Should American films with non-English speaking settings be filmed in that language?

Cafe Society
1

In This thread about the film Valkyrie, the OP says,

There is then some discussion of this. I didn’t want to hijack the thread with a discussion of other movies, so I started this thread.

Should American or English produced films that took place in a country or time where/when English was not spoken be in that language and subtitled. Let’s even take box office out of the equation (as one poster in the thread correctly suggested, subtitled movies are anathema to the general film goer “because they don’t like readin’ none, ‘specially not at dem movin’ picture shows.”)

I’m going to argue that films made primarily for an English speaking audience should be made in English, but some effort should be made to affect an accent similar to the language actually spoken by the characters. Pretty much, I am arguing the status quo. *

My reason is that it seems unnecessary. I’m not one of those film-goers who would avoid a film because it was made somewhere else and thus has the need for subtitles, but I certainly think they should be avoided if possible. Because while I find no difficulty reading subtitles, and I am more than willing to do it to enjoy the films of the world, it does detract from the overall film.

How? For me it is visually. I can follow the story and I never have trouble reading of course, but my eyes always flash between center screen (where the action takes place) and the bottom of the screen (where I read the text).

When there are subtitles, I find that I am not free to appreciate the full range of the cinematography. There is no real need for letterbox/widescreen, as I only looking at what you would see in the pan and scan/full screen format.

So, again I am always happy to sacrifice this to see a great film, I do not see the necessity of doing so simply for the sake of realism or really any other vanity (see Gibson, Mel).

Counter views?

[sub] * I thought of arguing that the film should be made in English, but the characters should all have a Brooklyn accent regardless of where the film is set. This would have been tricky, but I could have convinced you. [/sub]

2

Okay, first, what’s the purpose of a film? (Other than to provide a profit for the people involved…)

A film is supposed to entertain and/or push a message (although these are rarely really GOOD films). A film is not supposed to portray “reality” in backbreaking detail. The “actors who are supposed to be non-English-speaking characters should speak the language they would be speaking if they were real people from that country” trope is not really that entertaining. Yes, it may be more accurate, but if accuracy were what Hollywood were about, we’d be watching Tom Cruise’s home movies instead of “Valkyrie”.

3

Subtitles all the way. Whereas most European countries dub foreign movies, the Dutch put subtitles on pretty much everything. We’re used to it.

There’s two reasons I’ve never gone to see Valkyrie; I don’t want to support Tom Cruise in any way, and WWII-Germans speaking English when they are supposed to be talking German is just silly.

I get the distinct impression that with Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino had two big plot points hinge on different languages being spoken, just so the folks with the big hats couldn’t tell him to just do it all in English with funny accents.

4

There’s one situation where at least part of the dialogue should not be in English: that’s in a multi-lingual situation, where most characters speak English, but some characters speak other language(s). One example is Bend it like Beckham, where some dialogue is in Punjabi. From memory, I don’t think it was even subtitled: you didn’t need to know exactly what was said to understand what was going on.

Another example is a Japanese one: in Tokyo Godfathers, most of the dialogue is in Japanese, but one character just speaks Spanish. That Spanish is not subtitled, so the Japanese audience would have to guess from the context what she is saying – and in the English subtitled version, the Spanish remains unsubtitled.

That sort of thing can be useful to show the cultural context, but it’s not so important when all the characters would be speaking the same foreign language. For that, I think it’s reasonable to have the actors speak English.

5

No. It’s like being irked that Hamlet isn’t in Danish. It’s a dramatization, and unless the interplay between several languages is a plot point, I have no problem with a whole culture being “translated” into English for the purposes of a movie.

(And I prefer subtitles to dubbing for films made in other languages.)

6

Why is it silly? Is it silly that they don’t speak German in All Quiet on the Western Front? Or Hungarian in The Shop Around the Corner? Or French in Paths of Glory? Or Latin and Hebrew in Ben-Hur? Or Italian in Pinocchio?

7

I’ve watched plenty of subtitled films, but to pretend there is anything beyond a preference here - that movies really should be made one way or another - is ridiculous. Different approaches work for different movies. I’m not usually hung up on accents either, although hero = American and villain = British is a cliche to the point it’s distracting. A movie doesn’t become magically more realistic if Americans speak English with a German accent. The Cruise movie looked like a popcorn flick and the accents reflected that.

