listen to french practise listening with French television and films level advanced AS/A2 Pick of the site Page 1


Here is a short piece from Daniel Prévost Le village de Montcuq. Prévost was part of Jacques Martin's team on the television show Le petit rapporteur, and here he milks the unfortunate name of this village for all it's worth	The last thirty months of her life as seen by her psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson. But it's the voice-over of Didier Besace that I adore in this documentary.	More than 60 years after the catastrophe of 1940, French society is increasingly willing to take a painfully honest look at this period. Full marks to them. This clip will make you take a deep breath I think
July 2009	July 2009	July 2009

One of the best comedy duos that France has produced - and their clear diction makes them a gift for us. Here they are on Les rêves	Disney is schmaltz, but bears and country music go together. I know I can't persuade French teachers of this, but this is exactly what French students need to watch.	This shows exactly why comedy is the hardest listening exercise. We follow the boy reasonably well, but it's the father who has the punch lines!
August 2009	August 2009	August 2009

I selected this clip as a dubbed British film with formal dialogue. But the vocabulary makes it quite difficult	Brigitte, from Florence Foresti. This is evidently Level-3. As always, see what you can pick up without the subtitles, then enjoy with. Even with the text the double entendres may make you ponder a bit !	Songs are always very, very hard to follow. First time through, try it without the subtitles or text. Then just enjoy !
August 2009	September2009	September2009

This is a highly educated woman speaking very informally and under a certain stress. She actually speaks very clearly, but the speed and choice of language make it quite difficult	In fact, Jean Carmet is not at all typical of French stand-ups. His humour is what the Americans call 'dead-pan'. And it's beautifully conceived and written. With - if I am not mistaken - an imperfect subjunctive ?	*Isabeau de R is perfect as the very hautaine* night-school teacher. Your French teacher isn't like that, is she ?**
September2009	September2009	September2009

A nice documentary about the First Ladies of the 5th Republic	*The verb Ouïr,says Devos, is very difficult to conjugate. This is a Level-3. It's what makes learning to listen to French so worthwhile*	Here is that noted left-winger GuyBedos pretending to be a put-upon rich man - without a great deal of subtlety
September2009	September2009	October2009

Gaston Ouvrard, music-hall entertainer born at the end of the 19th century, made a speciality out of his comic trooper character	Un bombardier nommé Liberty Lily was a terrific five-part series on Arte. I still have the recordings and must revisit them for a serries of videos	Jean-Yves Lafesse was the great exponent of the candid camera type joke
October2009	October2009	October2009

And this is very much a Level-1, where the articulation is so distinct that one can almost see the spaces between the words on the page ! But this is beautifully spoken French	Harry Potter is as popular in France as in the English speaking world. Here is Le prisonnier d'Azkaban	Toute l'histoire is a very minor channel which doesn't even figure in my Télé deux semaines, but it offers some good documentary material. Here is Catherine Deneuve rightly celebrating the clockmakers of 18th century France
October2009	November2009	November2009

TMC screened Mon curé chez les nudistes. Ah well. In fact it was quite funny, a vehicle for the post-war comedian Paul Préboist. There are whole bunch of French comic films which are the rough equivalent of the British Carry On films. But, lets face it, the French can't compete with the British when it comes to pointless vulgarity...	*Here is an extract from the Comment c'est fait.* Couldn't be more useful for listening practice. - How toilet paper is made, which provides opportunity for some arch humour**	Denis Podalydès of the Comédie française, is a modest and unassuming man, but a fine actor. Here he acts as tourist guide to the gardens of Versailles - but using for script, the book written by Louis XIII Manière de montrer les jardins de Versailles. The result was a nice little documentary
November2009	November2009	November2009

