Clips organised by level
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According to one source "Diffusée entre 1997 et 2003, Voilà (Just Shoot me) a longtemps fait partie des meilleures audiences de la chaine américaine NBC, elle a même été durant sa cinquième saison la troisième série la plus regardée par les 18-49 ans." So I'm not even going to try to upload this clip to YouTube, where it will immediately be blocked throughout the world, and probably the farther galaxies as well
But it's funny and it makes a splendid listening exercise
September, and it's la rentrée, which means that there are once more some programmes to watch on French TV. A welcome return is E=M6, which in this episode tells us about the difference between men and women. Popular science, unassuming, but really not bad at all.
Les enquêtes de Murdoch is a police series which is perhaps more interesting to the English than the French, because it is set in 19th century Canada, where Inspector Murdoch applies remarkably modern techniques to the elucidation of murders. In this episode the detectives are faced with Jack the Ripper-type murders, when a rather unbalanced Scotland Yard official arrives on the scene. No prizes for guessing whodunnit. The language is very formal, and the dubbing makes for a rather peaceful listening exercise
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.
Very often I find that an extract which should be very easy turns out to have some unexpected difficulties. Here is Angelique et le Roy, the film starring Michèle Mercier, and one of a whole series featuring this aristocratic heroine. Historical dramas are normally easy to follow - formal dialogue and a moderate pace of dialogue. What makes this interesting is that the writers have laid on the mock-18th century vocabulary with a very heavy trowel. It makes it just a little tricky from time to time. Incidentally, speaking of vocabulary Majesté is always feminine. The King is Sa Majesté
Laurent Delahousse has been standing in for David Pujadas on France 2's evening news recently, and he's given us some interesting items. Here were two little stories, once after the other, to which I gave the filename DeuxTraditions, because they seemed to me to evoke first an unhappy British tradition, and then a French one. Both of them are regarded as shocking by the politically correct today, but each relate, I think, to deeply rooted traditions in our different countries.
The first story was from Britain, and was about boys aged less than ten being encouraged to fight in a cage, before adult spectators, in what they call 'free fight'. The second dealt with the fact that French men find it difficult to accept orders from women managers. The first did not shock me unduly, because I am English, and of a generation that watched boxing before it was tamed down into a 'safe' sport. The second, on male chauvinists, I found quite horrifying. I have a French friend of my age who had exactly the opposite reaction...
Like everybody else these days I have too many channels, many of which don't appear in the TV guide. One that appeared recently is called simply 'Test 4'. I imagine it's going to become one of the Orange cinema channels. Anyway, I recorded a half hour on spec, and chanced on something called Cinéstyle. Excellent... the idea is to talk about the costume design of well-known films. This was on Charlie Chaplin, and I have to say it made for six minutes of real pleasure.
If I don't do a Comment c'est fait regularly I get withdrawal symptoms. So here's one on milk production. Happy cows looked after by computers. I think Charlie Chaplin would have appreciated this bovine version of Modern Times
One of the very best programmes on FranceTélévisions at the moment is Un jour un destin presented by Laurent Delahousse. It presents the biographies of stars but without the mawkish sentimentality of a lot of these programmes. This one was on Simone Signoret, a very great lady of French cinema. This clip describes the success she and Yves Montand had in New York, when they finally woke up to the idea that communism wasn't a good idea and went to the States. Signoret was the first French actress ever to win an Oscar .
You will note that she got the award for her role in what is described as 'a little English film' which she had happened to make. Three times we hear about this 'little English film'. Well, it was Room at the Top, with Laurence Harvey, my friends and it wasn't so little...
Here's an old favourite. Our English novelist, Agatha Christies writing about a Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, played on television by and English actor, David Suchet, and then dubbed into French. That's Europe for you.
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.
Arte Télévision has the excellent habit of screening very early episodes of cult television series. So here is The Saint, with Roger Moore, in black and white. As always, this dubbed material makes excellent level-1 exercises
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.
Merlin is a British TV series that you can read about here. Merlin is a young magician at the court of Uther Pendragon (father of Arthur). It's a society that is rather down on witchcraft, and after a woman sees a horse emerging from a cloud of smoke (conjured by the winsome, but careless young Merlin), the witchfinder-general is called in. It's the sort of series that attracts our best British actors. Whether they do it for the money or the opportunity to go over the top and overact, is debatable. However, here is Charles Dance as Aredian the witchfinder. Overacting, one would say.
Linguistically interesting because of the parody of medieval language
A rather good American film, Une vraie histoire, (A straight story) made by David Lynch. A road movie in which an old man travels 350 miles on hos sole means of transport, a motorised lawn-mower, to visit an old friend. Super
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
