Clips organised by level
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Good old Comment c'est fait... Maybe it's a male thing, but I can always watch programmes about how you actually make the ordinary objects that fill our lives. The immense care with which CDs are made inspires with the thought - thank God someone invented the mp3 ! It also occurs to me that I should really search out a series of cooking programmes on French TV. That would exercise our vocabulary, woudn't it ?
I rather liked Legend of the Seeker whose title the French television company decided not to translate - something we see more and more in adverts also. You can read all about it here. There's no shortage of American material on French telly, is there. When you think of the size of the French dubbing industry...
Peur Primal (American title, Primal Fear is a pretty good film starring Richard Gere as a Chicago lawyer who decides to defend a young drop-out accused of murdering a bishop... But it's absolutely the right level as a listening exercise at a reasonably modest level
I came across this as an item in an evening news programme. A play currently running in Paris was based on the 1964 film Repas des fauves, which I had recorded some time ago but never got around to viewing. It turns out to be an excellent French film set in Paris during the Occupation. A group of friends are having dinner, when a German officer is killed by the Resistance just outside their flat. A German officer arrives to take hostages.... And the French is extremely clear
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
I always record discussions on the French language. This one was promising, between Daniel Pivot, Claude Hagège the haughty linguist, and Richard Bohringer. In the event, it was an odd discussion... you'll see why
Mid-July 2011 and French Television news is reporting with glee on the News of The World scandal in London. Here is John Hanley of the Guardian who is asked if this means that the gutter press is finished in Britain, and replies that no, despite these scandals, a country needs a free press to act as a contre-pouvoir to the men who run the country. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, of course... not Rupert Murdoch, that's for sure.
Here's Comment c'est fait on the subject of airline food. Of course, they spend a long time explaining how carefully the business class meals are prepared, and then add casually, 'Of course, economy class doesn't get the same care'. You can say that again...
La chasse à courre, à cor et à cri, is what in Britain we call fox-hunting, and which was banned in 2004, not without opposition. "The unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible" was what Oscar wittily called it, and it is interesting that the deputé Yves Cochet, who has espoused the cause of the anti-hunting lobby, describes the French version in much the same terms. He makes a distinction between the ordinary hunters, who hunt as men have done for millions of years, and the bourgeois - indeed aristocratic - ritual of hounding an exhausted animal to death. It makes for a nice piece for us, though
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
Here's a rather good fantasy series Nick Cutter et les portes du temps. British-made, and high budget. It's a time travel story - all good clean fun
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
I nearly didn't pursue this episode of Roswell, an American series which I take to be about ordinary American adolescents being extraordinary extra-terrestrials. But I was struck by the odd effect of informal American translated into French. The bit with the teacher works fine - that's formal English and formal French. But when the girl says in compact American English "He said it could be in the future he wouldn't be there", it ends up in French as "Il disait qu'il se pourrait très bien qu'à l'avenir il ne soit plus là". It made me laugh...
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.
August, and we have riots all over the UK. I am not going to comment, except to say that the reporting from France Télévisions is, as always, excellent. Here is an extract from the evening news of 10/08/2011
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...
Here is Comment c'est fait on making the 3D prototypes which are the models for all the thousands of different parts which make up our hoovers, dishwashers, etc. I liked the reflection at the very end "les machines qui ont permis de fabriquer ces pièces sont elles-mêmes faites de différentes pièces réalisées de la même manière. C'est un cercle sans fin" We're made the same way, of course. Man is a machine for creating the parts to make another man.
I very much enjoyed this docufiction from Arte Télévision Le grand Charles. The part of Charles de Gaulle is played by Bernard Farcy, who captures the voice to perfection
Envoyé spécial is a current affairs programme which tries to get people all het up about the little corruptions that have always lain behind the world of politics and of business. Here is an enquiry about the Légion d'honneur which affects to be surprised that Jacques Chirac gave the distinction to his pals from his constituency of Corrèze, or that Nicolas Sarkozy gave it to people like Barbara Streisand and Dany Boon ... or his tailor
And I loved this honest remark from the President
Et puis moi, je suis pas obligé de décorer que des gens que je
ne connais pas
que des gens que j'apprécie pas
ou que des gens qui ont dit du mal de moi !
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..
