Kino

[Tommaso]

With luck, Kino are aware of the problem and for this release will either demand access to the unrestored audio or attempt to source their soundtrack from an archival print.

Unfortunately, this is Kino and not Criterion. They could have taken this route with their new edition of Parajanov's "Surami Fortress" and could have easily restored the passage that now only exists with Russian voice-over by going back to their older edition and sourcing the audio for this passage from there. But they didn't. And if they didn't do this in such a blatant case, the chances they'll be doing extra work on the audio of the Antonioni seem like zero.

[TMDaines]

With luck, Kino are aware of the problem and for this release will either demand access to the unrestored audio or attempt to source their soundtrack from an archival print.

Unfortunately, this is Kino and not Criterion. They could have taken this route with their new edition of Parajanov's "Surami Fortress" and could have easily restored the passage that now only exists with Russian voice-over by going back to their older edition and sourcing the audio for this passage from there. But they didn't. And if they didn't do this in such a blatant case, the chances they'll be doing extra work on the audio of the Antonioni seem like zero.

Indeed. I think Strike was a nice wake-up call of the fact that ultimately they're still don't know what they're doing. Release enough disks and you're going to get something right eventually, if just through chance. Eisenstein with English intertitles?

[knives]

Some of the intertitles on Strike are still in Russian actually. I think they've settled into a nice enough of a compromise.

[TMDaines]

Some of the intertitles on Strike are still in Russian actually. I think they've settled into a nice enough of a compromise.

I would absolutely love to know why this is a "nice enough... compromise" and why there should be any sort of compromise at all?

It's ultimately just another silent from Kino with the soul ripped out of it. When a script and a language are so bound to one nation's politics and propaganda, interchanging the intertitles sucks the essence from the film.

[knives]

To be perfectly honest I don't know why translated intertitles are a bad thing. Reading text over text is difficult to say the least and in most cases the intertitles are just text. When this is not the case Kino reverts back to the original intertitles so the film's integrity is not compromised while still not making it near impossible to read.

[matrixschmatrix]

I would absolutely love to know why this is a "nice enough... compromise" and why there should be any sort of compromise at all?

It's ultimately just another silent from Kino with the soul ripped out of it. When a script and a language are so bound to one nation's politics and propaganda, interchanging the intertitles sucks the essence from the film.

Seriously? You know they changed the intertitles for foreign distribution back when the movies were new, right?

I mean, I support original language intertitles, and there are a few like Sunrise or Metropolis where the intertitles are stylized in a way that's a terrible shame to lose, but that's a really absurd hyperbole you're sporting there.

[TMDaines]

To be perfectly honest I don't know why translated intertitles are a bad thing. Reading text over text is difficult to say the least and in most cases the intertitles are just text. When this is not the case Kino reverts back to the original intertitles so the film's integrity is not compromised while still not making it near impossible to read.

Because the shape, the positioning, the format, the length or indeed the brevity of the titles were often chosen carefully?
Because translation doesn't consist of perfect one-to-one, word to word, relationships?
Because specific words in one language may hold so any more subtleties and connotations in one language than they do in the other and this is lost in translation?
Because a language can be so endemically linked to a nation or a people and their beliefs, politics or causes?
Because the latin and cyrillic scripts were such an obvious visual difference between two spheres of the world with competing political ideologies?
For simple flavour?

I would absolutely love to know why this is a "nice enough... compromise" and why there should be any sort of compromise at all?

It's ultimately just another silent from Kino with the soul ripped out of it. When a script and a language are so bound to one nation's politics and propaganda, interchanging the intertitles sucks the essence from the film.

Seriously? You know they changed the intertitles for foreign distribution back when the movies were new, right?

Seriously? Thanks for the lesson, I had no idea.

[ellipsis7]

TMD, you read Russian now? Wow! What a polymath etc....

Just a comment or 2...

All restorations are not necessarily better than what preceded (see the work to undo the damage created in a good cause to many Old Masters' paintings)

Celebrate when something is done well

Life is not a rehearsal, embrace the imperfections, they are the beauty

Subtitles are wonderful, but a law unto their own, rarely literal, and always time and space constrained

We are generally well served by DVD/BR producers worldwide

Only to add...

Calm down!

[MichaelB]

Can the people who are defending the replacement of the original Russian titles in Strike please confirm whether they've ever actually seen Strike in the original?

Because if you haven't, and you're just generalising, you've seriously picked the wrong film to use as an example.

Eisenstein was very precise about the composition and layout of the intertitles, and if you've heard the Yuri Tsivian commentary on the old Eureka DVD (which does retain the original Russian titles), he explains in some detail how the original Cyrillic titles set up various complex visual and verbal gags in terms of both their verbal content and their graphic layout.

