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2036-461X
19034
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Multilingual Films, or What we Know about a Seemingly Bright Idea
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
4
Thematic issue / Section thématique
2004-03-01
2022-11-20
2004-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Pierre Sorlin
2004/03/01
Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle
2036-461X
4
en
Multilingual Films, or What we Know about a Seemingly Bright Idea
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19034/16794
4
MULTILINGUAL FILMS, OR WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT A SEEMINGLY
BRIGHT IDEA
Pierre Sorlin, Université de Paris III




   The multilingual films are a myth. By myth I mean something known to everybody but
seldom examined. It is generally taken for granted that the introduction of sound obliged
film companies to modify their marketing strategies since it raised the problem of selling
pictures to publics which did not understand the language of the original version. The
simultaneous making of various versions of the same scripts spoken in different lan-
guages was seen as a bright solution which would save money on film set, costume and
extras and would allow producers to sell their pictures directly on European markets.
   For a long time this was the common knowledge passed on by cinema histories, and
it was scattered along with unchecked anecdotes. We can for instance read in books
written by serious scholars that every shot was filmed with the actors of the various ver-
sions succeeding each other in a row. Such solution would have been inefficient and
expensive; as far as I know it was only used at MGM, and for a very short time – but of
course the story is amusing and enlivens the book which tells it. It would be unfair to
mock such tradition since, for many decades, historians could do nothing but use unre-
liable written sources, especially with reviews published in film magazines which were
not necessarily well informed. However, thanks to numerous restorations achieved
during the past decades, new prospects have been opened and the Gradisca seminar has
provided an unique chance to take a fresh look at the problem. Without being an expert
in this field I am only intrigued by an initiative which at first looked highly promising
but turned out to be rather deceptive. And since we are at the beginning of what might
last many good years, I would like to raise the well known, but still useful questions:
what, who, why, what for?


What?

  Up to now we have no reliable chronology of how the multilingual films were shot
and released. Neither have we solid figures. How many versions were shot? Some say
one hundred fifty, others up to two hundreds. I am afraid these are hopeless statistics
since there is no way of telling precisely what a multilingual film was. Of course, it was
not the same as a co-production, that is to say a picture shot in one country with money
coming from two or more countries, but this is the only thing we can take for granted.
Beyond that point, there is no clear-cut criterion.
  A multilingual film could thus be:
  - A group of films made on the basis of same text, either independently or together. In
1936 Forzano shot, from a screenplay of his own, Tredici uomini e un cannone. This was

CINEMA & Cie, no. 4, Spring 2004                                                       ­17
PIERRE SORLIN

simultaneously a war film and a detective story, set during WWI on the Austrian front-
line, in which a perfectly camouflaged canon is destroyed by the Russians. Someone has
revealed its existence; is it one of the thirteen men who serve the canon? The film was
not exceptional but the story was excellent so that two years later an English and a
German company, wanting to use the script for two movies shot in their respective lan-
guages, came to an agreement with the Italian producer. They made their films in an
Italian studio and could share the many long shots which gave the story its back-
ground. Shall we say that, based on their nationality, the films were or weren’t a multi-
lingual production?
   - A series of movies shot separately from the same script. The case wasn’t rare at the time.
To take but an example the script of the German film Die Privatsekretärin, written by
Franz Schultz, was bought by an Italian, a French and an English company, each of which
adapted it and produced three independent pictures with independent casts. However,
there were differences in the making of the three versions. Wilhelm Thiele, having direct-
ed Die Privatsekretärin, was later entrusted with making the French version shot in Berlin
with German technicians, while the English and Italian versions were directed by two
other filmmakers working in their own country. Shall we say that the French and German
versions are twins, while the English and Italian ones are mere cousins?
   - A film whose different versions were shot in the same studio. This seems to be a
straightforward definition but it isn’t as simple as it sounds because there could be sig-
nificant variations depending on the origin of the technical crew and of the actors.
Theoretically the same people shot and edited all the films deriving from a script but
there were many exceptions, either with mixed crews or with different teams substi-
tuting each other. Some directors made all the pictures but there were also several direc-
tors or, as was the case with Paprika (1932), one director for the German and Italian ver-
sions, another for the French one. For linguistic reasons the cast was generally changed
but some actors played in two versions and, at the end of the decade, owing to the
progress of post-synchronization, some actors – but not necessarily all of them – were
hired for the various versions and were then dubbed.
   Since any definition would be disputable we had better spell out what it is we expect
from the study of simultaneous versions before deciding what is and what isn’t a mul-
tilingual film. As far as I am concerned I believe that much can be learnt about film-
making in the 1930s, and about the evolution of cinematic expression during the tran-
sition to sound.


