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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Introduction
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Introduction
2005-03-01
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2005-03-01
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Cinéma & Cie
Hans-Michael Bock
2005/03/01
Università degli Studi di Udine
2036-461X
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Introduction
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INTRODUCTION




  The debate around the plurality and multiplicity of cinema, repetitions and differ-
ences, accurate filmographic and document research, versions and variants, remake
and ‘reprise’) has identified – rediscovered – in multiple versions a polyhedral object
that is observed and can be observed from a heterogeneous number of points of views
but equipped, on the whole, of a strong equilibrium between historiographic tenden-
cies and theoretical and analytical reflections. In a sort of ‘hermeneutics rebound effect’
historiographic studies have in fact forced the theory to rethink and reassess the refer-
ence categories and taxonomies, thus rendering more problematic the research’s status
quo. Vice versa theory, in an effort to define adequate analytical tools, has raised new
considerations and reassessments in historical studies (Horst Claus and Anne Jäckel’s
paper is an illuminating example).1
  The studies published here constitute an important part of the papers and research
presented, discussed and developed during the 2004 II Gradisca Spring School.2 The
contents of this monographic number reveal the aim of introducing the discussion
starting from two theoretical studies, with different directions and orientations, cen-
tred on well-defined case studies. The first by Marie-France Chambat-Houillon, starts
from an in-depth and engrossing theoretical reflection on the remake of a classic –
Psycho – in order to bring multiple versions back into direct contact with the theoreti-
cal debate on cinematic plurality. A fruitful and productive field for the definition of
the identity of multiple versions, which finds coherent confirmation in the case studies
discussed by Michèle Lagny and Michel Marie. The second – by Francesca Chelu Deiana
and Davide Pozzi – continues, with constancy and rigour, the debate on multiplicity,
between versions and editions, faced by the theory and practice of film restoration.3
  Whilst investigating “la place de l’auteur” in the dynamics put into play by the prac-
tice of ‘remaking,’ Chambat-Houillon encounters the “fluctuating frontiers” of multi-
plicity. As well as confirming the tools and theoretical areas that match the allographic
and autographic properties of the works,4 there are two elements that in particular con-
cern the differentiation between multiple versions (territory of multiplicity) and
remakes (territory of plurality).
  The first characteristic peculiar to the remake is the lack of “equivalence” between
the works, whilst the multiple versions are typified (in part: the autographic side) by
the – functional – equivalence.5 The second element consists of one of the identifying
traits of the “originality” of a work. Along with the innovation and the singularity “l’é-
cart temporel” between original and remake, the diachronic and ‘re-recognition’ per-
spective of the ‘re-made’ work “fonctionne comme un différence ‘essentielle’” that
heightens and highlights the authorial intentions in the textual process and result of

CINEMA & Cie, no. 6, Spring 2004                                                         ­7
SIMONE VENTURINI, HANS-MICHAEL BOCK

