ALL SCI-FI

[Brent Gair]

I'm starting this thread to relieve some of the pressure on the other forums...and to help some people see the error of their ways .

Since this is the off-topic forum, I won't limit my comments strictly to sci-fi films.

Why should we bother with silent films and subtitled films? In simple terms, it's because we don't want to deny ourselves the chance to experience the first 30 years of movie history and we don't want ignore great films from the other half of the world (ok...not exactly half...but this isn't a math thread). One can "prefer" dubbed soundtracks over subtitles but the fact is that the vast majority of foreign films will never be dubbed. If a movie is big, well-known, and may reasonably be expected to be a money maker in English markets, it will get an English language soundtrack. All the cool little movies will get subtitles and likely nothing else.

In fact, the last Blu-ray movie I watched a couple of days ago was a small Italian movie that was only subtitled. It was nifty little pot-boiler called KIDNAPPED.



It's a film by Italian master Mario Bava who also directed PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES as well as DR.GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRLBOMBS! His body of work is too broad for us to limit our viewing to a small number of English or English dubbed films.

Days before that viewing, I watched THE BLACK PIRATE. It's a silent film with Douglas Fairbanks.



This movie from 1926 was filmed in two-strip Technicolor. It's not only a terrific movie but it's a historical artifact.

These movies need a chance. We're adults...well I am (and I just had my prostate surgically removed to prove it!). Our attention span is what separates us from teenagers. If people really devote some quality time to watching just a few silent or subtitled movies, they will discover that the experience is no different than watching any other movie. You get caught up in the story and whether you read the dialogue or heard it will be inconsequential.

[Robert (Butch) Day]

The Black Pirate is my favorite silent adventure movie!
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Brent Gair]

I also have the Cohen Group's Blu-ray release of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD which is another great film for Fairbanks fans.



For the experienced silent fan, I have Kino's BD of DIE NIBLUNGEN




This is epic in every sense of the word. It's almost 5 hours long and spread over 2 discs! It's amazing that a movie can last for 5 hours without dragging. But it is sort of an acid test for silent film fans.

On top of that...it's subtitled as well. The original German intertitles are used with English subtitles. This is the movie that Bud would watch in hell...a 5 hour, subtitled, silent movie.

But of course, it does have a soundtrack; reviewed as follows:

"For a large-scale production, an equally large-scale score. Recorded by the HR-Sinfonieorchester and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, this recreation of the long-lost original film music by Metropolis composer Gottfried Huppertz ... appropriately cinematic, with twinkling, magical-sounding motifs that recall future fantasy-epic accompaniment, like John Williams work on Star Wars. When called for, the music sounds huge here, spread throughout each channel of the default lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. "

[orzel-w]

(Moved here from another thread.)

My wife and I watch all movies with the subtitles turned on. (Our TV is connected solely to a Blu-ray player.) In fact, we get annoyed when we receive a movie (DVDs from Netflix) that has no English subtitles.

Problem 1: Today's actors have no qualms about mumbling or whispering their lines. Actors from the "old school" ('50s or earlier) were careful to enunciate clearly. Nowadays they don't bother with vocal training. I think that started with Marlon Brando and James Dean. Combine that with a soundtrack that can suddenly blast out a sound effect or musical passage, and you just can't understand a lot of the spoken dialog, not to mention poorer hearing at our age.

Problem 2: British actors. (Not actually a problem as such, but they speak a different English.) Without subtitles we would miss a significant part of the dialog. With subtitles turned on, we get the added benefit of an enrichment of slang and colloquial terms that otherwise would have passed by with no more than a "What did he say?"

See what I'm saying?
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As for dubbing foreign films into English vs. subtitling, again, I would probably have the subtitles turned on even if the film were dubbed. But the quality of dubbing, like anything else in movies, has a big impact on whether the dubbing contributes to, or detracts from, my enjoyment of the movie. Within the past week we watched the 2013 German film, Gold, about a party of wanna-be prospectors heading across Canada during the Klondike gold rush. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2338846/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_8

The dubbing was deplorable. The only voice that sounded like the person was actually involved in the undertaking was that of the sole female character in the party. All the voices for the rest of the cast sounded alike, and they all came across like they were sitting in a studio at a table with microphones in front of them.

