Without reading what I have to say, there will be those of you who jump in, headfirst, insisting that subtitles are better than dubbing because it’s better to watch a movie in its original language.
Of course it’s obviously better to watch a movie in its original language, but I would argue that it is elitist to reject dubbing.
Insisting on subtitles over dubbing is like keeping the Catholic mass in Latin or not owning a television. You can take those hard lines over a principle that you passionately believe in but in the end you bite off your nose to spite your face. Yes, the Mass was more beautiful in Latin, but saying it in common languages has made it more accessible to the faithful. You’re right, television is the “boob tube” but it’s also Masterpiece Theater and Boardwalk Empire. And certainly it would be wonderful if Americans watched subtitled movies, but we don’t. We just don’t.
The sad thing about a subtitled movie is that Americans have come to think of them as “artsy” when many of them are just fun movies and nothing more. You don’t have to put on black clothes and a beret and speak with a fake foreign accent to go to see a Carlo Verdone or a movie with Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo – they’re foreign but there’s nothing highbrow about them. It you’re Italian you don’t ever have to make the distinction; you just have to go to the theater and enjoy the movie. They’re all dubbed and anyone can and does go to see them.
It’s not that Americans don’t like the idea of foreign films; there are those like my husband, who love but just don’t have the attention span for them and get sleepy reading a movie. He may not admit it, but he would have watched many more foreign films if he didn’t have to keep his eyes glued to the screen while he watched them. If he could enjoy them in the same casual way he enjoys an English language film, things would be different.
Today at the Eden Film Center in Rome you’ll find 2 English language and 3 French Language films: David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, Lasse Hallström’s Salmon Fishing in Yemen, Ursula Meier’s Sister, Gianni Amelio’s The First Man, and François Cluzet’s The Untouchables. (I wish there was at least one Italian movie there, but there isn’t.) Romans are going to all of these foreign films and they are watching them in Italian – they are all dubbed. Italians dub everything.
And though American film lovers are full of derision for Italians and their dubbing, in the end, when Italians are in their the theaters watching films from all over the world and only a handful of Americans ever see a foreign film, who is winning in the end? The world of cinema is there with open arms for Italians and in an alley with a door cracked for Americans. In our stubbornness, we are losing out.
Certainly it’s better to hear a film the way it’s intended, in the original language, but maybe one day there will be a way to choose subtitles or dubbing for every movie in the theaters. If that day comes, I’m betting that most Americans will be in line for the dubbing.
I Love Italian Everything 