ADDITIONAL TEXTS FOR READING, TRANSLATING
AND RENDERING
THE FIRST CINEMA FILMS
One of the first cinema films was made by Edison, but the intervals between his photographic exposures were too short – about forty-eight photographs taken (and shown) for the second. The human eye could not see them so fast and the movements therefore appeared very jerky. This made the eyes tired.
When Edison’s machine was brought to France to show films, it was seen there by Auguste and Louis Lumiere. These two brothers soon made a camera and projector that worked at about 16 photographs per second. This reduced the jerkiness very much, and in December 1985 the Lumiere brothers gave the world’s first real cinematograph show. Their film was called The Arrival of a Train at a Station. The film was so good that some of the audience almost expected the train to rush out at them from the screen.
In 1903 one of Edison’s cameramen made a new long picture. It was called “The life of an American Fireman”. People liked it and asked for more; and so more films of this kind was made. More cinemas were built.
These first films had no sound. When it was necessary, printed words were thrown on the screen to explain what was happening or what people were saying. Usually music was played during the showing of a film. If the film was showing moonlight on the sea, the music was gentle and sweet. If there was a fight or a storm, the music was loud and noisy.
THE CINEMA IN THE USA
When the American goes to the pictures, he expects to see a large program:anewsreel (which is usuallythefirst item on theprogram), acartoon, adocumentary, anda feature film(a full-length filmin acinemaprogram).
Foreign films are shown with subtitles or are dubbed into English. The program may have one or two intervals during which is a continu-
ous showing of the program from opening till closing time. In that case exact show times are not fixed and the seats are not reserved. You may enter or leave thehall anytime during theshow and take anyseat you like.
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There is a parking ground near big cinemas. For those who want to see a film without leaving the car there are drive-in cinemas (so-called drive-ins).
A great number of films are released in the USA every year. Hollywood films differ in genre and artistic value. Hollywood’s early films were westerns, horror films, comedies. Then there were romance films.
There are films based on novels and films which describe historical events. In such films you see familiar characters brought to life.
Hollywood has changed greatly since the time of westerns. American films of today are realistic and up-to-date. They are made with great professional skill. Camera work, setting and acting are usually excellent. But there are also second-rate films, which critics call stupid and not entertaining.
A FILM REVIEW
Father of the Bride, directed by Charles Sayer, is a modern remake of 1950’s film starring Spencer Tracy. This time the role of doting father is played by Steve Martin, and Diane Keaton plays his long-suffering wife.
The story begins with Martin’s daughter announcing her imminent marriage.
Reluctant to see his beloved daughter leave the family nest, he feels more like he’s losing a daughter than gaining a son-in-law.
As preparations for the big day get started, there follows a chain of comic events, helped along by the delightful Martin Short, superb as the wedding organizer for the occasion.
Steve Martin gives just as admirable a performance as Tracy did in the original film, and brings his own unique brand of humour to the part.
Father of the Bride is essentially a funny, enjoyable film, suitable for old and young alike. For those of you who like a good chuckle, it’s well worth going to see.
AND THE OSCAR GOES TO…
On February 24, 2013, the 85th Academy Awards were held. The ceremony took place in Los Angeles, at the Dolby Theatre.
The history goes as far back as to 1929. On May16, 1929, the first awards were presented at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with about 270 people guested. $5 was the admission for the ceremony.
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The Academy Awards ceremony is broadcast in more than 100 countries annually. So far, as manyas 2,809 Oscars havebeen given to 302 actors.
What is interesting, the winners, or their heirs, are not allowed to sell their award, without first offering it back to the Academy for the price of US $1. Most attempts to resell were unsuccessful.
Shirley Temple was the youngest person ever to receive an Oscar, which happened in 1934 when she was merely five. The oldest person to receive an Oscar was Christopher Plummer, who, in 2012, received the statue for the Beginners. He was 82 at the time. Emil Jannings owns the title of the first Best Actor ever awarded. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), Titanic (1997), and Ben-Hur (1959) were the most awarded movies in the history, each having received 11 statues. The person who holds the greatest number of nominations for acting, with 17 and 3 wins in total, is Meryl Streep.