the remake. In multiple versions, on the contrary, the equivalence logic, even if not
always and entirely present, joins the relative indifference of the “amplitude tem-
porelle” in defining the theoretical identity of the multiple versions and in their dis-
tinction as single works.
  Could one say then, provocatively taking the seductive intuitions present in the
assessments of certain theoretical studies to their extreme, that the multiplicity in mul-
tiple versions can be considered as the synchronic “version” of plurality? As Chambat-
Houillon points out in her study, it nevertheless remains difficult – in the oscillations
between theory and concrete manifestation, often “hybrid” and “mixed,” of multiplici-
ty/plurality – to offer exact definitions, hierarchies and delimitations.6 One could in
fact object that the practice of the remake often annuls or limits “the essentiality of the
temporal difference.” In Italy, for example, many cases that can be ascribed to the field
and ‘strong’ period of multiple versions, the first half of the 1930s, are classified as
remakes of ‘contemporary’ foreign films, a practice that in actual fact is not limited to
that transitionary moment, but can be found throughout the history of cinema.7
  The notion of synchronicity, even if insufficient to define the identity of the multiple
versions, nevertheless offers interesting ideas and certain implications, which appear
even more important, of the theoretical practices defined by the concept of présen-
tisme, not by chance also treated and used by Michèle Lagny in his highly original case
study8. Seemingly removed from the strictu sensu study of multiple versions, the study
reveals itself to be fascinating and rich. It is able, amongst other things, to spark further
considerations on the dimension of multiplicity and plurality, when defining the inter-
textual relationships and the mnemonic processes between heterogeneous (in the tem-
poral sense) textual forms. In the specific case analysed by the scholar – a 1968 ‘original’
and two 19969 ‘synchronic’ versions – the 1996 documentary originates from a “frame-
icon,” a “fantasme,” that demands a “devoir de mémoire,” far from the forms prescribed
by the authorities, through the re-use and the stimulus of original elements (the May
1968 documentary) to establish, starting from an “objet-témoin” (the still of the work-
ing woman followed ‘live’ in 1968), a series of “images-mémoire” of the present: a “nou-
velle archive” of oblivion and of the socially removed. An archive of a living memory,
that works not to preserve but to create “present” testimonies, “remémoration,” in
order to (as is the case of the second version of the 1996 documentary) establish more
linear and pedagogic interpretations. In this extremely complex case it is perhaps the
re-use dimension, the oscillation between past and present, between mythical unique-
ness and the kaleidoscope of mnemonic locations, that helps us to understand well
Lagny’s hesitation between the entity of the multiple and the plural.
  In Deiana and Pozzi’s study the ‘silent multiple versions,’ in an analogous way and in
an extremely different historical and methodological context, nevertheless reveal – as
well as the confirmation of different editions, produced deliberately and with identical
legitimacy and reciprocal autonomy from an ‘archetype’ – how the very practice and
methodology of film restoration becomes a continuous decanting operation between
past and present. The enquiry (the inspection table, the restoration process) questions
the documentation, the texts, the historical and material heritage, archived and redis-
covered to bring the film back to the present as a new version, restored to ‘regulate’ the
distance between contemporaneity and original context. The progressive restorations
of Kif Tebbi (1928, Mario Camerini), conditioned by the subsequent discovery of new
witnesses, leads to the production of ‘new’ and further editions that feed, on the plural-

­8
                                                                              INTRODUCTION

ity front, the pragmatic, original and constituent multiplicity of the text. In this sense
also the duplication process, as the final element of the restoration process and as an
element of a theoretical whole, must be set in correlation with the concept of the
remake.10 Finally the analysis and method of the variants proves to be a common tool,
when examining the texts, to restoration methodology and the study of differences/rep-
etitions in multiple versions. 11
  The considerations tied to the processes and temporal dispositions (in the remake, in
the ‘reprises’, in the restoration) lead one to believe that if the plurality of the remake
acts and “neutralises the time of the story – time as tension between the production
context and the reception context” – then the synchronic multiplicity of multiple ver-
sions, works on the implementations of texts having equivalent differences and repeti-
tions, whose aim is not to neutralise the time of the story but to establish a communi-
cation between the production context and the reception – linguistic and cultural –
contexts. The production and semiotic machine of the multiple versions works (regu-
lates the tension between production and reception contexts) in a, prevalently syn-
chronic, adaptation and translation regime, not only strictly linguistic, but also, and
especially, cultural and symbolic. 12
  If in the plurality of the remake one aims for “un accord entre le présent de l’experi-
ence du spectateur […] et celle de la fabrication du film,” the multiple versions operate
through the multiplication to fill, translate and connect the distances between the dif-
ferent ‘cultural locations’ of reception.13
  Therefore in Europe there is the notion of the multilingual version system as a form
of synchronic adaptation to the international, national and trans-national cultural and
linguistic identities and contexts. Much like a linguistic and cultural translation system
that nevertheless, and perhaps because of it, acts on a level that intersects the remake.14
  The investigations into the adaptations to the multilingual contexts, on the con-
structions and representations of national and trans-national identities, on “national
styles,” carried out also through multiple versions, follow this direction and are part of
this theoretical and historiographical field. The essays by Paul Lesch, Charles O’Brien
and Ivan Klimeš and Pavel Zeman, in their evident differences, contain a common root
in the research current that, starting from different analysis levels and contexts – the
reception and diffusion of multiple versions and of talking films in the transition from
silent cinema to talkies in Luxembourg in Lesch’s case; the statistical approach,
between production modes and national styles in O’Brien’s case; the study of different
diffusion forms and modes of newsreels in the Czechoslovak territory in Klimeš and
Zeman’s case – investigate the modes of construction and representation of identity and
national and trans-national aesthetic forms as well as the diffusion of multiplicity in,
and for, multilingual contexts.
  The case study treated by Lesch, in which the essential and characterising features of
the specific historical picture provided by the cinema in Luxembourg – small multilin-
gual and multicultural context – during the transition from silent to sound films, is of
extreme interest. There are three preliminary factors that Lesch highlights: a multilin-
gual and multicultural context; a cinematic institution that acts on the level of film dis-
tribution, exhibition and critical reception, that is, it does not produce a national cine-
ma; a transitionary moment – from silent to talkies – perceived in the initial stages as a
fear of loosing, along with the aesthetic dimension, the communicative and ideological
qualities of silent cinema: internationality, popularity and democratic nature. The mul-

