How to write French film titles

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Usually, we would either put no capital at all, or just for the first name, like Les tontons flingueurs, or Les Tontons flingueurs, but I would say that, as a all, we would rather use no capital at all and go for Les tontons flingueurs, since "tontons" is a common name and has absolutely no reason to be with a first capital.

So why do you think we have, for example in that Gaumont list, Le Bossu, Les Tonton flingeurs, Les Mariés de l'an Deux, Un Taxi pour Tobruk,
but then Les copains, Un amour de Swann etc etc ? Rather than hard and fast rules a la Wiki isn't it a bit optional?
As my french primer says on page one. There are lots and lots of rules in the french language and even more exceptions.

[TMDaines]

Usually, we would either put no capital at all, or just for the first name, like Les tontons flingueurs, or Les Tontons flingueurs, but I would say that, as a all, we would rather use no capital at all and go for Les tontons flingueurs, since "tontons" is a common name and has absolutely no reason to be with a first capital.

So why do you think we have, for example in that Gaumont list, Le Bossu, Les Tonton flingeurs, Les Mariés de l'an Deux, Un Taxi pour Tobruk,
but then Les copains, Un amour de Swann etc etc ? Rather than hard and fast rules a la Wiki isn't it a bit optional?
As my french primer says on page one. There are lots and lots of rules in the french language and even more exceptions.

Not that I'd consider a DVD label to be much of forerunner for language standards, but if you look at the covers, it's only really the American-style film poster ones that follow this trend. The ones with the title written in a standard font just stick with first letter of the first word capitalised and then normal rules apply. I'd suggest a lot of it was English language influence but I'm sure certain publishers have their own standards too.

[Hail_Cesar]

Here's the rule used by a serious French film history journal in their instructions to authors: http://1895.revues.org/349" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Pour les titres français, l'initiale du premier mot est en capitales (majuscules), sauf lorsqu'il s'agit d'un article défini ; dans ce cas, la majuscule est mise au premier substantif (nom), ainsi qu'à l'adjectif qui le précède (Germinal, Une femme au bain, la Lutte pour la vie, le Bonheur perdu, l'Éternel Amour)."

The first letter of the first word is capitalized, except when it's a definite article; in this case the capital is moved to the first noun, as well as the adjective which preceeds it.

Seems to be a simpler rule set than above; though I'm too tired right now to compare and decide if in effect they say the same thing...

That makes a lot of sense for when you are mentioning a movie title in a text. For instance, in English, a critic can say "The beauty of The 400 blows..." but a french critic couldn't write «La beauté de Les quatres cents coups...» he will write «La beauté des Quatres cents coups...» because the first one wouldn't sound well the writer has to take off the article of the title and replace it. Although when its an «article défini» the movie keeps his article E.g. La beauté d'Une femme marié...», La beauté de Léon Morin, prêtre...». The Capital clearly shows when the writer states the beginning of a movie title. While the «articles indéfini» are important to be included in the title, the «indéfini»'s ones are not mandatory and are often changed by syntax rules. E.g. «La beauté de Des hommes et des dieux» would sound bad and if I just remove the «de» and keep the «Des» capitalized the «Des» would be part of the subject and would fail to make the link between «beauté» and the title.

Not sure if my explanation is clear... I hope so...

For Cataloguing, I'd say the best is to follow the creator's will or simply put the Capital at the very beginning...

[MichaelB]

My rough-and-ready solution is to Google the individual title and see what the majority verdict is in pieces written by native French people.

I definitely wouldn't go by the poster design. Not least because, based on my own experience of dealing with graphic designers working on film marketing materials, they're not exactly sticklers for typographical accuracy.

[JanPB]

This is a translation from a piece of French Wikipedia, about where the capital letters should go in French film and book titles

Actually the rule "do not capitalize words in titles unless you absolutely HAVE to (proper names etc.)" is almost universal for European languages with two notable exceptions:

* English,
* all nouns in German are capitalized.

Hence Polish titles like "Sanatorium pod klepsydra" and "Noz w wodzie", or German "Herz aus Glas" and "Der Ring des Nibelungen".

There are similar rules for European-like names containing words like "de", "le", "von", etc. all of which mean more or less "of" or "from" and are written in lower case and as separate words: "Johannes Diderik van der Waals", "Leonardo da Vinci", "Gloria von Thurn und Taxis". It gets quite complicated when listing those in a telephone directory:

* Beethoven, Ludwig van
* Karajan, Herbert von,
* Waals, Johannes Diderik van der [although Dutch have their own local rules]
* About Princess Gloria I have no idea but I suspect: Thurn und Taxis, Gloria von

Note that the Library of Congress in the US violates these rules for some reason. But not quite: one day I noticed a weird pattern: a person with a Dutch name in South Africa publishing a book there in English gets listed by "v" (i.e. "Van Something, Name") but another person with a Dutch name from South Africa with a book published in Dutch there gets listed as "Something, Name van". Your tax dollars at work.

[tenia]

Usually, we would either put no capital at all, or just for the first name, like Les tontons flingueurs, or Les Tontons flingueurs, but I would say that, as a all, we would rather use no capital at all and go for Les tontons flingueurs, since "tontons" is a common name and has absolutely no reason to be with a first capital.

So why do you think we have, for example in that Gaumont list, Le Bossu, Les Tonton flingeurs, Les Mariés de l'an Deux, Un Taxi pour Tobruk,
but then Les copains, Un amour de Swann etc etc ? Rather than hard and fast rules a la Wiki isn't it a bit optional?
As my french primer says on page one. There are lots and lots of rules in the french language and even more exceptions.

I think there will be as many ways to look at it as there are French inhabitants.

I spoke about my personal experience, which might certainly differ from an editor one, but I think that a cover and a product description can hardly be seen as a base for understanding French grammar rules.

However, your exemples clearly follow the 2 "simple" ways of writing the French titles : either like in a regular French sentence (Les tontons flingueurs) or with a capital on the first name (Les Tontons flingueurs).

Hail cesar explains also very well the consequences of this choice while in a full text.

[MichaelB]

I think there will be as many ways to look at it as there are French inhabitants.

That's very much the impression I've got, and I've been wrestling with this issue for nearly 25 years now, on account of countless jobs requiring me to reproduce French titles in the original. Every other European language seems very straightforward indeed (either names or German nouns get capitalised, along with the very first letter of the title, but that's it), but French seems far less consistent. But if the French themselves can't agree, that makes things much easier.

[TMDaines]

In Portugese title case exists to some extent also: Click