Frankly, I'd prefer an unsubtitled Russian version of the film (which I know well enough) to a bastardised English version.

[knives]

Have you seen the Kino by chance because they do keep a lot of gags in the film and as I said before revert multiple times back to the Cyrillic titles. I'm not attempting to argue that translated titles are perfect, but that even your bastardized comment is an extreme reaction to translation (assuming it's done with some care which I'll admit to ignorance on in this case).

[MichaelB]

Have you seen the Kino by chance because they do keep a lot of gags in the film and as I said before revert multiple times back to the Cyrillic titles. I'm not attempting to argue that translated titles are perfect, but that even your bastardized comment is an extreme reaction to translation (assuming it's done with some care which I'll admit to ignorance on in this case).

If the film doesn't feature the original intertitles in their original form, it's bastardised by definition. That's not an extreme reaction at all - it's a statement of fact.

Maybe it's been done with more care than, say, Tartan's edition of Strike, but it's still not the film that Eisenstein made.

[knives]

Again in this particular case I can't say definitively if all of the intent of the intertitles were kept, but with the right set of care keeping all of the gags that are possible to keep I don't see how that goes against Eisenstein's intent any more than not being able to read Cyrillic. I know I can't and they really do mean nothing to me so a well thought out facsimile in this case might be the better option. How would I really know a gag is present without being told and the easiest way to tell is with a full and dedicated translation. At first I was taking a neutral stance, but I think you've actually convinced me that there are cases such as with Strike where translation is preferable.

[triodelover]

Because the shape, the positioning, the format, the length or indeed the brevity of the titles were often chosen carefully?
Because translation doesn't consist of perfect one-to-one, word to word, relationships?
Because specific words in one language may hold so any more subtleties and connotations in one language than they do in the other and this is lost in translation?
Because a language can be so endemically linked to a nation or a people and their beliefs, politics or causes?
Because the latin and cyrillic scripts were such an obvious visual difference between two spheres of the world with competing political ideologies?
For simple flavour?

Eisenstein was very precise about the composition and layout of the intertitles, and if you've heard the Yuri Tsivian commentary on the old Eureka DVD (which does retain the original Russian titles), he explains in some detail how the original Cyrillic titles set up various complex visual and verbal gags in terms of both their verbal content and their graphic layout.

Michael and TM,

I don't disagree with any of your points, but if you aren't reading fluent in the particular language in question - and fluent at the speed at which the intertitles pass - how does any of the above apply? Even if the original intertitles are kept, the vast majority of the audiences in the UK and the US are availing themselves of the English translations at the bottom of the screen. The nuances of which you both speak were never there for those audiences in any case. And has been pointed out above, at the time the film was released, the importing countries would have inserted intertitles in that country's native language anyway.

I took Russian in high school (1964-66). After decades of disuse, I can still recognize the Cyrillic characters and sound out words. I can even define a few. But that's not enough to avail myself of the original Russian intertitles and certainly not enough to get any visual or idiomatic gags. Kudos to houses like MoC who keep the originals intact. But if Kino are going to give me a restored BD that exceeds everything that's been available before it visually, I can't ding them too hard for supplying English intertitles to what will be largely American market, the overwhelming majority of whom won't be fluent in Russian.

[knives]

Thanks, that's a far more clear version of what I was attempting to communicate.

[TMDaines]

I don't disagree with any of your points, but if you aren't reading fluent in the particular language in question - and fluent at the speed at which the intertitles pass - how does any of the above apply? Even if the original intertitles are kept, the vast majority of the audiences in the UK and the US are availing themselves of the English translations at the bottom of the screen. The nuances of which you both speak were never there for those audiences in any case. And has been pointed out above, at the time the film was released, the importing countries would have inserted intertitles in that country's native language anyway.

I don't really see how forcing translations on the masses makes the decision to force the same translations on future generations any more valid. Surely when adapting any form of media to make it comprehensible to others who wouldn't otherwise be able to understand it, the aim is to tamper with the original as little as possible or even keep it intact? Novels obviously have to be translated as there is little [no] alternative. Films as a visual medium have an alternative. The original doesn't have to be replaced and can instead be screened alongside the translation. i.e. subtitles will be preferential over dubbed and translated intertitles as the original is still there: intact and unaltered.

Nor do I understand the argument for why you'd only want the original intertitles if you understand the language. Surely anyone with a half decent education would recognise German from Spanish, Russian from Czech etc? The original intertitles add so much just to the flavour and ambience of the film - doesn't this Russian and Soviet flavour add to the experience of watching what is essentially Soviet propagada piece?