                                                                                         ­9
SIMONE VENTURINI, HANS-MICHAEL BOCK

tilinguism of the Luxembourg territory allowed, since the early 1930s, for an extended
distribution of films in double-version: subtitled and dubbed. Until the second half of
the 1930s the Luxembourg territory offered a broad range of possibilities: American
films dubbed in German, multiple versions of American films, German films, Franco-
German multiple versions, French films subtitled in German, etc. American cinema
regained its dominant position only in the second half of the 1930s, to the advantage of
German cinema whilst French cinema dropped in preference and screening frequency.
Lesch identifies, in the consistent drop in popularity of French films during the first
half of the 1930s not only the linguistic barrier, that is a minor familiarity with the
French as opposed to German language, but also a lack of promotion of the films com-
pared to the advertising campaigns and materials of Ufa films. The prevalence of the
German language, especially in rural areas, in connection with the advertising cam-
paigns does not prevent French and American films from finding their place. In con-
clusion there are two significant features that render the Luxembourg context unique
and interesting. The contemporary presence in the territory, between 1930 and 1933,
side by side or in the same cinema of French and German versions of the same film. The
multiple versions tend to, in this hybrid and complex cultural and linguistic context
and with different technological and linguistic solutions, to escape a strict regime of
functional equivalence. They are screened in the same cinema and one is encouraged to
see both of them, as is the case with Atlantic (1930, Ewald André Dupont, Jean Kemm),
in order to appreciate the difference in treatment of the same scenario and they are also
dealt with parallel in the newspapers. The particularity of the context is further con-
firmed by the fact that dubbing and subtitling (in French and German) were introduced
and accepted relatively early and without an evident refusal, resulting in the winning
model (especially for American cinema) throughout the 1930s. 15
   Ivan Klimeš and Pavel Zeman analyse, with different results and scope, the variants
and strategies of propaganda and adaptation to the different Czechoslovak linguistic
and cultural contexts present in two years of the weekly newsreel Aktualita (in Czech,
German and to a lesser extent Slovak versions). Despite the multilingual context, the
historical and political period leads Klimeš and Zeman to highlight, through a rigorous
analysis and documentation, how at times, under certain circumstances – in this case
the specific situation of conflict and precariousness in Czechoslovakia in the second
half of the 1930s –, communicating in a particular language, with particular symbolic,
cultural as well as political values, becomes more important than the content. The
analysis of the variants between the Czech and the German language versions, made
possible on the whole thanks to the use of a relevant quantity of non-filmic sources,
identifies, with philological rigour, five types of basic variants: order, removal, substi-
tution (to match certain current affairs pieces with the reference territories and popu-
lations or to avoid undesirable political connotations), variants in the audio commen-
tary (for political reasons or to avoid possible misunderstandings), and finally variants
that summarise and combine the above. The Czechoslovak propaganda therefore finds,
through the cultural focus and linguistic commutation, a flexible strategy such as to
maintain an equilibrium between the different intra-national and trans-national inhab-
itants. The multiplicity of the versions of Aktualita allows the state to represent itself as
a body close and directly interested in the cultural, social and daily activities of the
German minority. The media attention expressed in the Slovak version is very similar.
   O’Brien’s statistical analysis, in the wake of Barry Salt’s studies, starts from a macro-

