Unit II

Text I. Discussing films.

1)

– Did you watch this musical film yesterday?

– Yes, I did. It’s very unusual.

– The music was fascinating.

– The plot was thrilling. But frankly speaking I didn’t like the acting.

– I must say, I don’t agree. The leading actors were superb. And what’s your opinion?

– I’d rather say it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. I was greatly impressed by it.

– So, it is worth seeing, isn’t it?

– I think so. At least I wasn’t bored.

2)

– How did you find it?

– I thought it was absolutely marvellous.

– Yes, the acting was wonderful, and the film was ever so well directed.

– That’s not surprising. Shukshin was a well-known producer.

– And there was scarcely a single camera shot that was dull or uninteresting. Some of them were really superb.

3)

– What film did you see yesterday?

– “They Fought for Their Country”. It’s a screen version of Sholokhov’s novel. I’d seen the play at the theatre before and I was greatly interested to see the differences between the play and the film.

– And which did you like better?

– Of course, the film. I enjoyed the music and the colour of the film and the acting as well. The energetic, steadily pulsating, vivid character of a soldier was Shukshin’s final role, his last acting victory. And Vyacheslav Tikhonov reveals in his character an intense pain for the ravaged land, the desire to fight for it and defend it at any cost. His acting is superb, brilliant.

– Yes, they gave very good performances. And the cinema gives everybody the opportunity to enjoy their talent. But still I like the play at the theatre. The film speaks more to the eye than to the ear and the words are often unnecessary there. And the main characters and what they did and thought didn’t seem so clear as they do in the theatre. What we see becomes more important than what we hear.

– You may be right, but no theatre could ever hope for so great audience and so broad a variety of technical means in tackling artistic problems.

I. Discuss the films you’ve seen with your fellow-students. Try to speak on the films of different kinds: documentary, historical films, an animated cartoon, etc. Use the topical vocabulary.

II. Work out your pros and cons for the following problems. Discuss these problems in pairs.

1) Nowadays more and more films starring children are made; is it good or bad?

2) What is your attitude towards remakes, i.e. another variant of adapting the same book for the screen (and screen adaptation in general)?

3) Are you for or against old films being shown to the modern audience?

4) Can a serious book (plot) be made as a musical for the screen?

5) Is it good or bad for an actor to combine his work in the theatre with his work as a film actor?

Read and translate Text II.

ALEXANDER WALKER on David Lynch’s “BLUE VELVET”

It is not by accident that David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” turned out to be the most talked about film in America. Its timing was perfect. The US Attorney-General’s report on pornography had just hit the headlines, though not the book shops. Its two volumes, over-generous perhaps in detailing the raw evidence for its conclusion that, yes, there was a link between porn and sexual crime, were judged too raunchy to put on public sale. But curiosity was activated. Whether people found “Blue Velvet” repellent or risible – and some found it both – they knew they’d seen a film of a kind that rarely gets into mainstream American cinema. “Masterpiece”, said some American critics, like the LA Time’s Sheila Benson; while Rex Reed, on the other coast, denounced it as “trash”. Jack Matthews, an acute freelance critic, says that ‘Lynch has struck nerves in an era when most film-makers are aiming for flesh’.

The movie is set in what looks like typical small-town America – lawn sprinklers, flower-beds, tree-shaded streets. But what has both upset and titillated people, is the churning under-life of the paradisal locale; hyper-realist hues above ground give way to tones of darkest Pinter, and the horticultural peace and quiet conceal a horrific set of power-plays that the young hero, played by Kyle MacLachlan, who looks fresh out of Bible class, innocently stumbles upon. These include the local chanteuse (Isabella Rossellini), who catches him involuntarily watching her undress for bed, strips him in turn, and then demands the rough treatment. His knowledge of this sado-masochistic world is extended in even more unwelcome ways, chiefly by Dennis Hopper, who stuffs a wad of blue velvet into the lady’s mouth and takes his pleasure while feeding himself an aphrodisiac shot of helium through a nose mask.

Now to pretend this is the stuff of small-town subculture is clearly ingenuous. It is the be-all and end-all of porn: but what will keep the US Attorney-General at bay is Lynch’s way with it. He isolates it in a disturbing social vacuum in which an omnipresent but intangible menace is purveyed by a Pinteresque fresco of characters who build the film into an unpredictable and frightening psycho-drama.

David Lynch claims that Blue Velvet is his private pipeline to childhood fears and pleasures – a naked woman, he says, once walked by him and his kid brother while they were playing at dusk in a small-town park. It is possible, indeed, to see his film as a welcome antidote to that other apostle of rural America, Steven Spielberg, past whom, one can be sure, no naked woman ever walked. Lynch doesn’t really need to come on strong with autobiography, however. His movie connects with earlier ones he’s made, especially Eraserhead, a modern Gothic tale about a misfit and his girlfriend sharing their apartment with a half-human child. Unlike Eraserhead, Blue Velvet has a deliberately inflammatory feel to it – perhaps Lynch’s reaction to his last film, the disastrous Dune, which had no audience to speak of. He has made sure this one does. But if so, he is an agent provocateur who operates on the American subconscious.

There is very little left to shock people in a culture that recycles reality into ‘entertainment’. Lynch has taken the fantasies of the porn market and turned them into what looks like the everyday reality of the American heartland. The jolt is salutary.

III. Answer the following questions.

1) Why was the film “Blue Velvet” much talked about?

2) What is your own attitude to the following statement: “there is a link between porn and sexual crime”? Do you support this position? Give your reasons.

3) In what way does the film set contradict its content?

4) Why is “Blue Velvet” considered to be a psychodrama?

5) Why is David Lynch called “an agent provocateur who operates on the American subconscious”?

6) Do you share A.Walker’s opinion about “Blue Velvet” (if you’ve seen it)?

IV. Agree or disagree with the following statements.

1) “Blue Velvet” is a rather ordinary film that didn’t arouse any viewers’ interest at all.

2) The action takes place in a quite exotic set.

3) Every scene in “Blue Velvet” is full of peace and kindness.

V. Make a summary of the article.

VI. Write a review of a film.

VII. Role-playing.

Characters:

· a journalist

· a famous actor (actress)

Situation: an interview.

VIII. Topics for discussion.

1) Cinema, its role and place in the modern world.

2) Cinema and its genres.

3) Film and education.

4) Films are nothing but bits of celluloid and wire. They can only reproduce and what they reproduce is not art.