Maja Neskovi is a charming lady journalist who presents a sort of political travel guide to Europe on LCP. It's humorous and informative - not always the case with political programmes.	Le Zèbre is a film with Thierry Lhermitte whom I have loved ever since seeing him in Diner des cons. He has invented a particularly eccentric, anarchic form of humour - not particularly French, actually. This is a super example.	Every so often I like to include a clip to remind us where we're going, what we're trying to get our ears and brains to do - understand the French that the French find easy. Isn't it amazing that although about a third of the French are functionally illiterate (us too, not just the French), they can all sit in front of a telly and watch Thierry Ardisson, one of the big sharks of French television, make jokes in the worst taste possible ?
December2009

Des racines et des ailes is the flagship of French TV documentaries. This one was on the great builders of Paris - L'Ecole des Beaux-arts, Notre-Dame etc. Always well-detailed and beautifully photographed	In the series 'Un jour un destin...', France 2 gave us a piece on Brigitte Bardot, describing the various forms of nonsense that she and her films provoked. The Catholic church depicting her a the Seven Deadly Sins, indeed. But, happily, they didn't driver her to suicide. She has survived as a nice old French lady who lives with her animals and doesn't talk to the press.	France 4 brought us Gerald Dahan from the Casino de Paris on Christmas Eve. Here he does Bernard Kouchner.
December2009	January2010	January2010

Here is a very curious thing. Meurtre à l'Empire State Building is a French-made film which reveals the fascination that American history, culture and language have for the French. It tells the story of the murder of a 'gangster's moll' entirely in clips taken from American films of that period. One oddity - listen to the voice of 'Penny Baxter' at the beginning. The accent is London rather than American, isn't it ?	Toute l'histoire is a strange channel which doesn't figure in my programme guide, but occasionally comes up with some interesting stuff. As for instance this piece on Radio Londres : Les Français parlent aux Français. You get the voices of both Pétain and De Gaulle in this extract, and some interesting snippets of history	This extract is from a progamme called 8 Journalistes en colère, which I had assumed would feature journalists complaining about their pay or conditions of work. But no, happily they were talking about journalism. So you have a nice set of editorials delivered to camera
January2010	January2010	February2010

A very very good American film indeed. The Bicentennial Man, one of these rare films which improves on the original, written by Isaac Asimov. The robot, Andrew, is played by America's greatest comic actor, Robin Williams. And I don't care how often I repeat it, this is exactly what anglophone students of French need to watch.	When I started this site in July 2009, I included a first clip from this wonderful documentary on Mariyln Monroe and promised a second. I remain fascinated by the relation between America and France. We British are supposed (according to the French) to be hand in glove with the Americans, whom they distrust as capitalists. But the France-America relationship is cultural : books, films, philosophy, the Statue of Liberty, the modern democratic republic.	Here is a lovely version of Peter Pan. A realistic evocation of childhood - children were just as rumbustious in Victorian times as they are now, the fantasy world of Captain Hook, and the far more terrifying Aunt Millicent. My sincere thanks to the person who sent me the clip.
February2010	February2010	February2010

If you listen to the voices of Americans - and especially English people - speaking French on TV, you're struck by what a seriously horrible sound we make. The stiffer the upper lip, the worse it is. Jane Birkin, however, has acquired a gentle, infinitely sweet way of speaking French, even though she shares the problem we all have of not being quite sure of the gender of words. And what a wonderful parable of life that is at the end, the story of the little octopus !	I've commented before on the success of Faites entrer l'accusé, the France 2 series which reconstructs celebrated crimes through interviews and reconstruction. It dwells lovingly on the gory details. Be warned - this one is particularly unpleasant.	France has more than its fair share of very remarkable women (Florence Aubenas, Simone Weill, Elisabeth Badinter) ... or perhaps it is just happily the case that in the developed countries women are coming to the fore. Here is Elisabeth Badinter, who has fought for the cause of women in France, pointing out in France 5's book programme La grande librairie, that after the advances of the '70s women must not relapse into the old role of child-bearer and nothing else.
March2010	March2010	March2010

Le jeu de la mort explained just why ordinary people could, in a television game, put someone to death. Horrifying.
March2010