I've seen other dubbed movies, however, that took great pains to match the voices to the characters, match the voices to what the characters were doing in the scene, match the sound quality to the acoustics of the depicted scene, and synch the dubbing with the lip movements of the characters.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Brent Gair]

[orzel-w]

Paul's voice became so recognizable to me that it was a shock when I finally saw him onscreen. It didn't seem like that voice should be coming from that person.

Which makes me wonder... who did foreign filmmakers get to overdub Paul's voice in movies like War of the Worlds and Space Master X-7?
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Bud Brewster]

I am pleased to announce that one of our members -- Steve Joyce -- is a silent film historian, and Steve has published a book on the subject!

Here's the text of the post he made in 2013 called Book on Silent Era Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy in our Sci-Fi Reference Books section.

[Pow]

Phantom Of The Opera with Chaney.

Zorro with Fairbanks.

Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde with Barrymore.

[Robert (Butch) Day]

The Man Who Laughs (1928) with Conrad Veidt. The inspiration for the Joker!



He later played Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942):


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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Brent Gair]

I just ordered this:



It's one of the most interesting looking films I've ever seen.

[Steve Joyce]

Bud,

Been mulling it over & I think that I may have a partial solution for you. There used to be an old TV series called Silents Please. In it, they would take a silent film, condense it somewhat and...narrate it. For instance, they did this with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920, John Barrymore-style). One of these days (and yeah, I know I pop up here on an irregular basis but I always pop up), I'll try to load up one or two examples onto YouTube.

To add to the rest of the conversation, in Europe (well, at least Poland), they have/had a 3rd option to the subtitling/dubbing dilemma. What they do is provide a "Voice over". The original dialogue is heard faintly in the background while a single narrator translates.

Steve
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"There is a planet in the Solar System where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet." - Kilgore Trout.

[orzel-w]

A teaser...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHIvIQgTVUI
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Bud Brewster]

Thanks, Steve. Interesting ideas.

Here's why I don't understand the objection to dubbing foreign dialog -- especially the complaint that the English dialog doesn't match the lip movements on screen.

If I try to watch a movie in a foreign language, obviously I can't understand the dialog. Suppose a helpful friend hands me a translation of the script and says, "Here. Just read along with the actors."

"Okay," says I, "But I'll miss a lot of the movie if I'm staring down at the manuscript."

"Good point," says my helpful friend. "Okay, here's a version of the movie with the translation on the screen at the bottom. They're called subtitles."

"Well, that's a little better," says I. "But I don't read very fast, and the text disappears before I finish sometimes -- especially during rapid conversations."

"Ah, you poor guy. I see your point. Okay. I'm a fast reader, so I'll read the subtitles out loud for you."

"Thanks, pal. Would you be willing to just hold that written translation and read it during the movie? We'll turn off the subtitles, and that way I won't be distracted by all that appearing-and-disappearing text on the screen."

"Sure, glad to help," says my friend. "Hmmmm . . . maybe my girlfriend could come over and read the dialog of the female characters. That way you won't be confused by whose speaking at the moment -- like when somebody says 'I love you' and you can't figure out if she loves him or he loves her. Besides, she and I might enjoy pretending to be actors. That would be kinda fun, wouldn't it."

"Heck yeah, a real hootenanny!" I exclaim. "We'll just turn the sound way down so that all that unintelligible dialog won't make it hard for me to understand you and your girlfriend."

"Great idea! And hey, how 'bout this? My girlfriend and I could record the dialog the night before, so we won't goof up during the important scenes. Then we'll just play the recording back while we watch the movie, and we can all enjoy it!"

"Brilliant!" says I.

"I'll call my girlfriend right now and tell her about our bright idea."

So, my friend makes the phone call, but he comes back in a moment, looking perplexed.

"What's wrong? What did she say?"

"Well . . . she said why don't you just watch the dubbed version? According to her, it shouldn't matter if you read the translation as subtitles or listen to actors speak it out loud. Either way, it's a translation, and the actors' lip movements can't possible match the words of the text on the screen."

"Oh . . . right . . . smart girl."
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[orzel-w]