February 2012
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Here is part of the story of Jeanne d'Arc, seen by the French. I can never quite understand the French attitude to Jeanne. At the time they had a good army and an excellent military chief, Arthur de Richemont, connétable de France, who booted us out of his country. Good for him..
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An interesting little documentary from France 5 - La guerre des fromages qui puent - that is to say, cheese made with what we call 'full cream' milk rather than pasteurised. The sequence starts with a group of American cheese makers from Vermont selling their excellent product to the French, then shows how ordinary French people interviewed in the street have lost the taste for 'proper' cheese, and finishes by showing how hard it is - amd how little profitable - to make cheese by the strict rules of appellation contrôlée. The poor farmer can't even use antiseptic to keep his cows clean. I will refrain from comment..
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Arte Télévision is a joint French-German channel, but one sometimes feels that its best programmes come from the BBC. One such was Le tour d'écrou, from the Beeb's version of Henry James The turn of the screw. This is the very ending of this very ambiguous story of a young governess in a manor house, two young children, and a diabolic ex-servant.
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A nice little biography of Maurice Chevalier from France 5 told us about the beginnings in music-hall of this celebrated French singer. His speaking voice is quite clear. Not so the song excerpts of course, which are fascinating but very much of their time
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If I had to nominate the most innovative television I've seen on the French channels, it might well be this, the series Mystères d'Archives from Arte Télévision. The producers take an event of historical importance - in this case the assassination of the King of Yugoslavia in 1934 - and examine it in detail through the archive news footage of the time.
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La chaîne parlementaire gave us a nice documentary on the history of la jupe. It concentrated on the strange fact that young French girls today prefer wearing trousers to skirts, fearing to attract male attention, or to be considered 'loose', while for many centuries women were banned from wearing trousers. The voice-over is particularly clear.
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Une famille formidable is a popular soap-opera, screened by TF1, the most popular of the French TV channels. From the title one would expect a saccharine account of the ups and downs of French family life - and that is exactly what you get. On the other hand, the actors speak quite clearly, except when they feign emotion. So it makes a good listening exercise
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There are a surprising number of documentaries to be seen on French TV on the subject of 1940, the defeat of the French army and the Armistice signed with the Germans. It is perhaps because, after the war, Philippe Pétain was seen as an old man who wanted to spare the French people unnecessary suffering, and who underestimated the Nazi menace In fact, today Pétain is seen as a fascist, and anti-semite, who aimed to overturn the Republic and install an extreme right-wing regime. He was surrounded by men of the worst type - Laval, Darlan, and the infamous Maurice Papon.
This was a documentary which told a part of that story which I had never encountered - that of the liner Massilia, which the French government of 1940 - still that of Paul Reynaud, the Président du Conseil - intended to take the members of the Sénat and of the Assemblée nationale to safety in Casablanca, there to continue the fight. The liner was chartered, the politicians told to pack their bags - but in the week that followed, Pétain and his merry men, plotted and argued for an armistice with Germany. Finally the weak Reynaud and the even weaker President Lebrun, gave in. At which point, the majority of the politicians judiciously unpacked their bags and missed the boat
Not so about thirty politicians - largely socialist - who were allowed to sail away, including Georges Mandel and Pierre Mendès-France. Georges Mandel was the man preferred by London to be the representative of Free France. Instead they got a young man called De Gaulle..
Here is part of the story of le Massilia
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There is a channel on French TV called Mangas, and these Japanese cartoons are all it transmits. I thought we should give one a go, so here is an extract from something called Les chevaliers du Zodiaque, which you can read about here. It seems to be loosely based on Greek legend, and the formality of the dialogue makes it a good listening exercise at a quite modest level
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From Japan to ... Guadeloupe, I suppose, because this clip comes from the channel France Ô, the public channel for those in the French ex-colonies which form the DOM-TOM. It's called Portée Disparue (Donde esta Elisa), and is actually American-made for the Spanish speaking market. The French dubbing actors, for whom I have the greatest admiration, render faithfully the searing emotion conveyed by very bad acting. I have to say I enjoyed it hugely.
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It's been sometime since we had a Comment c'est fait - but my goodness what good practice this series is ! The voice is so clear, yet the specialised vocabulary makes life quite difficult. With a subject like Poterie, we know in advance that it's not going to be straightforward. Expressions like syénite néphélinique aren't part of everyday vocabulary. A good exercise, and an interesting series
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Arte Télévision, and an excellent version of Spellbound, the first collaboration between Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman. The French title is La maison Edwards. Very often the French dubbing studio will try to capture the scratchy sound quality of the original with disastrous consequences for those of us who try to follow the French. Not so here. The voices are clear, moderately paced, and the sound quality is good. Here are last few minutes of the film
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