时间:2018-12-28 作者:英语课 分类:英语听和读


英语课

 Amber 1: Hello, I’m Amber and this is bbclearningenglish.com.


In Entertainment today, we listen to a review of a new Hollywood film, The
Painted Veil, and we hear how the film – which stars Naomi Watts 2 and Edward
Norton – is different from the classic English novel on which it’s based.
Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil tells the story of Kitty and Walter
Fane, a young English couple in the 1920s, who marry for the wrong reasons.
Kitty is a shallow rich girl who doesn’t love Walter, but wants to escape from
her family. Walter is a doctor, an expert in infectious diseases, and he’s a
serious, rather uptight 3 person, although he loves his new wife very much.
The Fanes move to China, and Kitty meets Charles Townsend, an older,
married British diplomat 4 and has a passionate 5 affair with him ...
We asked the novelist Francis King (who knew Somerset Maugham) if he
agreed with critics that the new film of The Painted Veil doesn’t show the
powerful passion of Kitty and Townsend’s affair, and this is surprising as films
today have a greater freedom to depict 6 sexual love.
As you listen to his answer, try to catch the expression Francis uses to stress
the strength of Kitty’s desire for Townsend.
Francis King
‘Yes, with the affair between Kitty and Townsend, they could have shown much more of that
because it is a tremendous, passionate affair. She’s absolutely obsessed 7 with sex with him –
that never comes across really. You just see them once, when the door handle is turning, and
that’s all. So it is very old-fashioned in many ways, and the slowness of pace, I thought, was
old-fashioned.’ 
Entertainment © BBC Learning English 2007
Page 2 of 3
bbclearningenglish.com
Amber: Did you catch it? Frances says Kitty is ‘absolutely obsessed with’ sex with
Townsend. ‘To be obsessed with something’ is a very current expression in
English and it means that you’re unable to stop thinking about something.
Frances calls the film ‘old-fashioned’ – this expression is usually (as it is here)
used disapprovingly 8 – he means it’s not a modern film, and he thinks it should
have been. For example, he says it had a ‘slowness of pace’ and most films
today are very fast-moving! Listen again.
Francis King
‘Yes, with the affair between Kitty and Townsend, they could have shown much more of that
because it is a tremendous, passionate affair. She’s absolutely obsessed with sex with him –
that never comes across really. You just see them once, when the door handle is turning, and
that’s all. So it is very old-fashioned in many ways, and the slowness of pace, I thought, was
old-fashioned.’
Amber: To punish Kitty for her affair with Townsend, Walter takes his wife to a remote
Chinese village where cholera 9 has broken out … and we learn a lot more about
this terrible epidemic 10 in the film than we do in the novel.
Next, the BBC interviewer, Mark Lawson, asks Frances to comment on the
language in the film and how he thinks it sounds to us today. Most of the
dialogue in the film is taken directly from the ‘vintage’ (old) novel and it
conveys how repressed the characters are – remember the story is set and was
written in the mid-1920s.
Notice the description ‘anachronisms of language and delivery’ – an
anachronism is something which exists out of its time in history.
Mark Lawson and Francis King
‘One of the objections that some people have when stories of this vintage are done now is that
there are anachronisms of language and of delivery. I wondered about the language – at one
point the doctor says, ‘I need to speak with you,’ which sounded slightly wrong to me.
Completely wrong, yes. ‘I need to have a word with you,’ he’d have probably said, yes.’ 
Entertainment © BBC Learning English 2007
Page 3 of 3
bbclearningenglish.com
Amber: While Walter works selflessly to help the Chinese villagers, Kitty begins to
see her husband in a new light, and their marriage slowly blossoms into love.
But then tragedy strikes … and Kitty is forced to examine the choices she
has made.
Most of The Painted Veil was filmed in China, and Frances says the scenery
in the film is ‘absolutely superb’ – it’s excellent – although there is very
little description of the landscape in the novel. But he says the film doesn’t
really show Kitty’s ‘spiritual’ journey – how her deep feelings and beliefs
change – and how she ‘ends up’ a ‘totally changed’ person.
Francis King
‘Here it was absolutely superb, but I get rather tired of all those jagged mountains and the
water underneath 11 them – they seem to keep coming back, those mountains, and I felt what the
film didn’t bring out was that it’s not just a geographical 12 journey for Kitty, the heroine, it’s
also a spiritual one – at the end of the novel, she ends up totally changed, she’s a different
person, and I don’t think you got that feeling from the film at all.’
Amber: Now let’s recap the language we focussed on.
 
