February 2011

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Someting rather different to start February off. Arte did a nice documentary on the rise of operetta in France and Germany. Interesting and the songs came with the subtitles already inserted. What a pity though, that they didn't include some Gilbert and Sullivan...

The dubbing of classic films various enormously in quality. Sometimes it is very clear,  sometimes the dubbing studio decides to imitate the scratchy quality of early film recording, and that makes life very difficult. Happily, Hitchcock's great film Marnie is of the first category.  I don't think I've come across an American film which is easier to follow.

Is it my imagination, or does France possess more than her fair share of quite remarkable women ? - from Simone Weil to Jacqueline de Romilly, the great Helleniste who died a couple of months ago.  It's still a pretty machiste country : perhaps that's what brings the women fighting out of their corner.  Here is Gisèle Halimi, a lady who embodies this tradition.

It is a sad fact that the worse the American series, the better it is as a listening exercise at a modest level. Quite simply, wooden dialogue and simple situations make for easy listening - which is why these series are so popular one supposes. Top Models is a soap in the great tradition of Dallas. I can't help feeling sorry for the French actors who have to dub this deathless prose. But look - it's a good listening exercise...

Now here is a real pleasure - one of France's best comedians, Michel Leeb, interpreting a piece by Françoise Blanche, whose Signé Furax  is a long-running series on this site.  He imitates the voice of a different French actor for each verse - you'll find him doing the same with his Molière poem on the humour page of sonsenfrancais.org

 Amid the inexhaustible supply of American television series, we find DOS - Division des Opérations Spéciales.  I don't need to describe it to you, it is fast-paced and makes a good exercise.  Oh - I might need to apologise for a moment in my transcription. When the second in command says Et avoir une senorita bien gaulée comme couverture n'est jamais une mauvaise idée - I may have misheard and introduced a slightly naughty expression by accident. Bien gaulée is the equivalent of the American stacked when talking about a woman.  Sorry about that...

The Game is a good solid American film starring Michael Douglas. I'm always fascinated by the French dubbing actors who specialise in the voices of famous anglo-saxon actors.  The dubbing is particularly well done here.

I don't often watch the channel M6, but nonce a week there is a rather good popular science programme, M6. This one was on retouching photographs, showing the example of a nice, but ordinary-looking girl being 'improved'.  Good stuff...

I have a whole bunch of recordings I made over the Christmas break, and I'm just getting around tpo processing them. This was Christmas eve, and Stéphane Berne, the nice young presenter beloved of French grannies, introduced a celebrity chat show around the theme of Christmas telly. This extract opens with the end of Daniel Prévost's great, great sketch Le village de Montcul which was one of the first I ever posted here, and which you will find here.  It goes on to celebrate another great man of French TV - Jacques Martin.  My French friends find nostalgia TV irritating.  But for us it is all new - it is the history of French popular culture in the 20th century.

Here is a strange thing, which could not be less anglo-saxon.  From time to time the French make films which are consciously 'arty' - like the dreadful Parapluies de Cherbourg or practically anything from la nouvelle vague.  Here is Catherine Deneuve in Peau d'Âne, based on the story of Perrault.  It's about a king, who after the death of his wife resolves only to remarry a woman even more beautiful.  Finally he finds one, and the fact that she is his own daughter doesn't cause him any problems. Odd...

Let no-one suggest that the French are incapable of making courtroom drama series with stock characters, wooden dialogue and drearily predictable situations.  You could imagine this episode having been written specially for English speakers who are learning French ! - it has that laboriously clear quality.  It is so difficult for French teachers to accept that it's no use presenting students with the flower of French culture - Molière and Feydeau, la nouvelle vague... we have to learn to walk before we run.  This is perfect.

V is an American tele-series about nasty aliens who are intent on taking the Earth over, while being countered by 'the Fifth Column', a group which seems to me to be resistance fighters rather than a fifth column, which undermines an organisation from inside.  However, semantic precision is not the aim of this series.  The situations are magnificently implausible, the characters plastic - and of course - as always, it makes a jolly good listening exercise.

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