Life Is Like a Movie

ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

В каждый из семи разделов данного пособия включены тексты различной языковой трудности (адаптированные, сокращенные и оригинальные). Это дает возможность преподавателю использовать материал выборочно, в зависимости от индивидуальных особенностей аудитории и степени подготовленности студентов. Виды работы с подобранным материалом и его дозировка определяются преподавателем.

Основная цель данного пособия — способствовать дальнейшему развитию навыков устной речи, обогащению языковых знаний студентов. Этой задаче подчинена вся система упражнений, среди которых представлены не только задания, позволяющие проверить правильность понимания прочитанного (вопросно-ответные упражнения) или закрепляющие новые языковые структуры (пересказ), но и задания, стимулирующие студентов к поиску, определению своего отношения к обсуждаемой проблеме и спонтанному высказыванию своего мнения.

Пособие может быть использовано для работы со студентами других гуманитарных специальностей.

CINEMA

Topical Words and Phrases (to be learnt)

1)

– кино, кинотеатр

– черно-белый фильм

sound film – звуковой фильм

silent (or mute) film – немой фильм

full-length film – полнометражный фильм

film in two parts – двуxсерийный фильм

– кинозритель, частый посетитель кинотеатра

wide-screen film – широкоэкранный фильм

dubbed film – дублированный фильм

colour film – цветной фильм

short film – короткометражный фильм

multi-part film – многосерийный фильм

2)

– детективный фильм

documentary film – документальный фильм

popular science film – научно-популярный фильм

animated cartoon (film) – мультипликационный фильм

melodrama – мелодрама

thriller – триллер

three-dimensional film; – стереофильм

3-Dfilm [› rw'dw: fwlm]

block-buster – дорогостоящий фильм, отличающийся пышностью постановки

comedy film – кинокомедия

musical film – музыкальный фильм

feature film – художественный фильм

film of action – боевик

horror film – фильм ужасов

soap opera ['soup']p(c)rc] – многосерийная сентиментальная пьеса; “мыльная опера”

3)

film people – кинематографисты

director – режиссер

to star – исполнять главную роль

producer – продюссер

starring – главные роли исполняют (в заголовке)

cast – состав исполнителей

scene-designer – художник-декоратор

co-starring – роли исполняют (в заголовке после перечисления главных ролей)

cameraman – оператор

– сценарист

4)

film version – экранизация

close-up – кадр, снятый крупным планом

exterior shots [eks'twcrwc • ]ts] – натурные съемки

scenery ['sw: ncrw] – декорации

showing – сеанс

– титры

take – дубль

film set – съемочная площадка с установленными декорациями

film test – кинопроба

studio shots – внутренние съемки

reel – бобина, катушка для фильма

– кадр

5)

– снимать фильм

to release a film – выпускать фильм на экраны

to have a film face – быть фотогеничным

the film has a long run – фильм долго не сходит с экранов

for sound – озвучивать

to screen a film – показывать фильм

the film is on – фильм идет

What is on at the Gigant cinema today?

6) Film may be: first-rate; worth seeing; true to reality; brilliant; well-produced; technically well-made; realistic; gripping; exciting; depressing; entertaining; boring; dull; outstanding; moving; sentimental; thrilling.

Unit 1

I. Answer the following questions. Use the topical words and phrases.

1) How often do you go to the cinema? Which films do you prefer?

2) Which films you’ve seen recently were dubbed?

3) Who directed the last film you saw? Who played the leading role?

4) Who is your favourite film actor or actress and why?

5) What do you think makes films popular with the audience?

6) Why do fewer people go to the cinema today? Why do some people prefer TV to the cinema?

7) In what way might the cinema be useful in studying a foreign language?

II. Ask and answer. Choose the correct answer from the right-hand column. What do we call:

Read and translate Text I.

Until television began to sweep across the world in the 1950s, films were the most popular form of entertainment in history. During the 1930s and 1940s, vast sections of the world’s population went to the cinema not only once but twice a week. There were the golden years of Hollywood, the American – and the world’s – film capital. Millions went to the movies whether their idols appeared or not. Of course, it was better if one or more of the legendary stars were in a film, but the audiences always flocked in.