­10
                                                                               INTRODUCTION

analytical level, fruitfully bringing together national styles and aesthetics, production
and editing methods and techniques of sound cinema, in order to find, on a micro-ana-
lytical level, ways of understanding the historical weight and influence of the multiple
version system. The research on the statistical data from the Average Shot Length (ASL)
calculation is placed next to the assessment of the different market targets of the
national cinema industries. The analysis of this data demonstrates a considerable dif-
ference between national cinemas: in particular France, throughout the 1930s, main-
tains a longer average shot length than the United States and English language films.
This is attributable to the greater presence of live shots and contemporaneously demon-
strates a much broader oscillation (a range) than the German or American range and
therefore a greater variety of editing techniques. O’Brien puts down this last aspect to
the genres employed and to the relevance of the role of the auteur in French cinema. In
the period between 1930 and 1932 sound recording and editing techniques and the mar-
ket trends devised and employed by three different film industries (United States,
France, Germany) offer a diverse statistical and analytical picture. If one considers the
different market targets – on one hand, USA and Germany as “export-oriented film
industries,” and on the other France, more intent on maintaining the local market – the
industrial and consistent impact on the production methods and editing techniques of
the solutions employed through multiple versions by the United States and Germany
lead to, as O’Brien suggests, a “pre-designed modular film-sound technique.” On the
contrary, the French cinema industry, anchored to the local market, evolves, through
differentiated solutions and a marked use of live shots, towards a national style differ-
ent “from that of the export-oriented German and American film industries.” The com-
parison between the different ASL of English and German versions of the same film
therefore have a clear convergence with the more general data, highlighting a planned
modulation and adaptation process of the multiple versions to the “national styles” and
not exclusively for strictly cultural and linguistic translation.
   Hartvigson, differently from Lesch, O’Brien and Klimeš-Zeman states right from the
outset, in his examination of Frk. Møllers Jubilæum (1937, Miss Møller’s Jubilee,
Denmark) and Julia Jubilerar, (1938, Julia Jubilates, Sweden), his intention of not
analysing the differences in terms of nationality, but rather in the methods of actuating
comic strategies. In this sense, multiple versions offer a unique opportunity to high-
light the methods and processes for constructing characters in comedy. The Danish and
Swedish versions, starting from the same scenario and the same set, offer two consider-
ably different approaches to the definition of the main characters. The Swedish version,
monotonous in its classical running, maintains a strong adherence to the canons of
realism, in terms of a suppression of fiction codes. The Danish version, on the other
hand, constructs and develops the characters by placing in the middle of the comedy
their stereotypical and caricatural nature with connotations pursued by moving from
one genre, and functional world, to another (the musical, the melodrama). The oppor-
tunity to investigate the traits of the comical and comedy through different acting and
recitative approaches and through the construction methods of the comic substance
finds, in this multiple version, a perfect case study that pitches a discussion on the clar-
ification of the boundaries and transitions of fiction (the baroque, in the Danish ver-
sion) against a discussion on the suppression of comic codes (the discreet, in the
Swedish version). Such an approach sheds light both on the implementation strategies
of multiple versions and on their validity, on an operative and phenomenological level,

