B) Enact the actual conversation
Linda: Oh, I wanted to watch “Casablanca” on the TV last night but I didn’t get in time.
Joe: Oh, you didn’t get to see it, then.
Linda: No, did you see it?
Joe: Oh, yes, it’s a brilliant film, it’s a wonderful film. Yeah, I watched it again, I watch it any time it comes on because it’s a classic film, I never miss it.
Linda: Yes.
Joe: Er …yeah, you should have seen it. I mean the acting is fantastic …
Linda: Is it?
Joe: …you’ve got Humphrey Bogart playing Rick who runs this bar in Casablanca on the north coast of Africa and Morocco. And, er …Ingrid Bergman comes in to the story, Clark Raines, Paul Heinrich they are all wonderful.
Linda: Hmm, and what about the plot? The plot’s supposed to be very exciting, isn’t it?
Joe: Oh, it’s an outstanding plot, really. It’s er … got everything you need, it’s a very emotional love story, Ingrid Bergman’s married to this chap, and they come in, and she sees Humphrey Bogart, who was an old lover, and it starts the whole thing all over again, and, it moves, you know, in the midst of this strange setting, very gripping stuff.
Linda: Yes, and it’s supposed to have a very powerful ending as well, isn’t it?
Joe: It does, it has a very memorable ending, indeed. It’s an ending the image of which has been used in many commercials, it’s that popular.
Linda: Yeah. So what would you say is your favourite scene in the film?
Joe: Oh, I think the ending without question. It is …it’ so moving, and Bogart is, er …and Bergman saying their farewell at this …at the airport, it’s an image you never forget, it’s, er …a love story that is …archetypal, it’s outstanding. No question, it’s something that you should certainly see.
Linda: I really must get to see it, yeah.
Exercise 41. In pairs. Call your friend and invite him/her to the retrospective
screening of “Casablanca”. Report what Joe said about the film
Convincing your friend that the film is worth seeing.
Observe the rules of tense backshifting.
READING AND
LANGUAGE USE
Exercise 42. a) In small groups or pairs. Discuss the statement by M. Scorsese.
Report to the rest of the class why you think M. Scorsese put the two
Names side by side.
b) Find the reported speech and write down the actual statements.
Ingmar Bergman
1918-2007
“Bergman
was one giant;
Antonioni
was another.
Both of them cast
very, very long
shadows”
– Martin Scorsese
When Ingmar Bergman died at 89 on July 30 on Faro, a remote island off the coast of Sweden, the weather was cold and rainy. Somebody remarked that it was an all-too-fitting send-off for a man whose legacy included some of cinema’s bleakest visions of humanity. He told me that he was afraid that he would die on a very, very sunny day, quips Woody Allen, his longtime friend and greatest mainstream disciple.
From the chess match with Death in 1957’s “The Seventh Seal” to the intertwined female psyches in 1966’s “Persona”, Bergman was best known for deeply contemplative black-and-white sagas set in stark Scandinavia. A stage director by training and practice, he created 56 movies, three of which won Best Foreign Language Film Oscars (1960’s “The Virgin Spring”, 1961’s “Through a Glass Darkly”, and 1983’s “Fanny and Alexander”); he also earned the Irving G. Thalberg award in 1971. Many critics admitted that alongside Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa, he had been one of the great ambassadors of art-house cinema.
There were others who assumed that despite some of his more off-putting films, or perhaps because of them, Bergman had influenced pop culture enormously. Allen, who dubs Bergman “the greatest film artist of my lifetime,” famously paid homage via satires (“Love and Death”) as well as dusky dramas (“Interiors”) – and frequently employed two key members of his celebrated repertory company, actor Max von Sydow and cinematographer Sven Nykvist. But Bergman’s imprint extended to everything from Stephen Sondheim’s stage musical “A Little Night Music” (based on the unusually buoyant “Smiles of a Summer Night”) to, yes, “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” (in which the heroes battle Death in a game of…Twister).
Bergman also leaves a remarkable canon of confessional films, pieced unmistakably by and about himself: his sickly childhood, his domineering minister father, and his strained home life (he wed five women, fathered at least nine children, and had a long relationship with his most notable leading lady, Liv Ullmann). These lit a path for the early work of Martin Scorsese, Bob Fosse, and even George Lucas. Elliott Gould who played the director’s surrogate, an archaeologist, in 1917’s “The Touch” said that Ingmar had always been digging. “He told me that, up until that time, his two best films were “Persona” and “Winter Light”. And the message in “Winter Light” is that even if there’s nobody in the congregation, you must continue to deliver the message….That’s what he’s doing right now.” –Joshua Rich
Exercise 43. Read the following sentences and decide if they are false (F) or true (T).
1. Ingmar Bergman died at 89 on July 30 in Stockholm.
2. Woody Allen was Antonioni’s longtime friend and mainstream disciple.
3. Bergman was best known for black-and-white comedies.
4. Bergman created 56 movies.
5. Alongside Federico Fellini and F. F. Coppola, he was one of the great ambassadors
of art-house cinema.
6. Elliott Gould played the director’s surrogate, an archaeologist, in “Winter Light”.