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Movies with subtitles- how much is missed?

Posted by Bambi B (A) on March 4, 2010 at 19:46:39

In Reply to: RE: " The condiments of Death smell like breaking Wind after a Soufflé" posted by patrickU on March 3, 2010 at 00:40:39:

Patrick!,

It's a pity that I haven't seen "Un condamné à mort" for so long- I only remembered the photography and the basic action.

I was thinking about the problem of seeing movies in a foreign language with subtitles recently when watching "Das Boot". This Wolfgang Petersen U-Boat story I think is a great movie on many levels- humanity, the tragedy and futility of war, the struggle to survive- unbelievable stress, comradeship, duty- and so on. However, the first time I saw it, I saw it in German without subtitles and of course, missed 75% of the dialogue- I was getting 1 in 4. I know some German, but it is almost all reading and writing- mein Unterhaltung als a dumb drei Jahre ist. I have some French too, but again it is from reading and writing- et mon conversation serait tres penible et un potage etrange- seulement des mots! And, in submarine movie dialogue is often very difficult to hear- all those depth chargers, water jets, and yelling makes conversation difficult to understand.

So, I end up seeing movies and missing the words! But, I treat this the same way as opera- focus on the visuals, sounds, music, and try to pick up emotional clues from expression and tone of voice. Then, find out what the hell happened later by reading the programme. Then, see it again.

With movies in languages of which I have some knowledge- some German, a tiny French, and microscopic Russian I always have to watch movies several times so that in the final viewing I can only try and understand the dialogue. I would never accomplish with the sloshy, noisy Das Boot, and never in millions of years with "Solaris"- the real one in Russian. Still, I was pleased to believe I was getting the story from one of my favourite Truffaut movies "L'Enfant Sauvage". Of course, most of the time, Truffaut is speaking in voice-over and in the character of a Doctor writing a journal, so the language is slightly formal and clear- like a lecture on the subject.

With movies in languages I don't know- all those great Italian, Japanese, Swedish, and Russian, I and forced to read the subtitles. But, all the reading and then flipping back to the images always annoys me and I find I don't even know whether I like the movie- I can only be intrigued.

This aspect of movies of giving proportion to the visuals, sound, and dialogue is always interesting. In "Avatar"- and remember that I owe you that cup of coffee for suggesting that you see it- the visuals were everything and the dialogue- quite a lot of which were in subtitles- was merely a notation to the visuals. No doubt in the sequel, "Pandora's Box: Where every Na'vi warrior has been" , we'll get all the history and philosophy that was hinted at in the original. Perhaps we'll have a prequel and we see what's her name frolicking in the tribe and her romantic first kiss- when she was only 2.4M tall. And she later finds out that she is the daughter of Luke Skywalker and and his sister Leia.

With so many great movies and knowing how much is missed, I really regret not speaking at least 10 languages!

How do you approach movies with subtitles? Do you believe that you fully comprehend movies in your second or third languages without subtitles?


Cheers,

Bambi B

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