JACK NICHOLSON – A HOLLYWOOD LEGEND
Jack Nicholson is one of the greatest Hollywood actors of all time. He is recognized for the characters he creates in his films, who are often mysterious, sometimes comic, but always slightly neurotic. He has been nominated for Oscars twelve times, more than any other actor, and has won three. He has also won seven Golden Globe Awards and received the 2001 Kennedy Center Honors. He won his first Oscar for his part in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975. Another Oscar followed in 1983 for Terms of Endearment and his third in 1997 for As Good as it Gets. All these films have been dubbed into Russian and are very popular.
Like many Hollywood actors, Jack Nicholson is known as a ‘method actor’, an acting technique that originated in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Konstantin Stanislavski, one of the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre, developed a system for creating realistic characters and setting them in a realistic world on stage. Actors were taught to remember events in their own lives and then transfer their emotions to their role in the play. To do this, they had to understand the motivation behind their character’s words and actions. The first question actors had to ask was ‘What if I were in the same situation as my character?’ In America, Lee Strasberg took Stanislavski’s system and by emphasizing ‘emotional memory’, adapted it into what we now call Method Acting.
Jack Nicholson certainly has plenty of emotional memory to draw upon. His own childhood was confusing. His father abandoned him when
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he was young and he was brought up by his grandmother although he thought she was his mother. His real mother was in fact the person he believed was his older sister. He believed this for nearly forty years, long after his grandparents and mother had died. A journalist, preparing a story about him, told him the real truth over the phone.
Nowadays Jack Nicholson is regarded as one of the finest actors of the modern era. Few of his performances have been criticized and a mark of his success is that he was able to turn down the offer of a starring role in the most famous gangster film of all time, The Godfather.
GENIUS OF ANIMATION
Yuri Norstein is widely considered to be one of the most creative and innovative Russian animators ever. Despite the fact that his entire work lasts for less than 80 minutes it has had such a massive impact on those who have seen it that he is ranked as one of the best contemporary directors in the world.
After finishing a course attached to the state animation studio Soyuzmultfilm, Norstein began to work there full time in 1961. It was here that he met his future wife and creative partner, Francesca Yarbusova, with whom he collaborated on many of his films. Together they teamed up with cameraman Alexander Zhukovsky, to invent a machine which allowed them to animate on layers of glass.
It has often been said that his works give the impression of a children’s picture book that moves – but in such a way that you cannot tell whether his ‘pictures’ are drawings, photographs or 3D images. Everything seems to blend in and out of a pervasive fog, creating an eerie beauty and lyricism specific to Norstein alone. For Norstein the sense of beauty always took priority in all his works. He would never take short cuts in production if it meant that the aesthetics of his picture would suffer as a result.
He has always worked very carefully, creatively and slowly, depicting every small movement and emotion of his protagonists. It was this same professionalism that, in 1975, gained him permission from the authorities to complete in his own time his best known work Hedgehog in the Fog. This animated is at first sight the simple story of a little hedgehog which becomes lost in the fog. The actual plot, however, pales into insignificance as the audience is led through an enchanting, atmospheric journey, surrounded by disturbing noises and equally disturbing silences. The
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film won numerous awards at home and abroad, and in 2003 was voted the best animated film of all time at the Laputa Film Festival in Tokyo, Japan.
In 1979 Norstein went on to create another masterpiece, The Tale of Tales. Combining memories of childhood and war, the film is deeply rooted in Russian history, myth and sensibility. Events throughout are observed by a little wolf, a common figure in Russian folklore. In 1984, an international panel of animation experts proclaimed The Tale of Tales to be the best animated film of all time.
For the last twenty years, Norstein has been funding his own work on a film based on Googol’s The Overcoat. As usual he has been working slowly, producing about a minute of film a year.
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