Who?

   Who were the companies or studios which specialized in the making of multilingual
versions? Again we are faced with approximate claims and unreliable reports. Often
mentioned is the Paramount studio at Joinville, a suburb of Paris, organized according to
a Fordian rhythm of work and representing the most advanced system of filmmaking in
Europe. In fact, Paramount’s attempt was short-lived, having began in August 1930 and
ending after a year. But other multilingual pictures were made at Joinville before and
after this deal. So, when speaking of “Joinville films” it is necessary to make a distinction
between the various producing companies which hired the plant, sometimes for one
film only. It would also be useful to inquire into their working procedures.

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                                                                         MULTILINGUAL FILMS

  Many also stress the importance of the German UFA which, given the advantage of its
sound equipment, convinced foreign companies to work in its Berlin studios. Once
again, we must be very careful. Up to 1937 UFA was an independent company which
rented its Babelsberg studios to other producers, notably to Bavaria, whose Munich stu-
dios had no sound equipment, or to Itala Film Berlin. Many multilingual versions were
made in Babelsberg but only a few were produced by UFA.
  Joinville and UFA were only two episodes in a much more complicated story whose
main part took place in Hollywood where, from 1929 through 1931 all the majors pro-
duced a good many pictures in four, and at times in six languages. The attempt came to
an end at about the time Paramount was leaving Joinville. In 1929-30 dubbing technol-
ogy was still elementary, and the multilingual versions were likely to meet spectators’
expectations better than the confusing subtitling, or post-synchronisation of poor qual-
ity. But it wasn’t long before those in charge of adaptation understood that instead of
translating they had to find phonetic equivalents to the English words, and before
actors learned to attend to lip movements. Multilingual versions required higher
investments than straight American pictures. The latter were usually paid back in their
distribution on the local market so that export revenue was entirely a bonus. On the
other hand each multilingual version had to be sold separately and in many cases did-
n’t cover its expenses. After two years, the majors gave up. Only Europe, for reasons we
shall try to explain, continued its production up to WWII.


Why?

  There is no particular feature which would allow us to gather all multilingual films
in a specific group. But there is something which distinguishes them from other pic-
tures: they were made from a screenplay common to three or four movies. I shall argue
that, far from being a negligible detail, this tells us a lot about the production of the
multilingual versions. Is it not surprising to see that so much importance was granted
to the script? After all, in the silent era, when scriptwriters weren’t as protected against
plagiarism as they are today, imitating the plot of a previous film was common. As was
noted during the 2002 Udine International Film Studies Conference, Dino De
Laurentiis did not hesitate in the early 1940s to imitate scripts already shot by other
producers. Why is it thus that so many screenplays were bought by several film com-
panies?
  It has been pointed out that shooting several versions from one script helped to save
money since the same set and the same costumes could be recycled. Should we in that
case not be alert to the fact that there were two types of multilingual films? Some were
expensive productions such as Atlantic or Two Worlds (both directed by E.A. Dupont),
Casta Diva, or the five versions of The Big Trail (all directed by Raoul Walsh). But these
were exceptions. Most films were comedies of manners borrowed from popular plays or
novels. Paprika is a good example. A German producer commissioned an adaptation of
Max Reimann’s successful play Der Sprung in die Ehe. The story was very plain. Initial
situation: a resourceful young lady meets a misogynous bachelor. Episodes: she uses her
womanly wiles to seduce him. Conclusion: they become engaged to each other.
Reviewing the film Il Corriere della Sera said that the performances were outstanding
but that the plot was just one more variant of a hackneyed story. The same could be said

