The Business of Subtitles

[Raymond Marble]

I just got Borgman on blu-ray from Netflix, and unless I'm completely crazy, the subtitles that automatically came up, which were not optional and could not be switched to anything else, were English subtitles for the hearing impaired (i.e. complete with [footsteps] [dog barking] etc. descriptions of foley sounds). I tried both the pop-up and main menus, the subtitle button on my remote, and everything else I could think of, but nothing changed them. It was a bummer.

[MichaelB]

I've no idea why it happened, because all the other features and shorts in Arrow's Borowczyk box were fine, but I was initially sent hard-of-hearing subtitles for Blanche and had to painstakingly go through them subtitle by subtitle either removing or editing them. I hadn't seen the film in at least a decade, and I'd have quite liked my rediscovery to be in slightly less stop-start circumstances!

[TMDaines]

There's open source software that can remove all hard-of-hearing aspects from subtitles in seconds.

[MichaelB]

There's open source software that can remove all hard-of-hearing aspects from subtitles in seconds.

There may well be, but I wasn't about to resort to automated solutions for a project like this, any more than I use the "replace all" option of a find & replace search when professionally copy-editing.

[manicsounds]

I just got Borgman on blu-ray from Netflix, and unless I'm completely crazy, the subtitles that automatically came up, which were not optional and could not be switched to anything else, were English subtitles for the hearing impaired (i.e. complete with [footsteps] [dog barking] etc. descriptions of foley sounds). I tried both the pop-up and main menus, the subtitle button on my remote, and everything else I could think of, but nothing changed them. It was a bummer.

From a poster on Blu-ray.com:

They know about it, are upset about it, and are working on fixing it as soon as tomorrow. No word yet obviously about replacement discs or anything like that but an announcement should be coming soon.

[hearthesilence]

Stumbled across this Chicago Tribune article from May 15, 1989 online - unfortunately, it strips out the author's name, but I'm guessing it's Dave Kehr. (EDIT: It is indeed Dave Kehr.) It ultimately deals with the business of subtitles, but a very different aspect of it:

The two sides of the Cannes Film Festival-its extravagant showmanship and its underlying seriousness-came together Saturday in the context of ”Cinema and Liberty,” a daylong event that was the festival`s contribution to France`s bicentennial year.

More than 100 filmmakers from around the world, ranging from such international celebrities as Bernardo Bertolucci (an Academy Award winner for ”The Last Emperor”) to representatives of struggling Third World cinemas (Souleymanne Cisse of Mali, Lino Brocka of the Philippines), gathered in the echoing reception hall of Cannes` Palais des Festivals to discuss ”what role their cinema has played in defending freedom”-a freedom defined by the French Revolution`s definition of ”The Rights of Man” 200 years ago.

The freedoms under scrutiny were sometimes political, sometimes personal and often economic. For Fernando Solanas, a leftist director in Argentina, a country that has only recently recovered a freedom of expression, the most powerful repressive force remained the international dominance of Hollywood-” a new colonialism,” Solanas said, ”that destroys the identity of all other cultures by imposing a uniform vision of the world.”

American director Jerry Schatzberg (”Scarecrow”), present in Cannes with his new film ”Reunion,” pointed out that Hollywood`s power was ”a cultural problem in the States as well. As long as people are going to make a lot of money selling certain films, those are the films that are going to be made.”

English, particularly with an American accent, has indeed imposed itself as the international language of commercial filmmaking: In South America, one director noted, European films are often dubbed into English and then subtitled in Spanish to give the impression that they are American-made. John Berry, an American director who has lived in France since he was blacklisted during the ”Red scare” of the 1950s, noted that when he first came to Europe his producers insisted that he film in French, ”but now they want me to shoot everything in English.” (Two other American blacklist victims, Jules Dassin and Ring Lardner Jr., were also present.)

The liveliest moment of the 6-hour debate came when Greek director Theo Angelopoulos demanded to know why Bertolucci had shot ”The Last Emperor” in the ”imperialist language of English.”

”I have a financial obligation to film in the language with the widest possibility of exploitation,” Bertolucci shot back, ”and I refuse to be lectured here like a schoolboy.” (Needless to say, the discussion was held in the imperialist language of French.)

Significantly few voices were heard from those countries where language is the least of a filmmaker`s problems. Czechoslovakian filmmaker Jiri Menzel spoke bravely but sadly:

”You have asked a person from the East to say something. It`s not easy for us to speak of freedom, because we are all more or less employees of the state. We Eastern filmmakers are like domesticated animals-they feed us, they take care of us, while you in the West are like wild animals who live and hunt in the forest. We have learned to be pets.”

