See The Sun

Subtitles

Friday, August 17th, 2007 | Film

Just stumbled upon this article about foreign films doing much better commercially in the UK than they used to.

Hugo Grumbar of Icon Films, which distributed La Vie en Rose and the two Gibson films, said that marketing tricks and technology helped. Increasingly, foreign-language films are sold as thrillers, romances or comedies rather than the latest French, German or Spanish hit, he said. “With Caché you change the name to Hidden and try to cut a trailer that is not too French. Tell No One is a commercial thriller, not an art-house movie at all.”

Focus group research among audiences leaving German and French films this year revealed that between a third and a fifth did not know beforehand that they would be watching a subtitled film.

Isn’t that funny? I don’t mind subtitles at all and I am so glad we in Switzerland get pretty much all the movies (except the ones that are aimed at a very young audience) in their original version with subtitles. Contrary to Germany & Austria, who get the German versions of all the movies, I believe. I hate synchronizations, although they are in some cases pretty well made, esp. when it’s an animated film. When we were in France we wer thinking about going to the cinema to watch a US production, but when we were told it’d be a French synchronization with no subtitles we thought our French was not good enough to sit through an entire movie trying to figure out what they’re saying when it wasn’t even a ‘French’ movie.

Can anybody explain why it is that foreign films released on DVD in the US have the English subtitles forced rather than optional?

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