【英语听和读】面纱

 Amber¹: 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 Watts² 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 uptight³ person, although he loves his new wife very much.

The Fanes move to China, and Kitty meets Charles Townsend, an older,

married British diplomat⁴ and has a passionate⁵ 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 depict⁶ 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 obsessed⁷ 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

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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 disapprovingly⁸ – 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 cholera⁹ has broken out … and we learn a lot more about

this terrible epidemic¹⁰ 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

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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 underneath¹¹ 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 geographical¹² 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

参考例句：

• 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 )

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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

参考例句：

• 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。