long-running radio comedy transcription on this site.
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I enjoyed the film Sabrina broadcast by RTL9 - gawky young girl goes to Paris, meets Fanny Ardant and returns a ravishing beauty. She is the daughter of the chauffeur of a rich American family, has always been secretly in love with the playboy son, and now gets the chance to dance with him - at the ball given for his betrothal. It's easy on the eyes - and easy as a listening exercise too.
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Variety, variety... After the schmaltz of Sabrina, we turn to the beautifully refined tones of Laurence Piquet, hosting Un Soir .., which this week was on the nudes of Degas. She has with her an equally refined young man who speaks as most of us would like to be able to write. Apart from the interest in the subject, do note how the French pronounce the letter 'r'. It's not rolled ! That's just for for the traditional chanson
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I received a request a week or two ago to make an extract from an Arte documentary on the virtues of fasting as medical therapy. I hadn't recorded it so had to wait until it came around again (at 4 o'clock in the morning !). Normally, I ignore programmes where there is an English voice speaking, with a French voice-over - for obvious reasons. However, in this the voices are mostly German, so we'll make an exception. And it's an interesting piece.
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Every so often I record a number of E=M6, the popular science show on the popular television channel M6. This one was about volcanoes suddenly erupting and destroying the earth.. or rather it was about reassuring us that it couldn't happen while showing impressive pictures of the power of nature. But enough cynicism, it's a good programme.
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To mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of The Titanic, here is a clip from a really excellent docu-fiction from FranceTélévision. Very impressive images, and a commentary by Philippe Torreton. My Breton sea-captain friend, however, pointed out errors in the dialogue. Apparently French mariners don't say A bâbord toutes but A droite toutes. A relief to those of you who are never sure which is your port and which your starboard
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The most cerebral of all the French discussion programmes is Bibliothèque Médicis, hosted by one of France's senior journalists, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach. It can be hard going, frankly, but this one had Jean d'Ormesson as one of the guests, as sprightly an old rascal as you could hope to meet. Here he muses lightly, on life and love. What else ?
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Now here's a good ol' cult film The Fly. Made in 1986, so nice clear dialogue, faithfully rendered into French by the dubbing actors. Lady journalist very unwisely visits the flat of young man with strangely bulging eyes .. well you know the rest. Here's the scene where he shows her his matter transporter.
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Currently on France 5 they are screening a series called Vues d'en haut, which is the usual type of documentary composed of video shot from a helicopter of pretty scenery, and with a voice-over. But when the scenery is the Loire valley, it's rather special. As a listening exercise it is entry-level for this site, because the voice-over is clear and there are no interviews with 'real' French people .. but the images are very beautiful
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I hesitated before including this next one. LCP - La chaîne
parlémentaire - screened a documentary called
Tu ne parleras point. It was about Pierre Etienne, a monk of the
Béatitudes community, and a pedophile.
My reaction was - No we'll skip this one and I did not record. But I
watched it, and it was well-done, serious, not at all sensational and this
site is for adults. And the ironic title of the documentary rather warns us
against not talking, doesn't it ? So I recorded it the second time around.
Here is Cette conspiration du silence autour du péché d'un seul qui
devient le trésor de tous.
(Yann Queffélec, Prends garde au loup)
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Cigarettes et bas nylon was a nice film from Arte télévision about the period after the second war when a number of young French women fell in love with American serviceman, married them, and returned with them to America to become part of the American dream. But first they had to learn something about the American way of life. It is tempting to observe that this civic education was carried out with Germanic thoroughness. But the Americans showed an underlying kindness that was never part of the Nazi dream
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Here's another from the Vues d'en haut series to give us another modest listening exercise. This one's on the island of Majorca. Nice images, and some interesting history about this island which we mostly associate with mass tourism
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Last post for April 2012 and it's a good one. I was delighted to receive an email from Jean-François who is a teacher of French in Brazil. He uses the videos from this site, but he also makes his own transcriptions of videos that he downloads from the 'Net. He sent me the video links and the documents, and all I have had to do is create the Flash video with subtitles. We will have more from Jean-François in May. Here is a clip from Le petit journal of Canal+ on a very popular British boy band. No .avi version for these files - the originals are .flv
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