{"id":24667,"date":"2016-09-20T05:32:09","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T03:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=24667"},"modified":"2018-02-27T15:27:35","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T14:27:35","slug":"des-livres-au-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/des-livres-au-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"Des livres au cinema*"},"content":{"rendered":"

J\u2019adore lire.<\/strong> (I love to read.) <\/em>Et pour entretenir mon fran\u00e7ais, je lis beaucoup en fran\u00e7ais.<\/strong> (And to maintain my French, I read a lot in French.)<\/em> I especially love classic novels about the royal era of French history. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t always have the time to read as much as I would like.<\/p>\n

BREAKING NEWS: Would you believe you can actually call a random French person to talk about all things French?!! It’s true. Check it out<\/a> . . . . But be sure to come back after you do for our regularly scheduled post!<\/p>\n

The verb lire means \u2018to read\u2019. Present tense conjugations are: je lis, tu lis, il\/elle\/on lit, nous lisons, vous lisez, ils\/elles lisent<\/div>\n

Fortunately, many of the classics have been made into movies! And while I always like to watch movies in French when I can, sometimes when I\u2019m with other people (or ok, I\u2019ll admit it, just when I\u2019m feeling lazy) an English language version will do. Here are four of my favorites.<\/p>\n

The stories in these films \u2013 while historical in nature \u2013 have at best a loose relationship with facts, and in some cases a looser relationship with the source material, but they\u2019re all equally great at evoking a fascninating period in French history and culture.<\/p>\n

\"Cover

Aubrey Beardsley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Dangerous Liaisons<\/a>, 1988, with Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Uma Thurman in the lead roles, and based on the epistolary novel** les Liaisons Dangereuses<\/em> (1782) follows the twisted games of the former lovers the Marquise de Merteuil (Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Malkovich) as they plot conquests romantic and otherwise. It is a classic costume drama heavy on the courtly intrigue.<\/p>\n

Valmont<\/a>, 1989, tells the same tale as Dangerous Liaisons, but with a little less “edge”. Annette Bening replaces Glenn Close in the role of the Marquise, and Colin Firth replaces Malkovich as the titular Vicomte . . . The two are equally Machiavellian and hearts are broken and – spoiler alert – tragedy follows, but in\u00a0Valmont<\/em> the tone is a bit lighter and, by turns, even almost comic.<\/p>\n

The Affair of the Necklace<\/a>, 2001, recounts events surrounding a very real royal scandal that nearly took down the crown . . . or at<\/p>\n

\"By

By Ch\u00e2teau de Breteuil (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>least the queen . . . and is viewed as a significant event leading to the disillusionment of the French people with the monarchy. Alexandre Dumas chronicled the events in his novel Le collier de la reine, <\/em>on which this wonderful movie is based. The story of the affair of the necklace really is quite an interesting one and by itself makes this movie worth seeking out, but the film also features a hidden gem of French palaces, le ch\u00e2teau de Vaux-le-Vicomte (shown above).<\/p>\n

My final recommendation, The Man in the Iron Mask<\/a>, 1998, is based on a central plot line in another Alexandre Dumas novel, The Vicomte of Bragelonne<\/em>, which recounts the continuing stories of the Three Musketeers (les trois mousquetaires).\u00a0 Some might question the film’s historical accuracy and faithfulness to its source,\u00a0 but for pure fun and for sumptuous French royal intrigue, it’s an A+.<\/p>\n

Et vous? <\/strong>Do you have any favorite French royal films? Ou des livres pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9s au cin\u00e9ma? <\/strong>(Or favorite books as films?)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* Books at the movies<\/p>\n

** An epistolary novel is one written in the form of letters often exchanged between characters in the novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

J\u2019adore lire. (I love to read.) Et pour entretenir mon fran\u00e7ais, je lis beaucoup en fran\u00e7ais. (And to maintain my French, I read a lot in French.) I especially love classic novels about the royal era of French history. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t always have the time to read as much as I would like. BREAKING…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":24672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9235,2149,316,1852],"class_list":["post-24667","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-alexandre-dumas","tag-france","tag-french-culture","tag-movies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24667"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29791,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24667\/revisions\/29791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}