Should TCM Air More Foreign Films?

[Yeps]

I would prefer a well dubbed foreign film to one using subtitles.

You are the first person I have ever heard say this. I find it hard to understand how you could prefer dubbed films, but to each his own.

 

[skyvue]

I doubt it. Generally speaking, Americans hate subtitles.

Sorry, but that's an awfully broad generalization. Millions of Americans have no problem whatsoever with subtitles. Plenty of Americans don't want to watch old movies, either -- if you doubt this, spend a few days working in a video store, and try recommending classic movies to your customers, as I have done -- but that hasn't prevented TCM from being a success. Many folks won't watch anything in black and white. Not CASABLANCA, not CITIZEN KANE, not even GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

As for dubbing films, imagine seeing CASABLANCA without hearing Bogart's voice, STAGECOACH without hearing John Wayne's, ALL ABOUT EVE with someone else subbing for Bette Davis, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE without hearing Jimmy Stewart's unique vocal tics and mannerisms. No, thanks. When I've had friends visit from Germany, where many movies are dubbed, I've made it a point to play scenes from old movies for them, so that they could hear how these iconic actors sound, and they were quite grateful.

Some in this thread seem unaware that TCM already shows foreign films, and not infrequently -- the question was, should they show more? Without hesitation, I say yes, they should. I'd certainly prefer classic foreign films to the stuff from the 1970s and '80s they're adding to the mix now.

Some of my richest movie-going experiences have come in seeing foreign films (and I reached the age of 25 or so without ever having seen a subtitled movie). Truffaut, Kurosawa, Naruse, Ozu, Fellini, Powell and Pressberger, Cedric Klapisch, Patrice Leconte -- these are some of my favorite directors, and I could go on.

It's one of the many reason I live in NYC. I simply couldn't live in a city that didn't have diverse offerings of foreign films, classic and current.

I do think foreign films are ideally seen in a theatre, but then I feel that way about all movies, especially classic cinema. After five or ten minutes, one doesn't even think about the subtitles. It becomes second nature to read them.

 

[Tomasso]

And even when dubbing is well done, it's frequently hard to get accurate translations in approximately the same timeframe of any given line.

How would dubbing differ from somebody reading the subtitles aloud as you watched the movie?

 

[Tomasso]

Sorry, but that's an awfully broad generalization. .

It's just something an exhibitor told me when I asked about the dearth of foreign films available in the US.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

It's one of the many reason I live in NYC. I simply couldn't live in a city that didn't have diverse offerings of foreign films, classic and current.

When I started this thread, I thought back to 1992, when a small former first-run movie house from my childhood--I saw Return of the Jedi there in 1983-- began exclusively offering foreign films and other art films....adjacent to a popular mall smack dab in the middle of suburbia. I vowed to go every week and see whatever they were showing (I recall seeing Raise the Red Lantern first) and just loved it. That is, until Hurricane Andrew blew threw town and damaged the theatre. It caused more damage than the theatre could afford to repair, given its tiny but dedicated base, and that was the end, thereby putting my foreign film exploration on hold for so many years, so when I read of you and Doctor Strange having frequent exposure to such films, I lament my own short-lived experience.

And this being South Florida, little has changed' there still aren't any art house film theaters in Broward County.
(if there are any Dade County TFLers reading, do suggest something in Miami).

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's just something an exhibitor told me when I asked about the dearth of foreign films available in the US.

We show a lot of subtitled foreign pictures -- in a town of 7000 people -- and our regular audience doesn't mind it a bit. It's the casual moviegoers, the random people walking down the street looking for something to do and thinking about maybe seeing a show, who tend to be put off by subtitles.

Granted, our demographic here is much older than most places -- our median age in this town is 47 -- and we hardly ever get people in their 20s for foreign films. Given that most "mainstream/multiplex" theatres push hard for the teens-and-twenties instead of the more mature crowds maybe that's the real issue: younger audiences don't like subtitles, so except for indie/art theatres, they don't get booked.

 

[Yeps]

In my experience, it is older people who do not like subtitles. My generation, at least those in my area and and college, much prefer subtitles. Most of them would rather watch a mainstream hollywood movie, but watching a foreign movie, subtitles are preferred. It might have something to do with the popularity of anime. Most of the dubs for anime are horrible, and so my generation has been trained to prefer subtitles. I like subtitles because I prefer to hear the real actor.

 

[Yeps]

How would dubbing differ from somebody reading the subtitles aloud as you watched the movie?

I think that Doctor Strange explained this pretty clearly. Besides, would you really want someone reading the subtitles aloud? That would be horrible.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Nathan - Raise the Red Lantern is a great film!

Sometimes even modern dubbing - and DVD subtitling - isn't done so well. I had seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon twice in the movies with subtitles, and was happy to get the DVD. But I was disturbed to discover that it was the dubbed version, and while it was a good dubbing job, it still lost a good deal of nuance and detail. So I switched on the subtitles... and was disgusted to find out that they were a direct translation of about 80% of the dialog in the dub script, not the original theatrical subtitles!

What makes this case especially galling is that while this particular film was in Chinese, the script - and burned-into-the-theatrical-prints subtitles - had been co-written by an American, Ang Lee's usual producing parter James Schamus. Those theatrical subtitles were way better than the DVD ones!

Anyway, there's no question that subtitles are better. And it actually adds to the experience of watching a foreign film: your mind quickly begins reading the subtitles automatically while you still hear the actors speaking in the original language - which retains nuances of expression and delivery that can't be captured in even a great dubbing job, and which your mind processes as part of the performance and story. And while it's true that some people have a real aversion to subtitles, many audiences discover that it's not a problem after they've seen a few great subtitled movies.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Anyway, there's no question that subtitles are better. And it actually adds to the experience of watching a foreign film: your mind quickly begins reading the subtitles automatically while you still hear the actors speaking in the original language - which retains nuances of expression and delivery that can't be captured in even a great dubbing job, and which your mind processes as part of the performance and story. And while it's true that some people have a real aversion to subtitles, many audiences discover that it's not a problem after they've seen a few great subtitled movies.

