hce_nthu
115年
英文
第 31 題
📖 題組：
Though The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) was the first film he ever made, Pare Lorentz came to it with a strong belief in the persuasive power of cinema and its ability to make people face up to reality. As a film critic and co-author of Censored: The Private Life of the Movies (1930), he had frequently indicted Hollywood for “censoring” the public’s access to information about “tough contemporary facts”. Thus, when the Resettlement Administration (RA) asked him to make Americans aware of the necessity of its programmes, he leapt at the chance and convinced Rex Tugwell of the need, not for short public information films but for a new kind of “dramatic/informational/persuasive movie” that would be “worthy of commercial distribution”. By 1934, the Dust Bowl extended from Texas to North Dakota, with reports that over 180 million acres had already been ruined for agricultural cultivation and that a further 775 million were at risk. Lorentz had already proposed a film about the appalling cost of this situation to Hollywood. Having been rebuffed, he only became more determined to use the RA’s support to command the public’s attention. As many film historians have noted, he succeeded in producing a **seminal** film, both “politically committed and aesthetically ambitious”, that shaped the American documentary tradition. Presenting The Plow as “a record of the land” and “a picturization of what we did with it”, the prologue immediately conveys a sense of collective national guilt. Each section is carefully orchestrated, with poetic narration delivered by operatic singer Thomas Chalmers and visuals edited to Virgil Thomson’s musical score to unite the film as a lyrical whole. Idyllic shots of tall waving grass show “the richness of the western plain lands before their abuse”, and serve as the measure of the ensuing disaster. Homesteaders, farmers and the frenzy of mechanized harvesting prompted by the agricultural profits available during the First World War, contribute in turn to an ever-expanding exploitation of the land. A dramatic montage juxtaposing tractors on the home front with tanks on the Western Front foreshadow the destruction which Lorentz soon marks with images of dead animals and bleached bones on parched, depleted soil. His most powerful footage, however, is of the violent dust storms themselves, blocking out the sun, bringing the terror of the “black blizzards” to “millions who had only read about what was happening far away on the Great Plains.”
Though The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) was the first film he ever made, Pare Lorentz came to it with a strong belief in the persuasive power of cinema and its ability to make people face up to reality. As a film critic and co-author of Censored: The Private Life of the Movies (1930), he had frequently indicted Hollywood for “censoring” the public’s access to information about “tough contemporary facts”. Thus, when the Resettlement Administration (RA) asked him to make Americans aware of the necessity of its programmes, he leapt at the chance and convinced Rex Tugwell of the need, not for short public information films but for a new kind of “dramatic/informational/persuasive movie” that would be “worthy of commercial distribution”. By 1934, the Dust Bowl extended from Texas to North Dakota, with reports that over 180 million acres had already been ruined for agricultural cultivation and that a further 775 million were at risk. Lorentz had already proposed a film about the appalling cost of this situation to Hollywood. Having been rebuffed, he only became more determined to use the RA’s support to command the public’s attention. As many film historians have noted, he succeeded in producing a **seminal** film, both “politically committed and aesthetically ambitious”, that shaped the American documentary tradition. Presenting The Plow as “a record of the land” and “a picturization of what we did with it”, the prologue immediately conveys a sense of collective national guilt. Each section is carefully orchestrated, with poetic narration delivered by operatic singer Thomas Chalmers and visuals edited to Virgil Thomson’s musical score to unite the film as a lyrical whole. Idyllic shots of tall waving grass show “the richness of the western plain lands before their abuse”, and serve as the measure of the ensuing disaster. Homesteaders, farmers and the frenzy of mechanized harvesting prompted by the agricultural profits available during the First World War, contribute in turn to an ever-expanding exploitation of the land. A dramatic montage juxtaposing tractors on the home front with tanks on the Western Front foreshadow the destruction which Lorentz soon marks with images of dead animals and bleached bones on parched, depleted soil. His most powerful footage, however, is of the violent dust storms themselves, blocking out the sun, bringing the terror of the “black blizzards” to “millions who had only read about what was happening far away on the Great Plains.”
31. Lorentz’s proposal of a film about the problem of the Dust Bowl
- A was turned down by Hollywood.
- B was eventually sponsored by Hollywood.
- C was indicted as “censoring” the public’s access to information about “tough contemporary facts.”
- D was rejected by the Resettlement Administration.
- E risked ruining 775 million acres of land in North Dakota.
思路引導 VIP
當我們在文中看到 Lorentz 轉向尋求政府機構（RA）的支持時，文中提到他是因為先前在另一個地方遭到了「rebuffed（回絕）」才變得更加堅定。請你回頭仔細閱讀第二段的前幾行，看看在他找上政府之前，他最初是向哪一個特定的產業或地方提出拍攝計畫的？而該處對他的提議做出了什麼樣的反應呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
精準的資訊比對與語意轉換
非常好！你能從長篇的閱讀測驗中精準定位到第二段的關鍵訊息，並做出正確的判讀，這代表你具備優秀的細節檢索能力。這題的關鍵在於文中提到：「Lorentz had already proposed a film... to Hollywood. Having been rebuffed, he only became more determined...」這裡的 rebuffed 是解題的核心字眼，意思是「斷然拒絕」或「回絕」。你成功地將這個詞與選項 (A) 中的 turned down 進行了正確的語意對應，顯示你對同義詞轉換有敏銳的直覺。
難度切入點與邏輯判斷
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