I just saw “THE BROTHJERHOOD OF THE WOLF” on DVD-excellent movie! In spite of a rather weak ending, the movie was very well acted and kept your interest high. The photography was excellent…I’m sure that it was an expensive film to shoot.
Anyway, I’m curious…the French film industry released about 168 films in 2003…how come so few make it to the USA? I was in the frech Club (Cercle Francais) in High School-and we saw all of the classics by Truffaut, Godard, etc…I just don’t understand whay so few products of the French cinema get released here! 
Why? Two words: Freedom Fries.
The American movie industry seems to think that Americans don’t like either subtitles or dubbed films.
I have a few theories:
- Most Americans don’t speak or understand French well enough to enjoy a movie that is entirely in French.
- Most French films that come here only show up at out of the way theaters; not in the huge megaplexes so popular today.
- Most Americans are too lazy to read the subtitles.
Me, I don’t speak French at all, but I’ve seen quite a few french films; not that I can remember the titles of any. I can usually follow the action on the screen and the subtitles are very helpful. I enjoy listening for the word “merde”. 
Incidentally, there was a miniseries of The Count of Monte Cristo starring Gerard Depardieu on cable TV a few years back that was entirely in french, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I don’t see any reason to single out French films. There are plenty of good films from other countires that don’t get shown here.
To the larger question… subtitles hurt movies. You just can’t appreciate the cinematography or the subtlety of the acting if your eyes are constantly darting down to the bottom of the screen.
Brotherhood of the wolf is pretty good, I was shocked to see Mark Dacascos in a Real Movie, and a French one at that! :eek:
You’re missing out on a lot if you don’t get any French movies, surely Le Haine, Le Cité des Enfants Perdus, and Le Femme Nikita have been shown over there?
I hate this argument. AFAIK, American audiences are the only ones who will tolerate subtitles. Other countries dub American films into their native language and in many cases have voice actors who only “play” one actor so the voices are uniform across many different films.
If I recall right the Italian move theater industry had to shut down for awhile a few years ago because the voice actors went on strike and they didn’t have enough Italian films to fill the multiplexes.
I imagine it is very daunting to try and break into our market which is already heavily saturated with movies many of which are failures financially speaking. To make a large amount of money from a release here costs dozens of millions of dollars for advertising. And unless you spend that much money for advertising theaters wont want to show the films in any large amounts since they can’t make their money back from tickest and concessions. Which makes it a real gamble. And a very expensive one at that. So while it’s partly the insularism of the American entertainment market I don’t think you can overlook the finances.
As I understand it the main way foreign movies (mostly British) break into the North American (Canada & the US) market is for a company already with a large US presence to decide to distribute these foreign films. Can anyone give any examples of foreign film companies making a concerted effort to launch one of their films into our market? I don’t doubt there are examples but I just don’t know any.
The simple answer is that there is a niche market for Independent & Foreign films, and French movies must compete for this limited space with films from other countries as well as low-budget, “arthouse” English-langauge films (which are generally easier to market because they don’t have to contend with the language thing).
I can think of 15 new films from France that came out in 2003 in the US, and I can’t think of a single country that can come close:
L’Auberge Espagnole
Carnage
Cet Amour-la
Demonlover
The Flower of Evil
Friday Night
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
In My Skin
Irreversible
Jet Lag
Man on the Train
Monsieur Ibrahim
Swimming Pool
To Be and To Have
The Triplets of Belleville
Now, not all of these films may have opened near you, I suspect. But they generally fall into 3 categories: (1) They have a famous French performer, (2) they are from a famous French director, or (3) they are critically acclaimed enough that they had a reputation that didn’t require a big actor or director to bring in that limited arthouse audience.
Still, France also makes a lot of bad or mediocre films that have little likelihood of surviving in the non-French speaking marketplace, so are not worth the effort by a distributor when there are other films (from France, Italy or elsewhere) that are better bets.
I tend to agree that mainstream American audiences have a bias against most non-English language films, subbed or dubbed. Some anime (see Akira, much of Miyazaki’s recent work, or even unfortunately Pokemon, although that’s more of serving a rather large niche audience here - the kids who were big fans of the game/cards/TV show) and Hong Kong action flicks (especially some of Jackie Chan’s films) can be the exceptions, but there even dodgy dubbing can be beat by dazzling action or great visuals. So it’s not just French films, although in our current political atmosphere French films would seem to have even more trouble breaking out of the arthouse circuit in the US than usual for all the wrong reasons. More’s the pity.