[The Curious Sofa]

The global dominance of Hollywood cinema in Europe and how to handle and package foreign language films in the US/U.K. has long been an issue for the industry. At the time, it was more common for the more commercial foreign language films to be dubbed for English-speaking audiences but that limited their exposure as much as subtitling,

The European countries where dubbing is most common, Germany, Italy and Spain, were in the habit of not even recording sound for their local productions, so even the native version was dubbed. Also, the countries where dubbing is most common all had fascist regimes in the 20th century, and dubbing became popular during those regimes and was seen as a way of bringing foreign films into the mother tongue as a nationalist act.

Growing up in Germany, where they still dub all non-German language films and TV series, had at least one advantage. Non-English language films were much more mainstream. I grew up watching Eastern European fairy tales and fantasy films on TV, Karel Zeman was equal to Disney to me. Many of the more commercial European films that never or barely made it to the English-speaking world were given similar releases to Hollywood films, for example making Louis de Funes, Belmondo and Bud Spencer huge stars here (we have a museum devoted to Bud Spencer in Berlin). There are films that are considered classics in Germany, like Robert Enrico's Les Adventuriers, which was always on TV when I was a kid, that are barely known in English-speaking territories.

With streaming and especially Netflix, things seem to be changing, with something like The Squid Games becoming its most successful series, and dubbing must be contributing to that. (BTW, this is no defence of dubbing, I can't bear it now.)

[MichaelB]

The liveliest moment of the 6-hour debate came when Greek director Theo Angelopoulos demanded to know why Bertolucci had shot ”The Last Emperor” in the ”imperialist language of English.”

”I have a financial obligation to film in the language with the widest possibility of exploitation,” Bertolucci shot back, ”and I refuse to be lectured here like a schoolboy.” (Needless to say, the discussion was held in the imperialist language of French.)

This reminds me of a situation that Costa-Gavras encountered over Missing, where quite a few people whose ideological position overrode plain common sense insisted that he should have made the film about Chileans rather than Americans and in Spanish rather than English, and by making it in English for a Hollywood studio he'd clearly abandoned all his principles in favour of the basest commerce.

Costa-Gavras was personally not unsympathetic to their position, but politely pointed out that if he'd done as they were recommending, the resulting film would have played in a few arthouses, pretty much exclusively to audiences who already knew about the situation in Chile and who had already taken a position on it. By contrast, by making the film about Americans and casting major stars like Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon, the film could get a far wider release in mainstream American cinemas and reach precisely the kind of audiences that Costa-Gavras wouldn't have had a hope of reaching with his earlier work - i.e. people who knew nothing about Chile and US involvement in the Pinochet regime, but who bought a ticket because Jack Lemmon was in it.

And that's what he was trying to do with Missing first and foremost, and he triumphantly succeeded on all counts as the film performed very well commercially while also being remarkably uncompromising in its criticism of American imperialism – to a really remarkable extent, in fact, given Universal Studios backing. Language aside, it's clearly the work of the man who made Z and State of Siege.

[colinr0380]

I assume that is something that helped to trigger off the run of 'journalist-activist in a foreign land' films in the 1980s: The Killing Fields, Under Fire, Salvador, The Year of Living Dangerously etc? (Which I guess was itself a trend that Alex Cox was reacting back at with a film like Walker)

Arguably even Gorillas In The Mist fits in with that trend!

[The Curious Sofa]

The Year of Living Dangerously came out the same year as Missing and Under Fire had to have been at least green lit or in pre-production by the time Missing was released. Financially Missing was at best a moderate success, not the type of film that gets studios to jump on a band wagon.

[hearthesilence]

It's kind of a long tradition in Western entertainment. FWIW I recently I found out that Lawrence of Arabia was nearly written that way too, with Kirk Douglas playing the reporter (actually based on Lowell Thomas), but he dropped out when he couldn't get star-billing and a bigger salary. The role was subsequently reduced to what was eventually played by Arthur Kennedy. (Kennedy wasn't even supposed to be in the picture. Edmond O'Brien was cast, but he had a heart attack while shooting on location, so Kennedy was hired as a replacement.) To be fair, even with a less prominent role for the journalist, it still revolves around a Western perspective and how outsiders changed the Middle East.

[colinr0380]

Amusingly Ghandi has the same kind of figure packed off back to England on a train at the beginning of the film!