This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.18: “Although the film …”

How can we describe the films of today as they relate to the unnamed 1940 film in the text? The older film, we’re told, influenced critics’ opinions about cinema, indirectly helping later films to be taken more seriously. As a result, we might say that today’s films benefited from or owe something to the 1940 film.  Both beholden to (A) and indebted to (B) capture this idea (with beholden being a synonym for indebted or obligated). The next two answer choices, derivative (C) and based on (D), may seem attractive. They go too far, though: we don’t know whether the new films borrow anything from the older one in terms of style, technique, story, etc. We only know that critics paid attention to the older film, setting into motion a kind of ripple effect that has benefited today’s films too. Finally, distinguishable (E) and biased (F) are the opposite of what we want, calling attention to what separates the films of different eras instead of explaining what they have in common.