Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article “Read My Lips” by Chiara Barzini(©2012 by the Harper's Magazine Foundation).

In the passage, dubbing primarily refers to providing a film with a new sound track, especially dialogue, in a different language.

Filmmakers have debated the respective merits of subtitles and dubbing since the earliest sound films. In “The Impossible Life of Clark Costa,” published in 1940 in the film journal Cinema, director Michelangelo Antonioni wrote that Romolo Costa, the person who dubbed all of actor Clark Gable's performances, was a "hybrid individual born out of a chemical combination.“ This "half Clark, half Costa” was unbearable to Antonioni, who considered dubbing to be a mere "acoustic surrogate" of acting. To him, dubbing compromised the intention of the director, leading to an artificial product that lacked artistic unity. Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who called both dubbing and subtitles “evils,” said that, between the two, dubbing was the less harmful, since it allowed you to see the picture in full. Director Jean Renoir called dubbing a “monstrosity, a challenge to human and divine laws.”

Director Federico Fellini didn’t agree with any of them. Dubbing was an extension of his shoots, a technique he would use to retouch and rewrite. He mercilessly dubbed over his actors, changing dialogue in postproduction, sometimes having worked without a script. (He reportedly instructed his actors to count aloud in front of the camera so that he could insert new dialogue afterward. Renato Cortesi, a veteran Fellini dubber, told me that, during the filming of Amarcord(1973), he witnessed Fellini ask an old Neapolitan lady to tell him a sad story. Over footage of this woman recounting a tragic tale about her grandson, Fellini added a new sound track about war and hunger recorded by an actor from Emilia-Romagna, combining the vivid expressiveness of the South with his favorite northern accent.

If you visit a dubbing studio, the over-the-top zest of the actors is evident in everything from their melodramatic speech to their movements; standing in front of the microphone, they coil and twitch. I asked Cortesi whether this was a consequence of having to focus one's lifelong talent into the few centimeters between mouth and microphone, a kind of bodily rebellion to the condition of being heard but not seen, and he laughed “Of course it isn't easy to spend a life in the darkness, but this is hardly the reason why they twitch and turn! Dubbers are used to reciting while trying to re-create the bodily sensations of what they see on the screen before them. If there is running in the film. they will run on their feet. The moving, he explained, "is the result of re-creating large movements in small spaces."

There are still few options for those seeking to watch subtitled, original-language films at a movie house in Italy. The Metropolitan cinema on Via del Corso closed recently after a long battle involving intellectuals, show-business people, and American and British expats in Rome, to be replaced with a clothing store. Italians remain hooked on dubbing-perhaps because of simple affection. Familiar voices yield emotional attachment.

Francesco Vairano, a dubber and dubbing director known for adapting foreign films considered to be “undubbable,” such as the French box office hit Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis("Welcome to the Sticks, "2008), which relies on linguistic misunderstandings for much of its comedy, explained that actors become just as attached to their parts as audiences do. Vairano been one of the few directors to break the habit of matching the same Italian dubber to a foreign actor for all his films, preferring instead to select the dubber according to the requirements of the role, and he admits, he was hated by all the prima donna dubbers for this. “If you take that actor away from them,” he told me, “they will insult you.”

In 2007, I met dubber Luca Ward, who provided the voice of the narrator for a romantic comedy I co-wrote, Scusa ma Ti Chiamo Amore (“Sorry but I Love You”). What I didn't then know was that everyone Ward met wanted him to recite actor Samuel L. Jackson's Ezekiel 25:17 passage from the film Pulp Fiction, and that I should consider it an honor that he would offer a performance to a stranger. When he finally did recite the monologue. it was astonishing. every dramatic pause carefully timed and every word perfectly enunciated. I understood that, if any body took Samuel L.Jackson away from Ward, it would have meant taking away a part of his soul; he was, as Antonioni would say, half Ward, half Jackson, Leaving the day's recording session, Ward told me he was off to have dinner with actress Meg Ryan, before raising an eyebrow and clarifying, With Meg Ryan's dubber... I am having dinner with Meg Ryans voice.”