translatology Reviews

My Uncle Antoine (1971)

Still haunts me after 30 years

[10/10 · 12 September 2006]

Everyone agrees about the technical excellence of this film by Jutra (whose life ended short so tragically). As for the content, of course it makes a difference if you're a Quebecker, and this explains some of the divergence of opinions. For me, it is to cinema what Vignault's "Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays" is to song. In addition, Jean Duceppe was himself a part of legendary Quebec.

This film can be contrasted with "CRAZY", a current Quebec release that is successful enough to be showing here in Spain and is also about the 1960s. Urban Quebec (Crazy) vs. rural Quebec (Antoine). But also a film that must be something very different for foreigners and for people who know Quebec from the inside.

The Maidens' Conspiracy (2006)

Of course it's not the book, but...

[6/10 · 13 April 2006]

Of course it's not the book, but what screen adaptation ever is? There's no way a work of over 800 pages and full of digressions can be adequately condensed into a two-hour film. As some people have said in the Message Boards section, we should be grateful that the film will make this neglected masterpiece known to a wider audience.

So Aranda does what so many other screenwriters have done in the circumstances: chooses one incident or aspect out of a multitude, elaborates on that and tries to remain faithful to the spirit of the book. But does he remain faithful? That's the trouble. Certainly there's a love story with sensuality in the Tirant and not the platonic stuff of other mediaeval romances, but Aranda piles on the sex until it becomes a bawdy romp. It's a pity that people will get the impression the whole book is like that.

That said, the acting is good, the hero is handsome, the heroine is delicious dressed and undressed, Yvonne Blake's costume designs are truly gorgeous, and the film has humour - in fact it could be classed as a romantic comedy. I especially liked the ending, but no spoilers! You can also learn a bit of romanticised history about the Turks and the end of the Byzantine Empire. (Tirant goes to Constantinople to defend it, but truth is that Constantinople had already fallen before the book was written.)

A special tribute to the dubbers is in order. I saw the version in Valencian, and the dubbing was so perfect that it could well have been the original.

Deuxième bureau (1935)

An early telecast

[7 September 2004]

This film was telecast by the BBC from London in 1939. It must have been before September of that year, because the BBC suspended its TV service when war broke out. Curiously, they used the French version (with subtitles, I think) and not the English version ("Second Bureau") released in 1937.

I saw the telecast. I was ten or eleven years old. A TV receiver was far beyond the means of my family in those days, but an aunt who spoke French took me with her to the television room for guests at the Mount Royal Hotel in London. It was not only the first telecast I saw but also my first foreign-language film.

The "Second Bureau" version is a reminder that in the early days of sound film, before dubbing was perfected (or anyway made acceptable to audiences that didn't like subtitles), one of the ways of dealing with the problem of foreign distribution was to shoot a duplicate version with other actors who spoke the foreign language.

Alice in Wonderland (1933)

One in a lifetime

[7 September 2004]

This was the first film I ever saw, so my memory of it - vague though it is - is very special for me. It was probably in 1934 (I was born in 1929), and it was at the elegant Gaumont cinema in Maida Vale, London, which - so I've seen on another web site - is still there but transformed into an Islamic centre. I was taken on this adventurous outing by my maternal grandmother and an aunt. The only images and voices I can recall are those of the Caterpillar smoking a hookah, and of the fading smile of the Cheshire Cat. When later I read the Carroll books, I recognised Teniel illustrations of those two characters from the film. I haven't seen it again in the intervening years, so it really made a strong impression. It was a good film to start with.

I wonder how many other ardent filmgoers remember the first film they ever saw. It's like recalling a first love.