Documentaries
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I always enjoy Arte's series Mystères d'archives. Here is one on the coronation of Elizabeth II. No mystery, but a very impressive account of the different parts of the ceremony, and a little word on the disappearance of the famous Stone of Scone. A straightforward level-1
Monaco, le rocher des princes was a pleasant documentary on France 5 on the relationship between the Grimaldi family and the magazine POaris Match - one whose photographers was apparently responsible for introducing Grace Kelly to Rainier. Linguistically, as so often, the voice-over is very easy to follow, but the journalists who speak rather less so
There was some nice archive footage in these moments from Années '60 mythologiques part of an ongoing popular culture series from France Télévisions. I liked particularly the shots of the launching of le France, that grand old liner, at the end
I enjoyed this piece from Des racines et des ailes on Périgord and the château owned by Jesephine Baker. The camera work is always very fine, and of course the measured voice-over is a perfect level-1 exercise
A nice little documentary from Arte television, beautifully filmed, and interesting in its own right. The voice-over makes it a level-1, but perhaps not quite as easy as Des Racines et Des Ailes, for example. It's more informal.
Here's a charming little piece on Charles Trenet. We normally hear the sentimental ballades such as Douce France, but here is the entertainer, the singer of patter songs. You'll need the subtitles for much of this. And I can't tell you how long it took me to catch the words "L'élève revête un harnachement spécial" Sometimes it just doesn't come....
I try to keep the standard here at a reasonable level, but if a video extract interests me I tend to throw caution to the winds...
This was a programme in the Empreintes series, interviewing the actor Fabrice Luchini. I like him as an actor, and he is a great admirer of Louis Ferdinand Céline, as I am. But he is eccentric and enthusiastic, and he talks fast. Very fast. Add to that a contribution from the widow of Céline, a lady who is now in her 90s, and you have something to test the ear. It took about a week to make this transcription, against the usual hour or so.
French TV, like ours offers an enormous selection of minor channels, most of which run American series. However, there is Encyclopédie, which is only spoiled by far too many English-language documentaries with French voice-overs. However, here is a nicely pessimistic view of the future from French experts who enjoy pointing out how likely it is that we are all going to come to grief one day...
France 5 did a documentary called Bye bye cobaye, which asked the question, Can we dispense with the use of animals for laboratory experiments on commercial products. The answer will, sadly, not surprise you..
Stéphane Bern, the pantingly enthusiastic French admirer of the royal families of Europe, does a series called Secrets d'Histoire, where he speaks admiringly of his favourite subject. Here he did our dear old Queen Victoria, showing that she was a jolly old soul and not at all sour-faced as history depicts her. He also demonstrated that she and Prince Albert were eccentric to the point of madness in their attitude to Scotland, which they turned into a sort of royal Scottish Disneyland.
This weekend, 18-19 September 2011, is in France Les journées du patrimoine, where the French can tour around the Elysée Palace, the Bank of France and other incredibly luxurious buildings for whose upkeep they pay but do not normally get to see. I recorded Un été à Versailles thinking it would make a nice relaxing level-1 exercise of the Des racines et des ailes type. Well, it starts like that, but we quickly are introduced to the problems of managing 28 000 visitors per day, with a queue one and a half kilometres long. Arrives a harassed guide called Dominique who has the job of interesting a public who think that Marie Antoinette was married to Louis XIV, and the listening exercise rapidly gets quite a lot harder...
Documentaries made by FranceTélévisions make perfect listening exercises at a fairly modest level. They are beautifully photographed and researched - like the British BBC of thirty years ago. This one is on Claude Monet from the series Secrets d'Histoire introduced by Stéphane Bern.
From imaginary crime to a very real crime - Jack the Ripper, in 1888. So much has been written about this, so many theories put forward that when France 2 put on a programme called l'Eventreur démasqué, I settled down to watch with a sigh of resignation. But it was very well done. The suspect 'démasqué' turns out to be Melville Macnaghten, Commissionaire of Police of Scotland Yard. What is at the least surprising is that he doesn't seem to have been suspected before now. Everybody else was in London, after all. On the linguistic level, one notes that the speech of the lady who has uncovered all of this is quite hard to follow - a good level-2. Please note that some of the pictures are fairly gory.
The Garde des sceaux is the Minister of Justice, the head of the justice system in France. LCP did a good documentary in which five past holders of this position were interviewed. Two became famous - Robert Badinter who succeeded in having the death penalty abolished, and Rachida Dati, a young and attractive woman whose parents were North African immigrants.
We do not neglect culture on this site, and here is the reason why France is the cultural centre of all the arts, including that of music, where French composers have never equalled those of Germany or Italy. But one can speak beautifully about music in French
Laurence Piquet introduced Un soir ... Franz Liszt, and we hear the voice of the French musicologist Alain Duault, who demonstrates what I just said about talking about music, and then a drop-dead gorgeous lady pianist who plays the Sonata in B-flat minor while talking about it ... no easy feat.
Linguistically, her voice is fascinating. Very modern, very trendy. Not at all easy to follow, given the competition of the Steinway grand. It's a level-3.
The affair of the Mediator unites two subjects which are dear to the French - health and the villainy of large companies. This is the story of the pharmaceutical company Servier which sold this product, first as a medicine for the treatment of diabetes, then to help with weight loss. We are told that as a side effect it tended to harden the valves of the heart, and patients died. Servier is accused of knowing that, and suppressing the information. So here's a clip from an excellent documentary about some people who led the combat against this pernicious substance.
FranceTélévisions screened a very beautiful documentary on Line Renaud, one of my great heroines. Impossible to choose a representative 5 minutes from one and a half hours because she has reinvented herself with the decades, from the Las Vegas years to France, actress in her 50s... So here is a clip from the beginning in a grim Northern town of back-to-back houses
France 5 did a documentary on the commercial war between the world's luxury hotels. There was, of course, an undercurrent of surprise and disapproval that at a time of recession and financial crisis, the number of rich people in the world is increasing (if you're anglo-saxon, you might think that's a good thing, especially if you happen to be one of them) and a lot of people are happily forking out 7 000 euros a night without breakfast. It makes for a nice little video, though