Even though I can only read English, German and Italian (and I am starting on Russian and Ukrainian) I would want the original intertitles just as much in a French, Japanese or even Uzbek silent film as a film in any of the languages I can read.

[knives]

i.e. subtitles will be preferential over dubbed and translated intertitles as the original is still there: intact and unaltered.

That's historically false and for most of history it was actually considered lazy and disrespectful to use subtitles versus a complete and competent dubbing. Many film makers (particularly in Italy) would be very shocked at the idea of preferring subtitles which distract from the image. So while I do prefer subtitles over dubbing it's inaccurate to say that they are objectively preferable.

Nor do I understand the argument for why you'd only want the original intertitles if you understand the language. Surely anyone with a half decent education would recognise German from Spanish, Russian from Czech etc? The original intertitles add so much just to the flavour and ambience of the film - doesn't this Russian and Soviet flavour add to the experience of watching what is essentially Soviet propagada piece?

It really adds no flavour to me and just looks like gibberish and that's when the stay long enough for me to read both the translation and look at the Cyrillic. Being able to tell languages apart really means nothing here and this whole argument (other arguments you've made this is not true on) amounts to a matter of taste. The intertitles, for me at least, come second to the imagery and story. Obviously they're important to a cohesive whole and Michael has brought up many good points on how they helped additionally, but those elements are meaningless unless you know what you're looking at which especially in Cyrillic is not the case for me. The argument I quoted is basically the difference between watching a film open matte Vs. widescreen where things usually amount to a matter of taste.

[TMDaines]

i.e. subtitles will be preferential over dubbed and translated intertitles as the original is still there: intact and unaltered.

That's historically false and for most of history it was actually considered lazy and disrespectful to use subtitles versus a complete and competent dubbing. Many film makers (particularly in Italy) would be very shocked at the idea of preferring subtitles which distract from the image. So while I do prefer subtitles over dubbing it's inaccurate to say that they are objectively preferable.

Actually the main reason films were dubbed was because of government directives. In Italy, Germany and Spain for instance, distributors and producers were either absolutely forced or greatly encouraged to only distribute dubbed films in the official language of the state and as a result the practise became ingrained and instituationalised and remains the norm today. Generally all trends point to the fact that people tend to prefer whatever the local norm is, but where people are more multilingual or where people have a deeper interest in film then there will be a more likely tendency to prefer subbing. I imagine not least of all because the bastardisation of a film by merely adding subtitles is far less of a travesty than completely replacing one of the two key element of films: the audio.

There's quite a good article on it here: http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm? ... 7&paper=23

I'm curious and don't know the answer to this. In the past when films were showcased at film festivals and the like in a foreign land where dubbing was the standard practise, were they were nearly always shown in their original audio language? Fellini in French at Cannes or Godard in German at Berlin etc?

Also, which directors preferred a dubbing over a original? I've seen this comment made a few times but then never seen anyone singled out in particular. Co-productions, where two or more different versions are produced on set (even though often one is considered the original and the other a dub), are a different kettle of fish and shouldn't really count.

[knives]

Actually with a few exceptions the idea of Fellini in French works really well at least in theory. Also considering the international casts and native dubbing Italian films are a quagmire on this issue I want to avoid as much as possible. That's a very different cultural expectation (though it still fits in with my film makers have held different opinions in the past argument).

[manicsounds]

You know what makes both sides happy? Releases like Criterion's "Vampyr" or Kino's "Battleship Potemkin", having the option of seeing either the original language intertitles with English subtitles, or English intertitles.

[triodelover]

I don't really see how forcing translations on the masses makes the decision to force the same translations on future generations any more valid. Surely when adapting any form of media to make it comprehensible to others who wouldn't otherwise be able to understand it, the aim is to tamper with the original as little as possible or even keep it intact? Novels obviously have to be translated as there is little [no] alternative. Films as a visual medium have an alternative. The original doesn't have to be replaced and can instead be screened alongside the translation. i.e. subtitles will be preferential over dubbed and translated intertitles as the original is still there: intact and unaltered.

Nor do I understand the argument for why you'd only want the original intertitles if you understand the language. Surely anyone with a half decent education would recognise German from Spanish, Russian from Czech etc? The original intertitles add so much just to the flavour and ambience of the film - doesn't this Russian and Soviet flavour add to the experience of watching what is essentially Soviet propagada piece?

Even though I can only read English, German and Italian (and I am starting on Russian and Ukrainian) I would want the original intertitles just as much in a French, Japanese or even Uzbek silent film as a film in any of the languages I can read.

