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Topic: Exhibition in Foreign Countries

Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 06-27-2005 02:58 PM

quote: Christian Appelt
Hm, I have heard that the only thing separating Britain and the United States is the English language...

...which promoted Samuel Goldwyn to remark in 1930 that 'if the Brits all spoke Spanish, then the UK might still have a film industry.' He was pointing out that after the conversion to sound, the UK had become the only European country to which Hollywood films could be exported without the significant extra costs of dubbing or subtitling (before that point, the cost of substituting local version intertitles in silent releases was negligible compared to the overall production costs of a feature). His implicit prediction - that British cinema would continue to be dominated by Hollywood but that film production in non-English speaking European countries would revive - turned out to be right, though more for political than technological reasons.

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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"

Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002

posted 06-27-2005 06:42 PM

I think back in those days of early sound films they couldn't even dub movies. I know that in Babelsberg (a big studio complex outside of Berlin), they shot some movies with several casts in parallel in German, English, French, probably Spanish too. The famous actress Zarah Leander actually did all three versions, but normally, they would rotate the whole cast through the sets and shoot each scene several times in a different language with a different cast.

I wonder if they did the same thing in other countries too. Did Hollywood produce Spanish versions?

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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-27-2005 11:55 PM

quote: Leo Enticknap
His implicit prediction - that British cinema would continue to be dominated by Hollywood but that film production in non-English speaking European countries would revive - turned out to be right, though more for political than technological reasons.

And probably much more from economic/monopolistic reasons than technological reasons: the Hollywood studios demanded block booking contracts from English theaters just like US theaters, with the result that local product was mostly shut out. Without consistently being able to market their own films, UK studios weren't able to improve the prodct. When they tried to balance things out with quotas, the opposite effect of indifference to the quality crept in.

The situation with getting Hollywood pictures in your town was pretty much like in the US when Wal-Mart comes to town.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 06-28-2005 02:11 AM

quote: Michael Schaffer
The famous actress Zarah Leander actually did all three versions, but normally, they would rotate the whole cast through the sets and shoot each scene several times in a different language with a different cast.

This happened at Elstree studios near London, too. The British producer Michael Balcon signed an agreement with Erich Pommer in 1929 to produce a series of multiple language version (MLV) productions, both at Elstree and Neubabelsberg: E.A. Dupont and Geza von Bolvary directed most of them. If I remember correctly, there were around 15 of these films made between 1929 and 1932, and probably the best known is Atlantic. Sadly, none survive in all three versions (English, French & German), though Atlantic and G.W. Pabst's Dreigroschen Oper survive in both German and French.

quote: William Hooper
Without consistently being able to market their own films, UK studios weren't able to improve the prodct.

Even when they were, it didn't help. Alexander Korda in the '30s and Rank in the '40s both believed that if they threw Hollywood-scale production budgets at British films, that these films would make money both at home and abroad. But because the UK domestic market was so small compared to that in the US, they never came close to breaking even at home, even those like The Private Life of Henry VIII, which was very popular, and a number of factors prevented exports to the US on any significant scale. Korda went bust in 1937 and Rank stayed afloat by cross subsidising production activity from the 500 or so theatres he owned after buying out the Odeon circuit when its owner, Oscar Deutsch (the name is said to be an acronym for 'Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation'), died in 1942. Throughout the Rank Organisation's lifetime, film production was a loss-leader which was paid for out of the group's other business interests.

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Christian Appelt
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 505
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: Dec 2001

posted 06-28-2005 06:26 PM

quote: Michael Schaffer
The famous actress Zarah Leander actually did all three versions, but normally, they would rotate the whole cast through the sets and shoot each scene several times in a different language with a different cast.

Michael, I think it was Lillian Harvey who did three versions, not Zarah Leander. DIE DREI VON DER TANKSTELLE (1930, US title: THREE GOOD FRIENDS) was shot with a French, British and German cast, only Harvey played the same character in all versions.

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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"

Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002

posted 06-29-2005 12:51 AM

You must be right. I think Leander worked mostly on Sweden during the early thirties.

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Dominic Case
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Sydney NSW Australia
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 06-29-2005 01:39 AM

quote: Mark Hajducki
When Sweet Sixteen was shown on TV it was subtitled (Despite being in a UK based regional dialect of English). I don't know about the Theatrical release.

The first Mad Max film was dubbed for release in the US (under the title The Road Warrior). (And that was with Mel Gibson!).

American films are NOT routinely dubbed for release in Australia, nor are they subtitled. Sometimes it would help if they were.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 06-29-2005 01:44 AM

quote: Michael Schaffer
I think Leander worked mostly on Sweden during the early thirties.

...and worked mostly on Goebbels during the late '30s (until he dumped her for Lida Baarova)!

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Carl Martin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1424
From: Oakland, CA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 06-29-2005 03:16 AM

quote: Mark Hajducki
When Sweet Sixteen was shown on TV it was subtitled (Despite being in a UK based regional dialect of English). I don't know about the Theatrical release.

yes, it was too. at least in the u.s.

carl

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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 06-29-2005 08:30 AM

quote: Dominic Case
The first Mad Max film was dubbed for release in the US (under the title The Road Warrior). (And that was with Mel Gibson!).

The dubbed version of Mad Max was released in the USA with the title Mad Max. The second "Mad Max" film was released in the USA with the title Road Warrior. I don't know if Road Warrior was dubbed or not.

Could one of the moderators retitle this thread to "Dubbing vs Subtitling Around The World" or something else meaningful. Exhibition in Foreign Countries is so generic as to be not meaningful when someone does a search.

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Dominic Case
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Sydney NSW Australia
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 06-30-2005 06:46 PM

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
The dubbed version of Mad Max was released in the USA with the title Mad Max. The second "Mad Max" film was released in the USA with the title Road Warrior.

Oops! Memory fade. Of course you are quite correct. Mad Max was Mad Max everywhere. Mad Max 2 was Mad Max 2 everywhere except the US. But my point stands with or without the US title.

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