                                                                                         ­11
SIMONE VENTURINI, HANS-MICHAEL BOCK

in order to study the acting techniques, film star systems and the “substances” in the
genre’s requirements.
   The aims, approach and conclusions of the case treated by Horst Claus and Anne
Jäckel who have re-examined (“reassessed”) nearly ten years later, the celebrated Der
Kongreß tanzt (1931, Erik Charell) and compared it with the French and English ver-
sions are different still. There are numerous reasons: a notion of historiography as a
process of reassessment, “re-examinations” and revision of the texts and contexts with
new available sources.
   Furthermore Claus and Jäckel highlight, in the production and screening process of
the different versions, the special attention paid by Ufa to financial, commercial and
production policies between 1930 and 1932, with the progressive slide towards a greater
attention to European markets (German and French) at the expense of English language
markets (United States and Great Britain) as well as the particular and detailed atten-
tion to the production practices of the first film by the theatre director Charell and to
the conflictual and non linear genesis of the film which also contained different con-
tributions. Versions that starting from the initial multiplicity, ontological/constitutive,
filmographic and productive, proliferate through the historiographic and philological
enquiry towards a more extended multiplicity: the Viennese premiere, the Berlin pre-
miere and the subsequent censorship variants, the French version, the English version
and its 1932 Old Vienna re-edition, etc. The comparative analysis of the surviving prints
and the considerations that emerge seem more significant. If the three versions, at a
first cursory glance, seemed basically similar and the genre (the operetta-film in an
intermedial perspective) became the main “internationalisation” vehicle of the film,
allowing for the coexistence of national and contradictory elements, now a textual
analysis, – still to be completed, warn the authors – the consideration of the details (at
a recitative, linguistic, musical, choreographical and editing level, as well as for exam-
ple the special intervention of the supervisor, Carl Winston, on the English script) leads
one to reflect on the generalisations often acquired by historical research on multiple
versions. That is that the production and commercial practices influenced by the his-
torical, cultural and economic context and by the particular and individual interven-
tions occurred at different stages of the production and distribution process of Der
Kongreß tanzt make one in part, and positively, doubt, opening the historiographic re-
examination, generalisations tied to linear views of the standardisation processes, tech-
niques and solutions in act during the transition from silent to talking pictures or to the
schematics tied to the conception and constitution ‘by nation/language/culture’ of mul-
tiple versions. Furthermore, such re-openings include in the field of multiple versions,
not only of the remake, a strong rate of intentionality (authorial, textual, pragmatic,
productive) that is considerably different in the different original texts.

  Also Michel Marie, in the study dedicated to Le Mépris, stresses how the expression
“multiple versions” denotes “very varied technical practices.” Therefore “dubbed” ver-
sions must then be considered as “another variant of multiple versions.” If for Marie the
analytical approach goes through the textual and historiographical analysis, for the
procedures that make a film multiple, this doesn’t prevent it finding in the temporali-
ty, in the contemporariness of the circumstances or in their subsequent manifestation,
a fundamental difference between multiple versions and remake. It is in this sense that
Le Mépris becomes multiple and not plural. From a different point of view, one must

­12
                                                                                INTRODUCTION

also consider how the structure of the European cinema system of the sixties - with one
of the dominant factors consisting of co-productions and joint ventures, on the most
part at a financial level – meets, in its involution, certain ‘strong’ cases of ‘real’ co-pro-
duction. Films conceived from the outset with a mixture of international and multi-lay-
ered elements (international crew, intervention of a French author on an Italian literary
text, multilinguism, etc.).16
  The versions indicated by Marie and analysed according to their differences (linguis-
tic, musical, editing variants, removed and added variants, consisting of Bardot’s nudes)
offer a view of multiplicity in which the proliferations, the version of Le Mépris, appear
like the effect of an exemplary conflict (between multilinguism and cosmopolitanism
and commercial and institutional requirements) and of a rejection of a unique, and in
certain ways ‘old style,’ co-production model.17
  In conclusion, the ‘Multiple Versions Project,’ thanks to the results produced by the
Spring School in terms of research, collaboration between university, research and
archive institutions has achieved a first important operational objective, that is the
presentation to the European Community of an ambitious and shared international
long-term project: Multilingual Version Films and European Cultural Identity. MLV –
Multilingual Versions Project. The project partners and the associated members are:
Národní Filmový Archiv (Praha), CineGraph (Hamburg), Università degli Studi di
Udine, Filmarchiv Austria (Wien), Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv (Berlin), Archives
Françaises du Film du Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC, Bois d’Arcy), in
cooperation with Universität Hamburg, Ruhr Universität (Bochum), Friedrich-
Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung (Wiesbaden), Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, Cineteca del
Friuli, Università degli Studi di Bologna, CSC-Cineteca Nazionale (Rome) and the
PresTech Film Restoration Laboratory.
  The project will work on three levels. A basic filmography, containing the essential
information of the MLV films, will be used to create an advanced filmography contain-
ing detailed information as well as related documents. Census of the existing copies of
MLV films in European and world film archives and their physical state. Filmography
and important documents will be made available through a website and database
(English, French, German).
  As a first opportunity to relate the MLV project to a wider and popular audience
CineGraph and Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv will dedicate “CineFest - II International
Festival of German Film-Heritage” as well as the 18th CineGraph Conference in
November 2005 in Hamburg to the topic. The programme of CineFest will then be
screened in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich.
  The partners co-organizing the project will identify a series of MLV films, that will
undergo reprinting and/or restoration of the various versions; a series of international
events will present the results of the restoration projects and the progress of the
researches. They will host exhibitions and screenings of MLV films; the research and
restoration activity will result in publications (books as well as – hopefully – DVDs) in
connection with European publishing houses.
  Finally the organisation and distribution of an extensive retrospective dedicated to
MLVs in the context of European production, presented in major cities of the continent.
The publication of a book containing a popular summary of the MLV project.

