Here in Budapest, Polanski’s “The Pianist” opened a few weeks ago. Though the film is originally in English, many of the theatres here are screening a French-dubbed version. Now why the fork would they be doing this? Last I checked, way more people here speak English than French. But one way or another, all foreign-audio films here are subtitled in the local language. So why not just show such films with the original audio?
One thing I thought of is that maybe it was cheaper for the theatre to buy the French version from the French distributor than the original version from the American or British distributor. But this doesn’t seem right for two reasons:
Wouldn’t a dubbed version generally be more expensive, given that you have the added post-production expenses of paying voice actors and translating and recording the new dialogue?
Both the English and the French versions are playing here. If the French version really were cheaper, you’d think that it would be found only in the cheaper, less ritzy movie theatres. But I haven’t noticed any correlation between the language and the movie theatre quality for this particular film. The theatre I saw it in was one of the biggest and newest in town; seems to me they could have easily afforded to pay a few bucks more for the English film like the run-down theatre down the street did.
Fact 2: “The Pianist” was shown at Cannes (and, I believe, won a Palme d’or)
WAG: For one or both of the above reasons, the French dub was produced at the same time as the English final cut, and was immediately available for distribution in Europe.
Apparently, then, I am the only European who finds it grating that the actors’ lip movements are not synchronized to their voices. Then again, 99% of the people in the theatre were probably too busy reading the subtitles to pay any attention to the characters’ lips.
After “The Pianist” won Oscars for Best Actor & Director , it was given a wider release in the US. Since the success was unexpected (the conventional wisdom before the ceremony was that Best Actor was a race between Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis and that Best Director would be Martin Scorsese), the studio may not have been planning for a re-release in America. As a result it may have found itself short on English prints for foreign markets.
Fish42, that’s a good idea, except that “The Pianist” was released here in French well before the Oscar ceremonies. Though less likely, its nomination alone may have been responsible for the shortage.
I’m confused. You mean if the movie was recorded with the actors speaking in English, you want the French dubbing to match the lips? Or to match the subtitles? Other than reshooting the entire film, how exactly is that supposed to happen?
I think Psycho means that, since the majority of the audience is going to be reading the subtitles (which are neither English nor French, but the local language), rather than listening to the voice track to understand what’s going on, it would be preferable that the voice track was in English (and therefore synced) so that it at least wouldn’t look funny. Presumably, the same would go for a French-made movie with synced French dialogue and subtitles in some other language.
I know that if I had were watching, say, Amelie, with English subtitles, I would prefer that the film at least had its original synced French audio track rather than, say, the Mandarin one.