I'm strictly a subtitles kind of guy, and an instance that comes to mind is Bibi Andersson in Persona. Her monologue and her tremendous performance still comes through despite the fact that she's speaking in Swedish. Reading the subtitles in no way detracts from the experience and I can still hear the emotion in her voice long after the movie's ended. Dubbing by someone else destroys the actor's performance, IMO.

Oh, Raise the Red Lantern was excellent, indeed! Gong Li was a big crush for me back then.

 

[Tomasso]

I can't stand dubbed films. I would rather watch it in the original language without subtitles than dubbed (I do that occasionally.)

Interesting.........

 

[Nathan Dodge]

It will shock younger Loungers, but believe it or not the BRAVO channel was once an excellent source of "cutting edge" movies and music, at least when it was a premium channel. I recall watching a documentary on poet Robert Lowell in 1995, and Elvis Costello interviewing Chet Baker, among many other long-since-gone programs-and-unlikely-to-ever-be-aired-again programs.

From (the all-knowing and mistake free) Wikipedia:

"Bravo launched as a commercial-free premium channel on December 1, 1980 owned by Cablevision's Rainbow Media; the channel claims to be "the first television service dedicated to film and the performing arts". Cablevision launched Bravo as a premium channel available two days a week and sharing channel space with the softcore porn channel Escapade. In 1981, Bravo had 48,000 subscribers in the U.S.; four years later there were around 350,000. A 1985 profile of Bravo in The New York Times observed that most programming consisted of international, classic, and independent film. On Bravo, celebrities such as E. G. Marshall and Roberta Peters provided opening and closing commentary to the films. Performing arts on Bravo included the show Jazz Counterpoint. During the mid-1980s, Bravo converted from a premium channel to a basic cable channel. By the mid-1990s, Bravo began adding sponsorships as PBS did and included commercial breaks by 1998. Bravo signed an underwriting deal with Texaco in 1992 and within a month broadcast the first Texaco Showcase production, a stage adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.

In the Encyclopedia of Television, Megan Mullen perceived certain Bravo programs as "considered too risky or eclectic for mainstream channels". Those programs were Karaoke and Cold Lazarus, the final serials by British playwright Dennis Potter shown by Bravo in June 1997, and Michael Moore's documentary series The Awful Truth from 1999."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravo_(US_TV_channel)

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think cable television is proof positive of the principle of entropy. The inevitable fate of all cable channels is to eventually collapse into a heap of lowest-common-denominator dross. It's only a matter of time before TCM goes that route, which is terribly terribly sad. But Robert Osborne isn't going to live forever, and when he goes, they're going to all-out-embrace the "appeal to the younger crowd" mentality. And when that happens, commercial interruptions and zombie-themed miniseries are only a short hop away.

 

[C-dot]

But Robert Osborne isn't going to live forever, and when he goes, they're going to all-out-embrace the "appeal to the younger crowd" mentality. And when that happens, commercial interruptions and zombie-themed miniseries are only a short hop away.

TCM won't be able to appeal to the "younger crowd" without completely changing the set-up of the channel. Classic films will come to mean 1975 and beyond...

Part of me thinks that there must be a successor to Robert Osbourne out there, like there was a great one for Darrin on Bewitched. Will they find him/her, or even bother trying to, is another story.

 

[Lincsong]

I say yes ... sort of. If it's economically feasible, TCM should launch another cable channel dedicated solely to vintage foreign films.

Agree with Mr. Chevalier, they should launch another channel dedicated solely to vintage foreign films. But, I do recall watching the original Italian version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" on TCM. That was a 1942 or 1943 film and was a little more racier in commentary than the American version.

 

[Lincsong]

I think cable television is proof positive of the principle of entropy. The inevitable fate of all cable channels is to eventually collapse into a heap of lowest-common-denominator dross. It's only a matter of time before TCM goes that route, which is terribly terribly sad. But Robert Osborne isn't going to live forever, and when he goes, they're going to all-out-embrace the "appeal to the younger crowd" mentality. And when that happens, commercial interruptions and zombie-themed miniseries are only a short hop away.

Just like A&E and AMC.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

I think cable television is proof positive of the principle of entropy. The inevitable fate of all cable channels is to eventually collapse into a heap of lowest-common-denominator dross. It's only a matter of time before TCM goes that route, which is terribly terribly sad. But Robert Osborne isn't going to live forever, and when he goes, they're going to all-out-embrace the "appeal to the younger crowd" mentality. And when that happens, commercial interruptions and zombie-themed miniseries are only a short hop away.

The most pathetic thing about the catering to the younger crowd ethos is how everything must be dumbed down. Either that, or networks must grovel like appeasers to bring in the masses instead of letting viewers discover the channel and enjoy it on its own terms, without said channel having to resort to Al Jolson begging theatrics and sacrificing what made it so good to begin with (when I typed this it made sense).

 

[Feraud]

Isn't Robert Osborne due to take a hosting break due to minor surger? Will there be a temporary fill in?

As for a future permanent host I'd like to see Elvis Mitchell take the reins. I enjoy his Under the Influnce interviews on TCM.

 

[LizzieMaine]

They've got Robert Wagner -- who is practically unrecognizable -- as the fill in, or at least they did last nite. Osborne is "off for a much deserved break."

 

[Nathan Dodge]

TCM at this very moment is airing The Last Metro, a 1980 Francois Truffaut film that starred Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve.

The revolution has begun!