hce_nthu
115年
英文
第 34 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.”
34. Which of the following statements is correct about Pare Lorentz?
I. He was a film critic
II. He was one of the authors of Censored: The Private Life of the Movies
III. He produced a documentary concerning the Dust Bowl
I. He was a film critic
II. He was one of the authors of Censored: The Private Life of the Movies
III. He produced a documentary concerning the Dust Bowl
- A I and III only
- B II and III only
- C I only
- D II only
- E All of the three
思路引導 VIP
為了確定這位主角的多重身份，我們可以試著從文章的前兩段尋找特定關鍵字：他在正式開始拍片之前，主要從事什麼樣的文字工作？而在文中被委託製作的那個計畫，是為了反映哪一個特定的地理與環境災難呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精確地在長篇文本中定位關鍵資訊，顯示出非常優異的閱讀掃描與細節整合能力。
Lorentz 的多重職涯與創作主題
這題主要考察的是對文中特定事實的檢索與驗證能力。首先，第一段明確提到 Lorentz 的雙重身份：他既是一位 影評人 (film critic)，也是著作 Censored: The Private Life of the Movies 的 共同作者 (co-author)，這讓敘述 I 與 II 獲得了直接的文本支持。接著，第二段詳述了 1934 年發生的 塵暴災難 (Dust Bowl)，以及 Lorentz 如何受託將此慘狀拍攝成具備「紀錄與說服力」的開創性影片，這便證實了敘述 III 的正確性。
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