For a humble man like you who is able to read three languages and is learning two more, your comprehension leaves something to be desired. First I said, "I don't disagree with any of your points" and I still don't regarding authenticity and integrity. Second, I asked a question, to wit: "but if you aren't reading fluent in the particular language in question - and fluent at the speed at which the intertitles pass - how does any of the above apply?" meaning the very valid issues both Michael and you point out. Your response does not address that question. Third, I never said I didn't want original intertitles, on the contrary I even lauded those houses that keep the originals intact. You are quite correct again that original intertitles add to the ambience. Fourth, do you understand how arrogant and condescending the following is?

Surely anyone with a half decent education would recognise German from Spanish, Russian from Czech etc?

Are you seriously limiting the viewing of these films to only those whom you consider to have had a half-decent education? Is that the purpose of cinema? Or are you suggesting that people who cannot distinguish Russian from Czech should only view films in their native tongue?

But there's a more fundamental question I have for you after our recent exchanges. Does the world view you've acquired from your half-decent education allow for different points of view?

[TMDaines]

Fourth, do you understand how arrogant and condescending the following is?

Surely anyone with a half decent education would recognise German from Spanish, Russian from Czech etc?

Are you seriously limiting the viewing of these films to only those whom you consider to have had a half-decent education? Is that the purpose of cinema? Or are you suggesting that people who cannot distinguish Russian from Czech should only view films in their native tongue?

[sarc]Yes. I am intending to start a DVD label where one of our special features will be a brief quiz where people have to correctly identify 20 world languages. Provided 18 of the 20 are identified correctly, the viewer will be able to see the feature presentation with either the original intertitles or indeed english replacements. If less than 18 are identified correctly then the DVD will simply fade to black.[/sarc]

I don't think it seems condescending or arrogant because I presume the overwhelming majority of people here could tell the difference between vastly different European languages such as those listed above. I tend to think the people here, interested in what one would deem a somewhat high art - arthouse cinema - are a fairly well read and educated bunch on the whole. If I made out that people were idiots for not being able to tell the difference between Urdu and Hindi then I would understand.

My point there was that you don't have to be able to speak or read a language to gain from the intertitles being the originals and the fact that you merely recognise the intertitles as being in German (in a German film) helps provide an ambience to the film. Perhaps if you honestly can't tell the difference between German and Spanish (for instance) then it wouldn't make any difference if the original language was present or not as it wouldn't add to the ambience and the setting of the film. For me personally the cyrillic script and the Russian language draw me into the film (even though my Russian/Ukrainian are so shallow they're next to useless here). The intertitles being in English would be incredibly jarring for me and the film would lose plenty of its impact. I imagine this is doubly so as I'm fairly well travelled and couldn't imagine Ukraine (or Russia) without the cyrillic script after being there several times. It's so endemic and engrained to those cultures.

Then again maybe one being completely monolingual means one doesn't have the same view on languages as I do. Language and culture are so tied together for me as languages, and the cultures where those languages are spoken, are what I study.

[Drucker]

Just to add a minor point, I would think that losing the original vocal inflection of a (sound) picture and losing the way the dialog is originally delivered would be worse in many cases than what is lost in subtitle translation (assuming that both are relatively good, because obviously both subtitles and dubbing can be dreadful if done poorly...)

[knives]

Well again your argument primarily hinges on a personal preference and no definitive statement. Meaning that you are not arguing in a way that builds to how translations are bad. At least in Michael's case he was arguing from important aspects that have historical significance and caused me to shift my position slightly (if not in the intended way). You're, again, arguing for open matte when from your argument widescreen is just as acceptable.

[MichaelB]

I'm normally much more laid back on the subject of intertitle languages - I like to have them if the original is in French, Italian or German, because I can read the first two pretty well and understand enough of the third to recognise when something isn't being translated well or completely, but I'm not the least bit fussed if Finnish or Tagalog titles are replaced.

But with Strike, the intertitles are part of Eisenstein's visual conception of the entire film. And once this has been pointed out to you in detail, as was the case when I watched the film with Yuri Tsivian's commentary (still one of the benchmark critical commentaries of my DVD-viewing career), you really miss them when they've been replaced - as was the case with the Tartan DVD of Strike.

And given the existence of genuinely seamless branching on Blu-rays, it seems perverse to go to the trouble of replacing intertitles without putting in what probably wouldn't be that much additional effort to include the originals as well.

[ellipsis7]

From Facebook...

Richard Andrews: The 'Story Of A Love Affair' release looks amazing, especially with all the special features! Is there definitely no chance of a blu-ray release of this any time soon?
2 December at 08:54 · 1
Kino Lorber: Sadly, there was no available HD master.
2 December at 09:06