                                                                                         ­19
PIERRE SORLIN

of T’amerò sempre, and indeed of most multilingual pictures. Such schemes require
neither elaborate sets nor unusual costumes, there are no location shots involved. A few
furnished rooms and ordinary clothes are enough.
  Another motive for making multilingual versions was to reach foreign audiences not
familiar with the language of the country of production. American companies met the
problem early. Among their best customers were Latin America audiences so that some
studios produced for this important market pictures adjusted to local customs and spo-
ken in Spanish, which were more likely to satisfy the public than the arrangement of
typically north American stories. Why then did Hollywood replace this logical solution
with multilingual versions made after the same script?
  I have found no explanation, and can only offer a hypothesis. From 1929 through
1931 a harsh competition prevailed between American and European producers, each
attempting to monopolize the diffusion of talkies. After its agreement with the Tobis
Klangfilm and the American patent holders was resolved, UFA could produce films that
from a technical point of view were equal to those of the Americans. Didn’t the
Hollywood tycoons think that a good way of tackling UFA was to lure the best
European actors away from their countries by offering them immediate contracts and
to make films spoken in various European idioms? All was made in a hurry. Dozens of
actors went off to Hollywood, there was no time to crank out original scripts, the stu-
dios, wanting to recoup the money paid to foreign actors, were content with shooting
several versions of available screenplays. But once the so-called Paris agreement divid-
ed the world between the two embattled powers Hollywood dismissed the useless
European comedians and put an end to a hopeless, expensive experiment.
  The Paris agreement granted the Americas and India to Hollywood, northern and cen-
tral Europe to UFA but the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Europe was still open to
rivalry: Britain with her Elstree plant, Italy with Cinecittà, and Germany were all strug-
gling to attract foreign producers. Much work has to be done to analyze the arrange-
ments made with European companies but is it unthinkable to presume that good bar-
gains including the script, the technical crew and extras were offered to producers in
order to convince them to choose London, or Rome, or Berlin?
  It would be also necessary to know the financial situation of the other contractors.
Wir brauchen kein Geld, an Austrian film, was shot in an Italian and a French version
in 1933. The original script was rewritten and adapted to an Italian context for the for-
mer while there was only a translation of the dialogues for the latter. Now the former
was produced by Pittaluga, a wealthy and important Italian distributor, while the latter
was produced by its director Jean-Paul Paulin. Hence another query: were there not dif-
ferent strategies of arrangement depending upon the assets of the producing company?
Since the story of Man braucht kein Geld takes place in a small and anonymous town,
there was no need to create a particular atmosphere typical of any given country. Was
that the reason Paulin decided to shoot this particular screenplay rather than some
other?


What for?

  However, money doesn’t account for everything. What was it that made it necessary
or advantageous to adapt a screenplay to another context or, on the contrary, to not

­20
                                                                        MULTILINGUAL FILMS

modify anything? Why was it for instance that Lisetta, the Italian version of the
German Das Blumenmädchen vom Grand-Hotel, cast by the two well-known Italian
actors Elsa Merlini and Vittorio De Sica, was set in Berlin and not in an Italian city? Or
why did Batticuore, the Italian version of the French Battements de cœur, take place in
Paris and not in Rome? Was it because the time allotted to the shooting was so short
that there was no way of building an Italian set? Or simply because the Italian produc-
er thought that any scenery would do? Or, more likely, because the Italian producers
thought that a story involving rich people had to be located in an “international” city,
that is Berlin or Paris rather than in Rome?
   This finally leads us to the most interesting aspect of the various comparisons: they
have a lot to tell us about the strategy of production companies. There are questions we
won’t be able to answer by confronting only a couple of versions but the juxtaposition
will help us to better define the problems we ought to tackle. How much did the use of
the same establishing shots, the same scenery and the same costumes influence the
shooting, and subsequently the film’s reception? And what was required to make spec-
tators feel that they were viewing a “national” movie, not a film made in another coun-
try? What were the details and cultural hints sufficient to recreate a local atmosphere?
The Italian count of T’amerò sempre becomes a rich young man in the French version,
the story shifts to Paris, the furniture is changed. Is that enough? Or are there behaviors
and attitudes characteristic of one country and difficult to transfer to another? It is
impossible to extrapolate general conclusions from one example but it is striking to
note how neither John Longden nor Henri Garat are convincing in the part of an
Austrian aristocrat in the English and French versions of Two Worlds/Zwei Welten: the
former is too relaxed, the latter too clumsy.
   But are we not indulging in stereotypes here? After all there may have been both
clumsy and relaxed officers in the Austrian army. True, but fiction – be it cinematic or
literary – is the realm of pre-established patterns. That is the reason why the non-
American versions of The Big Trail appear awkward: European actors made for implau-
sible cowboys, and westerns or melodramas like Two Worlds require typecast charac-
ters. Is it not possible to assume that the predominance of comedies among multilin-
gual versions was linked to the difficulty of making good dramas? Now, comedic char-
acters are also archetypes but they correspond to social positions rather than to ethnic
prototypes: rich old men married to young ladies, clever young men and pretty sales-
women rather than Junkers or cowboys.
   This is what makes comparisons so revealing. How were equivalent social positions
represented in different countries? How did the actors amuse their spectators? Think of
Man braucht kein Geld with Hedy Lamar and Hans Moser as confronted with Non c’è
bisogno di denaro with Maria Denis and Luigi Almirante. How do the different actors
conceive their part? How do they interact with their partners? How do they move inside
the frame, how do they fill it? What sorts of clothes identify their roles? What puns are
acceptable in one language but not in another? These are some of the problems we
should keep in mind while looking at the movies. I have raised a few preliminary ques-
tions but I am not sure they are the relevant ones. Only a close attention to the films
themselves will allow us to carry on with our investigation.




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