Unit 4
Stage and screen
Developing ideas
Good Book, Bad Movie?
Activity 1
1. Have you ever read any of
these books? What are
they about?
2. Have you ever seen the
movies or TV plays based
on these books? What do
you think of them?
Activity 2
Scan the passage. Find out which of the
books in Activity 1 are mentioned.
The Great Gatsby and The Iliad
Activity 3
Match the author’s opinions about the movie adaptations to the examples from the
passage.
□1 Some parts of the story and some characters are missing in the movie.
□ 2 The visual images are not as striking as the descriptions in the book.
□ 3 The movie is not as great as the book.
□ 4 The movie doesn’t look the way we visualised while reading the book.
□ 5 The characters do not stand out.
a
d
c
e
b
Think & Share
1. What does the saying “There are a thousand Hamlets in a
thousand people’s eyes” mean? Do you know of any similar
sayings in Chinese?
2. What books would you like to see made into movies? Why?
3. What other reasons do you think make movie adaptations less
satisfactory than the original books?
Activity 4
Work in groups. Give a talk about a movie adapted from
a book.
1 Use the notes to help plan your talk.
Activity 4
2 Organise your talk following the steps below.
• Introduce the book.
• Describe the movie adaptation.
• Give your opinion of the movie adaptation.
3 Give your talk to the class.
1 They say that“a picture is worth a thousand words", but the
briefest look at books and the movies based on them would have
anyone questioning this common saying. All too often, great words
end up being turned into cinematic
"turkeys".
人们常说“一图胜千词”，但是简单对照一下书籍和由之改编的电
影，就会让人开始质疑这种说法。很多时候，优秀的文字作品最终
却变成了失败的电影
2 Good movies need good stories. If so, why has one of the
earliest and greatest works in Western stortelling, Homer's The
Odyssey, never had an equally great movie based on it? Movies
need strong characters. So why have the movies based on The
Great atsby never been praised as“great" P Movies of course
need impressive images, so why has Alice in Wonderland only
resulted in movies best described as "interesting" ?
好电影需要好故事。若是这样，那为什么西方最早也是最优秀的
叙事文本之一一-荷马的《奥德赛》一一从来没有产生过同样优
秀的改编电影呢?电影中需要个性鲜明的人物。那为什么由《了
不起的盖茨比》改编的电影从未被赞为“了不起”呢?电影当然
需要令人印象深刻的画面，那为什么由《爱丽丝梦游仙境》改编
的电影最多也只能被称为“有点意思”?
3 One of the key reasons ; behind this is that while a book usually takes a
few days to read, a movie typically lasts under two hours. This means that
great books can lose plot details and characters when they move to the
big screen. This is something that even the highly successful Harry Potter
movies can't escape from, with fans of the books disappointed not to see
some of their favourite characters in the movie versions.
这背后的一个重要原因就是，-本书通常需要花几天的时间来阅读，而一
部电影一般不会超过两小时。这就意味着好书被搬.上大银幕之后，会删
减一些情节和人物。这是连大获成功的哈利.波特”系列电影也无法避免
的事情,有的书迷因为在电影中看不到自己最喜欢的一些角色而大失所望。
这背后的一个重要原因就是，-本书通常需要花几天的时间来阅读，而一
部电影一般不会超过两小时。这就意味着好书被搬上大银幕之后，会删
减一些情节和人物。这是连大获成功的“哈利.波特”系列电影也无法避
免的事情,有的书迷因为在电影中看不到自己最喜欢的一些角色而大失所
望。
4 Movies also disappoint us when things don't look the way we
imagined them in the books. Take, for example, the epic movie
Troy, which is in part based on Homer's The Iliad and was met with
mixed reviews from the audience. The most questionable issue was
the actress chosen to play the part of Helen. Many people thought
she didn't live up to Helen's title of“the most beautiful woman in
the world"，influencing opinions of the movie to some extent.
电影呈现出的事物与我们读书时的想象有落差时，我们也会备感失
望。以史诗电影《特洛伊》为例，它部分改编自荷马的《伊利亚
特》，观众对它的评论毁誉参半。其中最受争议的问题在于扮演海
伦的女演员。许多人认为她配不上海伦“世上最美的女人”这一-
称号，这一-定程度上影响到了人们对这部电影的评价。
5 There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes. Furthermore, books
and movies are two different forms of media and therefore have different rules.
With this in mind, perhaps we should judge a movie in its own right, and not
against its original source. Interestingly, audiences have in recent years turned to
television series such as Sberlock or Mad Men, which an have many characters
and gradual plot development. Perhaps, one day, readers of E. Scott Fitzgerald's
most admired work will find themselves glued to their
screens by episodes of The Great Gatsby.
一千个读者就有-千个哈姆雷特。而且书籍和电影是两种不同的媒体形式，因此
也遵循不同的原则。知道了这一点，也许我们应该从电影本身来评价它，而不是
将其与原始版本进行对比。值得注意的是,观众已经逐渐将兴趣转向了《神探夏洛
克》或《广告狂人》这样的电视连续剧，因为电视剧能展现更多人物，情节也得
以逐步展开。也许有一天，F .斯科特.菲茨杰拉德最杰出作品的读者们，会发现自
己已被《了不起的盖茨比》的剧集深深吸引。
Homework
• Dream of the Red Chamber Dream of the Red Chamber, also
called The Story of the Stone, witen by Cao Xueqin,is one of
China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was written during the Qing
Dynasty. The novel is generally considered to be the greatest of
all Chinese novels and among the greatest in world literature.
• The air is full of singing and drinking in 1920s America.By chance,
Nick, a poor clerk, broke into the secret world of the
moneyspendthrift millionaire Gatsby. To his surprise, he found
that the only connection in his heart was the small green light on
the riverbank -- in the shadow of the light dancing, there lived his
beloved Daisy.However, the cold reality could not tolerate the
illusory dream. In the end, the goddess in Gatsby's heart was just
a worldly material girl.When all the truth comes out, Gatsby's
tragic life is just like fireworks. The bright is only a moment, but
the disillusionment is eternal.
Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes is a fictional consulting detective in
London created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation,forensic science, and
logical reasoning. Together with his assistant, Dr John H. Watson, he pursues
criminals throughout London, the south of England, and continental Europe.
• Rickshaw Boy
• Written by Lao She, Rickshaw Boy is considered by many to be
one of the masterpieces of modern Chinese literature. It describes
the difficult life of a rickshaw puller during the years of warlord
turmoil. This book is famous for its vivid descriptions of life in the
city of Beijing in the beginning of the 20th century.
• Moment in Peking
• Moment in Peking is a novel oiginally written in English by
Chinese author Lin Yutang. The novel covers the turbulent events
in China from 1900 to 1938, and it focuses ont the lives of several
dfet ailies and people, along with their iteractions during that time.
Homer's Epic is the earliest Greek epic poem, including Iliad and
Odyssey. It is said that it was written by the blind poet Homer, but
in fact it originated from folk oral literature.Iliad is the ancient Greek
blind poet Homer (800BC-600BC) epic narrative poem.It is an
important works of ancient Greek literature and one of the classics
of the whole West.
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