Plus, US film studios seem much more willing to snap up the rights to French films (mostly comedies) that might play over here and remake them with varying results. Look at films like Three Men And A Baby, The Birdcage, Jungle 2 Jungle, Just Visiting.
I’ve seen plenty of French films (much later on home video) in recent years that I thought would have a broader appeal than they were given credit for during their mostly limited releases in the US: The Crimson Rivers, The Closet, Brotherhood Of The Wolf, and even Wasabi.
Some French films come over here. La Femme Nikita is one of the most popular based on my limited observations. Betty Blue: 37.2° Le Matin is my favourite. Vagabond was shown theatrically on a limited basis, and is available on DVD (unlike Betty Blue, dammit!). City of Lost Children also was seen. I remember watching Get Out Your Handkerchiefs and The Man Who Loved Women on cable back in the 1980s. And of course I have Breathless on DVD.
Enough people have seen these films that they have wanted to make them more accessable to American audiences by re-making them with “name” stars and in English. Personally, I have been unable to bring myself to watch the re-makes; but I’ve heard they are not as good as the originals.
French films tend to play in “art houses”; small, independently-owned theatres that cater to the tastes of the niche audience. Too bad. There are a lot of great foreign films out there; and I, for one, do not mind reading subtitles.
Add The Barbarian Invasions to ArchiveGuy’s list.
No, it may be in French, but the film is from Canada.
Don’t forget Amalie, which played to many enthusiastic audiences in mainstream theaters.
Here in Japan, the only movies that are shown dubbed are children’s films (because most children won’t know enough kanji to be able to read the subtitles). And even then, they have seperate subtitled showings for adults and teenagers.
Uhh, what about those far-out foreign nations like Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, Singapore or New Zealand? American audiences are certainly not the only ones who are accustomed to subtitling. Similarly, subtitling is not unheard of in non-English speaking nations.
I don’t know anything about the proportion of countries that dub/subtitle, but your categorical statement is certainly incorrect (but then, you said AFAIK 
). At least in The Netherlands all movies are subtitled, except movies for kids. I think Belgium may have the same system.
Germany and France AFAIK do indeed prefer dubbing. Other countries I don’t know about. My guess is that smaller countries (Scandinavian, Middle/Eastern Europe) prefer subtitling.
On what data, pray, do you base this assertion? It is almost impossible to see a dubbed movie in the UK and Ireland. Foreign-language movies and TV programs are subtitled in most countries in Europe, with the notable exception of Germany. English-language movies and TV (of which there’s an awful lot) are subtitled de rigeur in the Netherlands and Scandinavian, which is often cited as one reason people from those countries are so good at English.
Not true. I’ve seen quite a few movies while visiting relatives in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and every single foreign feature is shown with subtitles (even animated stuff like Mulan). Hell, even the Japanese Return of the King trailer I recently saw had the original English dialogue, with Japanese captions. If anything, America is (at least from an Asian perspective) remarkably resistant to subtitled films. The only two relatively recent subtitled films I can think of that earned significant amounts at the American box office were Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Amelie. Meanwhile, wonderful films like Princess Mononoke receive little or no attention until they’ve received a full dubbing job.
I disagree, but I can’t really explain why except anecdotally: I find that, when watching a well-subtitled film, I generally reach a state of mental “immersion” within five or ten minutes, in which reading the dialogue while simultaneously processing all the usual elements of film becomes completely instinctive. In many cases, I actually remember “hearing” the dialogue in English- for example, I have the clearest memory of hearing many of Amelie’s lines being spoken in English by Audrey Tautou, even though obviously that never actually occurred. Just as changing camera angles have become such a basic part of film editing that we frequently don’t register them on a conscious level, so can subtitles become a very effective way of communicating foreign dialogue while keeping all the nuances of the actor’s original vocal performance.
I also experience this. In the French gangster movie Subway there is a song sung in English during the movie. I remember my shock at discovering afterwards that I hadn’t even noticed the transition from subtitles to spoken (sung) English.