Today, although millions of people still go to the cinema, films have to be better or bigger, or both, before the “house full” notices go up.

As with most inventions, no one person invented the moving film. Thanks to the work of Thomas Edison in America, the Lumiè re brothers in France and William Friese-Greene and Robert Paul in Britain, the first silent films were shown in the 1890s, usually as part of a music-hall show. An early film of railway trains entering a station alarmed its audiences into thought: the trains were coming straight at them.

By 1901 a Frenchman, Georges Mé liè s was making story films. America’s first story film was “The Great Train Robbery” in 1903. Two of the first film stars were Mary Pickford and the immortal comic, Charlie Chaplin. While Europe was fighting in the early years of the First World War, American film-making shot ahead. Hollywood, near Los Angeles in California, was established as a film centre. Great comedians like Buster Keaton appeared. So did the first great director, D.W.Griffith, who made “The Birth of Nation” in 1915. The director is the key man in film-making, as his name implies. He decides what scenes shall be seen, how they are shaped and how the actors interpret their roles.

During the 1920s, Germany, Russia and France were also centres of fine film-making. The Russian director Eisenstein (1898-1948) made a masterpiece called “The Battleship Potemkin”. The first sound film, “The Jazz Singer”, created a sensation in 1927. Soon, the era of silent films was over and the “talkies” had come to stay. Europe continued to make films, but this was Hollywood’s era, though many of its greatest stars and directors were European. During the 1930s, Walt Disney’s cartoon characters, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, became world famous.

Three countries who became major film producers after the Second World War were Italy, Sweden and Japan. The competition from television made film-makers experiment with improved sound, bigger screens and new spectacles like Cinerama^*. Colour films improved in quality from their early days in 1930s. The perennial old stars were joined by new ones, but films remained chiefly a director’s medium.

Now films are truly international. Hollywood, though still important, has been joined by London, Rome, Paris and Stockholm as world film capitals. Location work, when films are made out-of-doors, takes place anywhere on earth. As long as good films are made, the Big Screen will never lose its hold over millions.

Note:

^*Cinerama [7swnw'ra: mc] – a wide-screen process that used three synchronized cameras and three synchronized projectors. Later became an anamorphic system.

III. Answer the following questions.

1. When were films the most popular forms of entertainment? Why?

2. What did cinema have to compete with? Why were films to change?

3. Who is considered to be film inventors?

4. When were the first silent films shown?

5. What was the first film about?

6. When did the first American (Russian) film appear? What was its name?

7. Why is the director the key man in film-making?

8. What countries were the centres of film-making in the 1920s? in the 1950s? nowadays?

IV. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Give the correct answer.

1. The 1920s were the golden years of Hollywood.

2. In the 1930s people went to the cinema only to see their idols.

3. It was admiration and joy that the audience of the first film felt.

4. The first film star was Sarah Bernhardt.

5. Buster Keaton is considered to be the first great director.

6. “The Battleship Potemkin” was the first sound film.

V. Give a talk on the history of cinema.

VI. Discuss the situation in film-making industry of present-day Russia (compare it with other countries and periods of time).

Read and translate Text II.

Life Is Like a Movie

Film is larger than life. It illustrates the values we hold most dearly. There is love and romance, the hero and the heroine. Film provides us with a giant mirror – a reflection of the values, the half-truths, and the ideals of society.

It does this because writers, directors and producers are successful at tapping into our personal emotional treasure chests and translating them to a film. We then “buy them back” at the box office. The more closely a film approximates our own mixed bag of myths and values, the likely we are to see it and recommend it to others.

For example, fear is a universal emotion. We have all been afraid at one time or another, afraid we were going to die some horrible, lingering and unjust death. The “master of suspense” Alfred Hitchcock successfully played to these fears through his stories on the screen. There is universal audience identification with fear and that translates to box-office success. That success turned Hitchсock into one of the largest legends in filmdom...

These are universal emotions – fear, love, disappointment – but few of us have experienced such total ruin, complete love, realistic fear, and utter violence. The film represents universal emotions but “blows them up” until they are larger than life. When we come upon an experience in real life that is profound we think of movies. “This is just like a movie”, we say. Our ideals – our very way of perceiving intense experience – are shaped by what we have seen on film.

