XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.books.james-joyce   
   From: blissInSanFrancisco@mouse-potato.com   
      
   This is not an animated film. It is a live action production so   
   please remeve rec.arts.anime.misc from your future postings   
   about live action films not made in Japan.   
      
   Neither is it a James Joyce book.   
      
   bliss   
      
   On 9/18/24 01:06, HenHanna wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   > On 9/17/2024 4:09 AM, Ross Clark wrote:   
   >> Story by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed, with Orson Welles in a   
   >> central role. Noirish occupied Vienna in 1946.   
   >>   
   >> I certainly remember Anton Karas's theme tune on the zither; it was on   
   >> the radio a lot when the film was new. But I was a small boy, and this   
   >> was not a suitable film. I didn't see it until maybe a decade later.   
   >>   
   >> And the language angle? The envelope, please...   
   >>   
   >> Crystal references a paper he gave at a conference a few years ago:   
   >> "Going Especially Careful: Language Reference in Graham Greene".   
   >> To my surprise, it's right here:   
   >>   
   >> https://www.davidcrystal.com/Files/BooksAndArticles/-4838.pdf   
   >>   
   >> But just to summarize the points for today:   
   >>   
   >> Greene never said much explicitly about language.   
   >> But his characters notice it and talk about it all the time.   
   >> And "whenever there's explicit reference -- to accent, words, grammar   
   >> -- or to individual languages and dialects, it's a sign that trouble   
   >> is brewing.   
   >> [I want to jump up and say, "But trouble is brewing all the time in   
   >> Graham Greene's novels, so the correlation is not significant." But I   
   >> won't.]   
   >>   
   >> Anyhow: language-related plot elements in The Third Man:   
   >>   
   >> - The point-of-view/narrator character (played by Joseph Cotton) is a   
   >> novelist.   
   >> - He has come to Vienna to write advertising/propaganda for his old   
   >> friend Harry Lime (Welles).   
   >> - He can't speak German, so has to rely on interpreters a lot, and   
   >> gets into difficulties when he hasn't got one.   
   >> - The people he meets have strange names, which he often gets wrong.   
   >> - He ends up having to give a lecture on a subject he knows nothing   
   >> about, and is lost for words. In answer to a question he says "Well,   
   >> yes, I suppose that is what I meant to say."   
   >>   
   >> There's more at the link above.   
   >>   
   >> Just in case you don't know this film, the most famous quote from it   
   >> is Harry's "cuckoo clock" speech before he disappears, which has   
   >> nothing to do with language:   
   >>   
   >> (as rendered on IMDb)   
   >>   
   >> Harry Lime: Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like   
   >> the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had   
   >> warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced   
   >> Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland   
   >> they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace,   
   >> and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.   
   >   
   >   
   >  > - He ends up having to give a lecture on a subject he knows nothing   
   >  >                  about, and is lost for words.   
   >   
   >   
   > this used to be a common setup in Old(er) movies  ... There's a   
   >                fav. Hitchcock movie containing a scene like   
   that.   
   >   
   >   
   > _______________   
   >   
   > i don't think of  [The Third Man]  as particularly  Ling-intensive.   
   >   
   > [A Clockwork Orange] or [To Build a Fire] (both with Burgess)   
   >           or [My Fair Lady]   
   >             are much more Ling-intensive.   
   >   
   >   
      
      
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