                                                        [s.m., in collaboration with h.m.b.]

                                                                                           ­13
SIMONE VENTURINI, HANS-MICHAEL BOCK

1 In the name of continuity, as Nataša Ďurovičová recalled in the Introduction of the first
  issue of CINÉMA & Cie dedicated to multiple versions, the IX Udine International Conference
  on Film Studies, held in 2002 – Il film e i suoi multipli / Film and its Multiples – had called
  the attention of scientific research to the different dimensions, figures and fields of cine-
  matic plurality and multiplicity. This attention, over the last two years has found in the
  “Scuola di Gradisca” - MAGIS – International Film Studies Spring School – a special location
  and an international research and comparison project on multiple versions. This second edi-
  torial appointment with the research on multiple versions, made possible thanks to the
  activities promoted by the Spring School and the important and constant attentions, con-
  tributions and stimuli provided by all the young researchers and scholars that have taken
  part (many of the latter are by now no strangers to Gradisca d’Isonzo), confirms first of all
  the validity of the choices undertaken and of the research contributions, themes and per-
  spectives opened and developed. Cf. CINÉMA & Cie, no. 4, Nataša Ďurovičová, in collaboration
  with Hans-Michael Bock (eds.), Multiple and Multiple-language Versions/Version multiples
  (Spring 2004); Anna Antonini (ed.), Il film e i suoi multipli/Film and its multiples (Udine:
  Forum, 2003).
2 Amongst the talks presented it is worth recalling André Gaudreault’s contributions, on mul-
  tiple versions in the early cinema, Charles Musser’s on the variants and on the versions of
  Ame d’artiste/Heart of an Actress (1924, Germaine Dulac), Hans-Michael Bock and Nataša
  Ďurovičová’s on the research issues and perspectives in the field of multiple versions.
  Furthermore the talks by Natalia Noussinova, Casper Tybjerg, Leonardo Gandini – on two
  versions, in English and Spanish, of Dracula (1931, Tod Browning/George Melford), Lenny
  Borger – a talk dedicated to the The Robber Symphony (1935-36, Friedrich Fehér) -, Rié Kitada
  (on the multiple versions of the benshi).
3 Cf. Davide Pozzi, “Quelle version restaurer? Deux cas concrets: Nana et Prix de Beauté ”,
  CINÉMA & Cie, no. 4, cit., pp. 22-29; Davide Pozzi, “La passione di Nana. Vita morte e trasfigu-
  razione di un film di Jean Renoir,” Cinegrafie, no. 15 (2002), pp. 79-115.
4 For a treatment of the allographic and autographic qualities see Gérard Genette, L’Œuvre de
  l’art. Immanence et transcendance (Paris: Seuil, 1994); Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art
  (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968).
5 Cf. François Jost, Territoires de l’œuvre cinématographique, unpublished paper, MAGIS -
  Gradisca International Film Studies Spring School, March 2003.
6 Cf. F. Jost, op.cit.; see also Rémy Pithon, Les Versions multiples: composantes, limites et prob-
  lèmes d’une definition, unpublished paper, MAGIS – Gradisca International Film Studies
  Spring School, March 2003. See also Rémy Pithon, “Les Version multiples: ont-elles existé?”,
  in A. Antonini (ed.), op.cit., pp. 123-129.
7 For the quoted theme and historical context cf. Orsola Silvestrini, “L’autoremake e il cinema
  di genere: il caso Mario Camerini,” in A. Antonini (ed.), op.cit., pp. 180-181: “Nel periodo com-
  preso tra l’avvento del sonoro e la seconda guerra mondiale, coesistono in Italia due princi-
  pali forme di rifacimento cinematografico: le versioni multiple (o versioni in lingua
  straniera) e i remake […] I remake sono per lo più tratti da film stranieri, in larga misura
  europei, realizzati qualche anno prima, o addirittura l’anno stesso.”
  In a different perspective, but still relative to the constituent properties of multiple versions,
  Pierre Sorlin, taking as an example Die Privatsekretärin (1931, Wilhelm Thiele), asked himself
  what could be the link between the German and French versions and the English and Italian
  remakes: Pierre Sorlin, “Multilingual Films, or What We Know About a Seemingly Bright
  Idea,” CINÉMA & Cie, no. 4, cit., p. 18. Cf. also with R. Pithon, op.cit., p. 124. Pithon, referring to