to be obsessed with something – to be unable to stop thinking about
something
 old-fashioned – not modern, more typical of a time in the past
vintage – old, and of high quality and lasting value 

1 amber
n.琥珀;琥珀色;adj.琥珀制的
  • Would you like an amber necklace for your birthday?你过生日想要一条琥珀项链吗?
  • This is a piece of little amber stones.这是一块小小的琥珀化石。
2 watts
(电力计量单位)瓦,瓦特( watt的名词复数 )
  • My lamp uses 60 watts; my toaster uses 600 watts. 我的灯用60瓦,我的烤面包器用600瓦。
  • My lamp uses 40 watts. 我的灯40瓦。
3 uptight
adj.焦虑不安的,紧张的
  • He's feeling a bit uptight about his exam tomorrow.他因明天的考试而感到有点紧张。
  • Try to laugh at it instead of getting uptight.试着一笑了之,不要紧张。
4 diplomat
n.外交官,外交家;能交际的人,圆滑的人
  • The diplomat threw in a joke, and the tension was instantly relieved.那位外交官插进一个笑话,紧张的气氛顿时缓和下来。
  • He served as a diplomat in Russia before the war.战前他在俄罗斯当外交官。
5 passionate
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的
  • He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
  • He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。
6 depict
vt.描画,描绘;描写,描述
  • I don't care to see plays or films that depict murders or violence.我不喜欢看描写谋杀或暴力的戏剧或电影。
  • Children's books often depict farmyard animals as gentle,lovable creatures.儿童图书常常把农场的动物描写得温和而可爱。
7 obsessed
adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的
  • He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
  • The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。
8 disapprovingly
adv.不以为然地,不赞成地,非难地
  • When I suggested a drink, she coughed disapprovingly. 我提议喝一杯时,她咳了一下表示反对。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He shook his head disapprovingly. 他摇了摇头,表示不赞成。 来自《简明英汉词典》
9 cholera
n.霍乱
  • The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
  • Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。
10 epidemic
n.流行病;盛行;adj.流行性的,流传极广的
  • That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
  • The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。
11 underneath
adj.在...下面,在...底下;adv.在下面
  • Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
  • She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣,里面套着一条连衣裙。
12 geographical
adj.地理的;地区(性)的
  • The current survey will have a wider geographical spread.当前的调查将在更广泛的地域范围內进行。
  • These birds have a wide geographical distribution.这些鸟的地理分布很广。
学英语单词
a-baffled
acetic acid amide
acoustic range
air peak
alabastrums
at the port
AVNRT
bacon and eggss
Ban On
bluetooth-enabled
body component
bos primgenius
Bousval
boy geniuses
burned region
button head screw
cage-bar
Charles Albert
chemicoluminescent
chokeout
conflagrative
cortege (france)
Corydalis claviculata
cubiclelike
cut meat
declasse
diffley
downfacing
Doxamin
electric motor oil
enamel incremental line
Evaluation period
exopt
fleming valve (tube)
frequency standard
fucketh
gas cleaning
general-purpose pig house
global address
golding by dipping
gradual contact
guyliners
half floated rate gyro
Hancock, Mount
Hillsboro Beach
homoscedasticity
hormone theory
iccs
imports and exports
innixion
internal primitive water
iron(iii) phosphite
Jackson Bay
Jordan-Wigner commutation rule
kip-up
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
lesbophobia
lingshuiensis
liquid adhesives
lose the plot
meteorological instrument
milenkovich
minnesota scholastic aptitude test
multi-layer transient voltage suppressor
named peril policy
neutral gear
nominal fracture stress
nominal usable field strength
non-labor income
opsomenorrhea
Ouray County
patrilineal descent
penaeus japonicus
pin someone's ears back
plumbates
posthouse
present evidence
quasi judicial act
radiography
ragged text
relieving palpitation
revised-lower-bound
rocking bar
rotary knife cutting machine
Saussurea incisa
screenname
secondary property
self-regulations
shedding of leaves
shield cask
slagslide
stephanolepis japonicus
switch wheel
teleostei abdominales
Terence Rattigan
thorium resources
tiples
ultrastruct
underuption
uniater
whose fault