8

I agree with this 100%. You have to be able to distinguish from the “language” of the protagonist and the “other” language(s) spoken.

Also, in the film Babel there was a reason to use subtitles beyond “language authenticity.” It was part of the artistry of the film.

Dubbing films is a crime against humanity. I would rather have a written translation I had to read along with the film rather than have someone dub over the actor’s voice. Talk about taking away nuance and expressive acting!

I do think it is interesting to get the global perspective. I was surprised to learn that American films are usually dubbed. I guess international film goers are just as dumb as Americans. Listening to my friends abroad, ignorance is a uniquely American condition!

9

It’s an error to favor the story over the audience.

A recent failure was West Side Story’s revival on Broadway, where they put a few lines of the key songs into Spanish for “authentic flavor”. The result was that people could only guess what was meant and those songs lost their emotional edge. So they say they are going back to the original versions.

10

I think one of the best depictions of the “correct” language and English being spoken by the actors was The Hunt For Red October. The actors on Red October start off talking in Russian (giving us a hilarious snippet of Sean Connery mangling the language), and then switching to English for the benefit of the audience, while keeping the conceit that they’re still speaking Russian. When the Americans board the sub, the few comments uttered by the Russian crew are again in their native language before switching to English proper.

11

Your example contradicts your point. The “authenticity” – which in the case of WSS was not necessarily authentic – was as the expense of the story and the audience, and so the audience lost interest.

What you probably meant that “It’s an error to favor accuracy over the story (or the audience),” a point I’ve been making on this board for years now.

12

:dubious: Well, using your metric, we’re actually smarter/more sophisticated since virtually no foreign language films (except animated movies) are dubbed for U.S. commercial release. They’re almost always subtitled.

13

Hollywood found out long ago mainstream US movie fans don’t like subtitles so that’s why they don’t use them.

When Gibson did Passion of Christ at first he said he would not have any subtitles which was strange (he was not going to have them speak English either.) He obviously backed down on that , maybe the studio forced him to.

14

Are you talking about subtitles vs. dubbing, or subtitles vs. English?

Because if the former, it’s categorically untrue, and if the latter, it’s a false dichotomy because if Spielberg wants his lead to speak Russian throughout The Terminal, he’s not going to hire Tom Hanks in the first place.

15

Quoth Mostly Clueless:

That’s different. If you’ve got a movie already made that’s in a different language, then you should keep the original work as much as possible, which means keeping the sound on the original language and subtitling it. But if you’re making a completely new movie for a particular audience, then unless there are good artistic reasons to do otherwise (for instance, if it’s important to highlight the language barrier between characters, or if the audience isn’t supposed to understand the language either), you should make the movie in the language the audience knows.

16

I mean subtitles vs. English. Hollywood by default makes mainstream movies for US audiences in English, they don’t really care where the movie is set. Art/indie films are not mainstream so I don’t include those.

I haven’t seen what Hollywood does when then send their mainstream movies overseas, I think I read some of them are dubbed, maybe most of them are? When I was in Montreal the American TV shows there were dubbed, not subtitled. I have never seen an American movie in a foreign country.

17

Different approaches work for different films, but as a general rule I see no problem with having movies in Foreign places filmed in English- I like to think of it as being provided via a “Babel Fish” so to speak, in that if you could actually understand the language being spoken in the place where the movie is set, you’d be able to understand it as if it was in English anyway.

18

When I was a kid I remember thinking it was funny in the WW II movies the Germans spoke English with a German accent. I think I asked my father and he said it was so we knew they were German. :slight_smile: (just in case we didn’t notice their uniform)

19

But most Americans do not see those films, so we cannot give them credit for the fact that sharp people like you and I prefer foreign films to use subtitles instead of dubbed voice overs. Our intelligence was never in question.

I’m simply saying that their popcorn crowd is just likely as ours to oppose all that extra reading.

20

Don’t forget the effect that having American films with non-English lines would have on making the film. Unless you wanted the above mentioned Sean Connery “hilarity” going on all the time, casting directors might end up having to go to said foreign countries for actors, which I imagine could drive up costs. Not to mention hiring additional bilingual writers/translators, subtitling costs, and possibly having to have translators on set during filming.

Then you’d have to ask yourself, does the additional cost, time, and hassle justify the extra artistic verisimilitude? Why or why not?