The 400 Blows

Last night we went to see the classic Truffaut film, The 400 Blows, at the British Film Institute.

This release has rightly been garlanded with 5 star reviews by the likes of Empire Magazine and Time Out. I cannot, however, imagine that such reviews were actually based upon a viewing of the new print currently running at BFI, as no mention is made of the terrible subtitling!

The programme notes available from BFI for this print state: "The subtitles on this new BFI release have been kept to a minimum. The subtitler has explained that this is for aesthetic as well as technical reasons and the audience is certainly not missing out on anything important to the story."As you know, subtitles are never a verbatim translation. However, what we are offered on this new print are little more than occasional fragments of dialogue. Huge tracts of dialogue have no translation at all. Character A may speak, unsubtitled, only to have the response by character B then translated. Perplexing!

The assertion by BFI that we are missing nothing important in the story is also quite wrong, as proven by the 1960 review from Sight and Sound that the programme notes also include.

And the reasons given for the brevity of the subtitles? Asthetic? Well how dare BFI inflict its own asthetic on this masterpiece. If Truffaut had wanted the subtitled dialogue to be little more than fragmented and disjointed cyphers, surely we would have had such a treatment before now?

Furthermore, there can be no technical reason for such a hatchetjob.... good subtitlers manage to condense dialogue so it doesn't fill the screen yet carries all the meaning and feeling of the original script. This print does neither.

It is a tragedy that this of all films should be lumbered with one of the poorest quality subtitled translations. As such, BFI have, unusually, truly dropped the ball, and done this classic a great disservice.

Hillsborough

The day Hillsborough happened I was Chair of the British Youth Council, and our twice yearly council meeting was taking place in Sorby Hall, Sheffield Uni. The organisation that I had 'graduated' from to become Chair of BYC was Knowsley Youth Council, and a couple of their delegation had, understandably, skipped the boring business of Council to go the match. During the afternoon break, our attention was drawn to a TV that was showing the breaking news, and It was really hard to know what to do. Continue with business, when some of our number are missing? It was tough, but that is what we decided. Some time later our two colleagues arrived back, devastated by what they had seen. They collected their belongings and headed home to Merseyside.