【英语听和读】憨豆先生

 William: Hello and welcome to Entertainment – I’m William Kremer.

[FX – canned laughter]
Well, the comedy that has made Mr Bean popular around the world doesn’t
quite work on the radio, since the main character – Mr Bean - doesn’t actually
say anything. It is what we call visual comedy – jokes that you watch, rather
than listen to.
This month sees the release of a new Mr Bean film, Mr Bean’s Holiday. It’s
been a long time since the first Mr Bean film – ten years! But it’s been over
fifty years since a film with a very similar name emerged 1 from France – Mr.
Hulot’s Holiday, or to give it its French title, Les Vacances de M. Hulot.
We’re going to listen to part of an interview with the creator of Mr Bean,
Rowan Atkinson. He describes his reaction to seeing M. Hulot when he was
seventeen… and he uses two really great descriptive expressions. See if you
can catch them:
R. Atkinson: Les Vacances de M. Hulot, I remember, I remember watching when I was
seventeen at school and it was a, it was an eye-opening and jaw 2-dropping
experience for me.
William: It was a what…? 
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R. Atkinson: Les Vacances de M. Hulot, I remember, I remember watching when I was
seventeen at school and it was a, it was an eye-opening and jaw-dropping
experience for me.
William: An eye-opening and jaw-dropping experience – do you have the image of
someone’s eyes opening really really wide? Or the lower part of their mouth –
their jaw – dropping to the floor? Good! Now think about what might cause
this kind of reaction and you’ll get an idea of the meaning of these phrases. If
something is eye-opening, it makes you think in a new way or opens you to
very different experiences. For example, if you travel to another country, that
can be an eye-opening experience. We can use this image in a number of ways
– for example, ‘I went to see an interesting exhibition yesterday; it really
opened my eyes to some new things’. Or you might say, ‘It was a real eyeopener’.
 
If something is jaw-dropping, it is astonishing or amazing. For example, you
might say, ‘The Great Wall of China is jaw-dropping’. Or you could say, ‘Mt.
Kilimanjaro is jaw-droppingly beautiful’.
STING 3
William: So Mr. Hulot’s Holiday was an eye-opener for Rowan Atkinson. In the next
clip 4, Atkinson describes what he found so astonishing about the film, which
starred and was directed by Jacques Tati. He contrasts the French film with the
Hollywood comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd:
R. Atkinson: I mean the very nature of the traditional silent comics in Hollywood – the
Chaplins and the Keatons and Harold Lloyd and people – is that what they did
was, you know, it was not just visual but physical, you know, lots of stunts 5 and 
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falling over and dancing and… and what I liked about what Jacques Tati did, it
just had a slower, sort of more European flavour and tone 6 and pace to it.
William: He said that American comedies were very physical, with lots of stunts and
falling over. Physical means, to do with the body, so the Hollywood comics
did things with their bodies to make people laugh, like falling over. Jacques
Tati, being a European, had a different style. I like the three words that
Atkinson uses to contrast M. Hulot from the American films.
R. Atkinson: … it just had a slower, sort of more European flavour and tone and pace to it.
William: Flavour, tone and pace. When we talk about tone in art, we usually mean a
work of art’s underlying 7 emotion or feeling. For example, we can say that
something has ‘an optimistic tone’, ‘a serious tone’, ‘a happy tone’ and so on.
The word flavour, we usually use to describe the way something tastes – e.g.
‘The sauce had a spicy 8 flavour’. Rowan Atkinson is using the word to mean
something similar to tone – the flavour of the film means the overall feeling
that the film gives the audience.
Pace is simpler. The pace of a film means how quickly things happen. If the
story moves very quickly it has a fast pace, and if it moves very slowly, it has a
slow pace.
European films, of course, have a slower pace than American ones. Rowan
Atkinson says that the new Mr Bean film is much closer in tone to European
films like Mr Hulot’s Holiday, than American ones.
R. Atkinson: And, and what I liked about what Jacques Tati did, it just had a slower, sort of
more European flavour and tone and pace to it. And that I think is, is, is what 
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distinguishes 9 Mr Bean’s Holiday from the first Mr Bean movie – is that I think
it is something which is far more European in tone, whereas 10 the first movie
was definitely American.
William: So – whether you like Mr Bean’s Holiday as much as the first Mr Bean film
will depend whether you like films with a fast pace or a slower one, with an
American tone or a European one. It’s released in the UK on 30th March.
Remember that you can download this programme, and hear today’s
vocabulary again by going to the Entertainment website on BBC Learning
English dot com. Goodbye.