­14
                                                                                        INTRODUCTION

     the same, and other analogous, cases asked himself: “Où est, dans ce cas, le limite entre la ‘ver-
     sion multiple’ et le remake?”
8    The concept of présentisme we believe can also be useful in the identification of the, not obvi-
     ous, theoretical and cultural statute of the “restored” versions and in shedding light in part
     on the relationship between remake and restored editions within the field of filmic plurality.
     Cf. François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité, présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris: Seuil,
     2003).
9    The same Lagny, senses in the remakes and the adaptations, simple forms of multiplicity, of
     the “formes particulières de ‘version multiples’”. Cf. Michèle Lagny, “Le Téléfilm comme
     remake culturelle,” in A. Antonini (ed.), op.cit., p. 192.
10   Cf. Cosetta G. Saba, “Cinema, differenza, ripetizione, remake” in A. Antonini (ed.), op.cit., pp.
     45-52; Michele Canosa, “Per una teoria del restauro cinematografico,” in Gian Piero Brunetta
     (ed.), Storia del cinema mondiale, Vol. V, Teorie, strumenti, memorie (Torino: Einaudi, 2001),
     pp. 1069-1118.
11   Cf. with the essays by Ivan Klimeš, Pavel Zeman and Horst Claus, Anne Jäckel contained here.
12   Cf. Joseph Garncarz, “Making Films Comprehensible and Popular Abroad: The Innovative
     Strategy of Multiple-Language Versions,” CINÉMA & Cie, no. 4, cit., pp. 72-79; Nataša
     Ďurovičová, “Tradurre l’America. Il plurilinguismo hollywoodiano 1929-33,” Cinegrafie, no.
     6 (1993); Nataša Ďurovičová, “Introduction”, CINÉMA & Cie, no. 4, cit., pp. 8-9.
     In the 1930s Ufa produced and distributed in France, through ACE set up in Paris in 1926,
     French versions of German films. In certain cases as R. Pithon, op.cit., p.129, suggests, only
     the “French” version, whose ‘original matrix’ was not realised. A sign of continuity and fur-
     ther concentration on the theme of cultural translation is represented in France, during the
     Vichy regime, by Alfred Greven already engaged by Ufa during the first half of the 1930s to
     manage French technicians and artists in Berlin in order to realise French versions of German
     films. Greven and Continental continued with this policy of realising films by French crews
     for French audiences. On this subject see also the proto-co-production relationships of
     Scalera Film with the French companies of the period.
     Cf. also Sibylle M. Sturm, Arthur Wohlgemuth (eds.), Hallo? Berlin? Ici Paris!: Deutsch-
     französische Filmbeziehungen 1918-1939 (München: text+kritik/CineGraph, 1996). In a sym-
     bolic sense we are referring, amongst other things, to the fact that the dubbing practices, as
     noted by Nataša Ďurovičová, represent in part a ‘naturalized’ exception to the fact that “usu-
     ally you can’t stand in two places at once.” The learning and acceptance of dubbing and sub-
     titling practices must, in their different levels and evolutions (see for example the
     Luxembourgeois context described by Paul Lesch in the essay presented here), be placed in
     correlation to the practices and processes of literacy and affirmation of representation modes.
     Cf. Nataša Ďurovičová, “Local Ghosts: Dubbing Bodies in Early Sound Cinema,” in A.
     Antonini (ed.), op.cit., p. 83; Noël Burch, La Lucarne de l’infini. Naissance du langage ciné-
     matographique (Paris: Nathan, 1991).
13   Once again P. Sorlin, op.cit., p. 18, found in “a film whose different versions were shot in the
     same studio” perhaps the most illuminating, but at the same time unsatisfactory, definition
     of multiple version. The idea of a ‘studio’ as the epicentre, production and semantic-cultural
     network, however unstable, of focalisation and implementation of the ‘meeting’ process
     between production and reception context is of considerable interest, especially if compared
     with the methods and forms of individual and cultural ‘migration’. Cf. with the essay by
     Horst Claus and Anne Jäckel contained here and with Harry Waldman, Paramount-Paris: 300
     Films Produced at the Joinville Studios, 1930-1933 (Lanham-London: Scarecrow, 1998);