Indeed the power of the film-maker to shape our notion about intense experience, to provide a series of fictional experiences through which we funnel “realife”, is unrivaled in all of mass communication. Somehow, the mediated reality we see “up there” takes on an inexplicable significance.

At first glance it’s easy to make a distinction between “realife”, the events that happen to us directly and those we experience in “reel life” via film. If I ask you what the difference was, you would probably respond rather huffily that you could “certainly tell the difference between fact and fiction”. However, it’s really not that simple.

We have seen how all mass media play a large part in formulating our attitudes, beliefs, and ideals, because we all incorporate perceived mediated reality back into our real lives. For example, most of us have never experienced major crime first-hand, so we formulate our ideas about these types of experiences from what we see in films or on television. If we actually do witness a crime in real life we can’t help comparing it with what we have seen on mass media. We might even react to a given situation by imitating behaviours of those we have seen in a film or on TV.

Our notions about romantic love are almost completely derived from mass media formed by what we have read and seen. All of us are waiting for that great scene when we will take that special person in our arms for the first kiss. It will be a long, smooth, beautiful kiss. Everything will be perfect. The skyrockets will explode, and we will go off and live “happily ever after” just as in the movies.

The problem with this is that “realife” can’t always measure up to the expectations we have developed by consuming mass media.

VII. Explain what is meant by the following:

1) Film provides us with a giant mirror – a reflection of the values, the half-truth, and the ideals of society.

2) Writers, directors, and producers are successful at tapping into our personal emotional treasure chests and translating them to a film.

3) The film represents universal emotions but “blows them up” until they are larger than life.

4) The problem with this is that “realife” can’t always measure up to the expectations we have developed by consuming mass media.

VIII. Answer the following questions.

1) What films are a success with the public?

2) What is the difference between film and “realife”? Is the exaggeration an obligatory feature of film art?

3) In what situation could you say: “This is just like a movie”? What would you mean?

4) What can you say about the influence of the movies on our life and characters? Can you say that there are some films that have shaped you into what you are?

5) Have you ever in real life imitated the behaviour of those you have seen in a film? Is it merely the “behaviour” as it’s put in the text or something more profound which is worthy of imitation?

IX. Analyse the paragraphs given below. Single out the main idea of each paragraph and express your own attitude giving your arguments or counterarguments.

a) The virtue and significance of Soviet cinematography is that it gives a true portrayal of life in our Soviet country.

Eisenstein S., 1939

b) A movie as art objectively and vividly displays man’s good. It brings moral truth into the world.

Robinson W., 1969

c) A realistic film poses problems, poses them to itself as well. An American paper wrote an attack on my film saying that the cinema is for entertainment and ought not to raise problems. But for me a realistic film is precisely one which tries to make people see.

Rossellini R., 1973

d) What I look for is whether the idea is true and entertaining. However, if I were ever forced to make the choice I would prefer that it be entertaining.

Wilder B., 1961

e) People tell me that the movies should be more like real life. I disagree. It is real life that should be more like the movies.

Winchell W., 1982

f) I am bored to death with heroes more or less imaginary. I want to meet the real protagonist of everyday life, I want to see how he is made, if he has a moustache or not, if he is tall or short, I want to see his eyes, and I want to speak to him.

Zavattini C., 1953

g) Art doesn’t require the absolute equality between something told in a book or shown in a performance or a film and real life. A cultivated reader or viewer remembers it is not reality itself but its reflection created by an artist, who has noticed some facts or conflicts which deeply move him, and who initiates a viewer into his feelings and thoughts.

Kapralov G., 1985

X. Summarize the conclusion you’ve made in the previous exercises and speak on the following problems:

1) If the task of a film is “to reproduce real life”, should everything we see be reproduced? Is there any difference between the world of the screen and reality?

2) If film as art should “display man’s good”, should films about the evils and drawbacks of the society and human nature be made?

3) If you admit that our ideas and ideals are to a great extent shaped by the films, as it is their task, then it is film that comes first. If you admit that any scriptwriter or film director draws his inspiration from life, it is life that comes first. So which is it that comes first?

4) What is it to your mind that makes the impact of the film so great? Write a short essay on this question.