Учебно-методическое пособие по работе с видеофильмом "Casablanca". Дворжец О.С. - 8 стр.

                                   3.2 You are going to read a profile                 The popularity of movies boomed and the film companies joined together
                                        about Hollywood, the biggest film          in order to get patent rights as a way of protecting their products. But pirate
                                        factory in the world.                      companies began to make films of their own outside the law. To avoid prose-
                                   Pre-reading task                                cution these film makers packed up and moved across country. They settled in
                                   The following people, places, dates and         a small town called Hollywood.
                                   things are in the profile. What connec-             By 1914 this town had become the biggest film factory in the world. Other
                                   tion do you think they have with Holly-         companies moved there because the sunny climate was conducive to shooting
                                   wood? They appear here in the same              outdoors. The surrounding environment was also perfect for making westerns,
                                   order as in the profile.                        the first and most popular American genre.
                                                                                       The big film studios of today also got their start early in this century. Four
                                                                                   of the most talented people working in Hollywood realized the importance of
   – 1886                                – Douglas Fairbanks                       controlling their own film and thus Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Char-
   – California                          – Mary Pickford                           lie Chaplin and the director D.W. Griffith formed United Artists in 1918.
   – ranch                               – Charlie Chaplin                         Shortly afterwards Paramount, Columbia and M.G.M. were formed and they
   – Los Angeles                         – 1930s                                   also built their own studios and used their own stars. Today the actors are no
   – William Friese Greene               – 1940s                                   longer tied to just one company but the studios are huge, multinational com-
   – "The Great Train Robbery"           – profit                                  panies.
   – "Nickel Odeons"                     – monsters                                    Everything we read about the great days of Hollywood in the 1930s and
                                                                                   1940s seems like an exaggeration. The studios always said their films were
▪ What facts from Hollywood history do you know?                                   'super', 'colossal', 'fabulous' or 'fantastic'. They spent vast sums of money but
▪ Now read the profile and discuss the list again.                                 made very few good films. But when we discover what the people in charge
                                                                                   of the studios were like, it is surprising that they made any good films at all.
    Hollywood, the most famous town in America, got its name in 1886 when              Almost all of the owners of the big film companies had been small busi-
a retired couple moved to California and built a ranch. The movies hadn't yet      nessmen who developed the Hollywood philosophy of 'the bigger, the better',
been born and the couple chose the location because they liked the wide open       believing that the more money they spent, the greater the profit they would
spaces around the small but bustling city of Los Angeles.                          make. They owned the production companies and the cinemas as well as the
    Three years later moving pictures were invented in London when William         studios, so they were so powerful that no one could make a successful film
Friese-Greene gave the first demonstration of a Kinematograph. But it was the      without them. But in private life they were ignorant, unattractive people, and
Lumière brothers in Paris who gave the first public demonstration before a         their employees thought they were monsters.
paying audience in 1985. Ironically, they thought movies had no commercial             Everyone hated Louis B. Mayer so much that when someone asked his
use.                                                                               former partner, Samuel Goldwyn, why so many people had come to his fu-
    When this curious 'magic lantern' show reached. America, people were           neral, he said: "They want to make sure he's dead".
more enthusiastic about its potential. Edwin S. Porter made the first narrative    Reading and speaking
film that used actors. It was called "The Great Train Robbery". People went to     Comprehension check
see the film in their thousands. Each person paid five cents for admission: this   Now read the profile more carefully and answer the following questions:
is why the first cinemas were called "Nickel Odeons".                              1. When did Hollywood get its name?

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