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SIMONE VENTURINI, HANS-MICHAEL BOCK

      Riccardo Redi, “La Fabbrica dei multipli: Joinville,” in A. Antonini (ed.), op.cit., pp. 115-122;
      Andrew Higson, Richard Maltby (eds.), “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema,
      Commerce and Cultural Exchange 1920-1939 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999);
      Martin Barnier, Raphaëlle Moine (eds.), France/Hollywood. Echanges cinématographisques
      et identités nationales (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002); Alberto Farassino, “Cosmopolitismo ed eso-
      tismo nel cinema europeo fra le due guerre,” in Gian Piero Brunetta (ed.), Storia del cinema
      mondiale, Vol. I, L’Europa. Miti, luoghi, divi (Torino: Einaudi, 1999), pp. 485-508.
14    The practice of the remake is adopted, for example, by the American cinema system as a form
      of replacement of multiplicity originating, amongst other things, from a refusal or at least a
      lasting difficulty in accepting such a translation technique on the part of American cinema
      audiences. Cf. N. Ďurovičová, “Local Ghosts: Dubbing Bodies in Early Sound Cinema,” op. cit.,
      especially pp. 93-95.
15    The renewal of a dominant position by American cinema can also be associated, as well as to
      other factors, to the collusion between dubbing practices and the different technical, pro-
      ductive-commercial and stylistic approaches to talking pictures assumed by the American
      film industry, that quickly adopted the separate tracks and mixing technique. Cf. Charles
      O’Brien, “Multiple Versions in France: Paramount and National Film Style,” CINÉMA & Cie, no.
      4, cit., pp. 80-88 and the essay by the same author contained therein; N. Ďurovičová, “Local
      Ghosts: Dubbing Bodies in Early Sound Cinema,” op. cit., pp. 83-98.
16    Cf. Aldo Bernardini, “Le collaborazioni internazionali nel cinema europeo,” in G. P. Brunetta
      (ed.), op.cit., Vol. I, pp. 1013-1048.
17    The reference is to the initial viewpoint of the first European co-productions, that is a recip-
      rocal productivity, the autographical components present in the practices of re-use imple-
      mented in twin co-productions, the constitution of mixed production groups as well as
      famous cases of multilanguage versions such as Hallo Hallo! Hier spricht Berlin/Allo? Berlin?
      Ici Paris (1931, Julien Duvivier). Furthermore it is not by chance that, as of the beginning of
      the 1950s, many Italian companies, Gualino’s Lux being the initial and ideal reference point,
      feel, as well as for purely speculative and financial motives, the need to look towards export-
      ing and look out for genres and stylistic models that are trans-national and ‘popular’. They
      undertake the challenge of elaborating new strategies of international understanding and
      translation of their products. Cf. J. Garncarz, “Making Films Comprehensible and Popular
      Abroad: The Innovative Strategy of Multiple-Language Versions,” op. cit.; Simone Venturini,
      Galatea s.p.a. (1952-1965). Storia di una casa di produzione cinematografica (Roma: AIRSC,
      2002).




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