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.

Movie Co-incidences

So last night we settled down for a quiet night in front of the telly, with the intention of dipping into our considerable collection of as yet unwatched DVD movies. First up, Almodovar's 'Live Flesh'. A fantastic, richly rewarding film, which, as it turns out, includes a central performance by Javier Bardem, which I hadn't realised until he appeared on screen. IMDB attests that the his co-star, the wonderful Liberto Rabal's career has not been quite so glorious. After that, we had a dinner of trout and kale, and then settled down to watch the Coen Brothers 'Blood Simple'. A great movie, but for me, much less enjoyable than the Almodovar film. I pondered on the fact that the three most enjoyable films of recent times that I have watched at home have all been European - The Lives of Others, The Edukators, and Live Flesh. Anyway, the random selection of the two films from our shelves threw up the interesting coincidence that both had at their hearts the theme of marital infidelity, photos being taken of supposedly secret liasions, and lovers being shot. So once I realised there was a patten, I ended up watching Blood Simple entirely through the filter of looking for links with Live Flesh. That is all.