BD 17-18 La signora senza camelie & Le amiche

[Nothing]

To be fair to Don Lope, would any English speaker say "this is not an idyll" in that situation, in the 1950s or otherwise? Presumably this is a literal translation of the Italian, but the central challenge of any translation is in striking a balance between accuracy and flow and I'm not sure this aids the latter... Of course, there can be no absolute answer, as you yourself point out.

[MichaelB]

Given that subtitles are intended to be read and not spoken aloud, and that they also accompany the original language, I think you probably can get away with phrases like "this is not an idyll" if it's a literal translation of the original and no more imaginative alternative springs to mind. But in this instance, you could simply rephrase it as "This isn't exactly idyllic", which is the same phrase in more idiomatic form.

Sight & Sound ran a fascinating piece about subtitling in (I think) the 1980s, which started by discussing the challenges posed by subtitling Only Fools and Horses into French - an effective way of illustrating to a British reader the kind of details that are likely to fall by the wayside when French films from a similar milieu are rendered into English. If I remember rightly, the same piece went on to illustrate some painful but all too typical howlers - a translator having no knowledge of poker, for instance, and rendering the French terms into literal English.

Come to think of it, the title The 400 Blows also fell victim to this - the phrase "faire les quatre cents coups" has no exact equivalent in English, and something like Wild Oats or Raising Hell might have better conveyed the sense of the original. Although Criterion belatedly corrected Ladri di biciclette from The Bicycle Thief to Bicycle Thieves a few years ago, I suspect it's a bit late to change the Truffaut title by now.

[ellipsis7]

Given that subtitles are intended to be read and not spoken aloud, and that they also accompany the original language, I think you probably can get away with phrases like "this is not an idyll" if it's a literal translation of the original and no more imaginative alternative springs to mind. But in this instance, you could simply rephrase it as "This isn't exactly idyllic", which is the same phrase in more idiomatic form.

"This is not a bed of roses" might be an even better free idiomatic translation, but it all amounts to the same...

[MichaelB]

"This is not a bed of roses" might be an even better free idiomatic translation, but it all amounts to the same...

Really? I can't imagine saying that out loud, whereas I can imagine saying "This isn't exactly idyllic".

Although obviously I can't speak for what I'd have said in the mid-1950s, largely because I wasn't around then.

[ellipsis7]

I really only say it thinking as a scriptwriter (or subtitler which I'm not), one aims for lean language, paring words down to the minimum syllables possible (and occasionally unleashing a strategic big one)... Remember as a subtitler words take up space and time...

"This is not an idyll" - 4 x 1 syllable words, 1 x 2 syllable word (6 syllables total)

"This is not a bed of roses" - 6 x 1 syllable words, 1 x 2 syllable word (8 syllables total)

"This isn't exactly idyllic" - 1 x 1 syllable word, 1 x 2 syllable word, 2 x 3 syllable word (9 syllables total)

Which is probably why they went for "This is not an idyll" in the first place...

[MichaelB]

All completely fair points - I've assessed subtitle translations in my time, but I've never actually created one myself, and I'm sure there are all sorts of invisible rules that you have to follow.

[otis]

What's the original Italian line? Or when does it appear on the Criterion DVD? (This is L'avventura we're talking about, right?)

[Nothing]

Or:
"This is hardly idyllic." (4 words, 7 syllables).

[Der Spieler]

Saw SIGNORA last night, thought it was great.

Can't believe though that Lucia went from this:



to that:



Time is a really cruel master.

[peerpee]

The lovely lady in 2000:

[ellipsis7]

It happens, and I reckon she has aged rather respectably...

As has...



The benchmark for this is Eric Rohmer and Beatrice Romand, whom he featured from teenager to middle age across his oeuvre...

[Gregory]

@Der Spieler:

I often hear of "blue-haired old ladies" but this is ridiculous.

[Der Spieler]

It happens, and I reckon she has aged rather respectably...

As has...

That's brutal.

[rohmerin]

Aging is cruel with women, specially Mediterranean ones, and if they were a beauty, is even crueler. Claudia Cardinale refused to operations, she wanted to get older naturally, like Geraldine Chaplin. They are the only examples? Brave women.

Lucia Bosè has got electric blue hair for the last 15 years. She opened a Museum about angels in a hamlet of Segovia. She talked with angels, like the Norwegian princess Martha, but she had to close the Museum because nobody went to visit it and she did not get subventions. She adopted her grandson as a son and heir because her real son, the famous Miguel Bosè will finish the Bosè surname, until Miguel did go to USA to rent a belly and He has now twins (like Ricky Martin). Apparently nobody speak to none in the family. She's got a granddaughter singer, modeling. She looks a man. Bimba Bosè.
The patriarch Lucia owns a big collection of Picasso and Cocteaus (friends).

Do you want more gossip?

[knives]

Le amiche has me desperately wishing that even once Antonioni had gone full into giallo during his career. It's such a fantastically strange film that the connective tissue toward genre is stronger than ever before. Such a film could have easily been his masterpiece.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Excuse me, but what Knives? Where is the "connective tissue to genre" here, and how would stronger genre elements improve this willfully idiosyncratic, moving and, as you say, strange, film?
I feel you must be expending huge amounts of effort to will a filmmaker that you don't like into arbitrary categories that you do.

[knives]

I seem to have misspoke as that was not what I meant at all. I just mean that this film with its bare traces of giallo text (woman discovering 'murder' becoming detective etc) was so enjoyable for that that it has made me curious as to what a 'pure' giallo as done by Antonioni would be like. I was just saying this film makes me think he would have been great at that genre had his career gone a different direction.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Ah, that makes much more sense. Sorry for being so snappish.
Have you seen Petri's A Quiet Place in the Country? It's a very bizarre mod-giallo hybrid with regular Antonioni and Petri screenwriter Guerra along for the ride, and feels a lot like Blow-Up derailed into full on genre territory. Lotsa fun, and an awesome self-parody or pastiche of Guerra's more serious screenplays for Antonioni.

[knives]

I haven't seen it unfortunately.

[feihong]

I was curious about seeing A Quiet Place in the Country, but unsure. You just sold me on it!

[knives]

Of course it only seems available (english subbed) as an MGM DVDR.

[rohmerin]

There's a legal MGM Spain, Un lugar tranquilo en el campo, http://www.amazon.es/Un-lugar-tranquilo ... 797&sr=1-2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
it says English Audio, is that correct or was shotted in Italian?

Antonioni was offered to direct Sotto il vestito niente (Nothing Underneath), a very fun giallo set in Milano fashion week where models are murdered.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotto_il_vestito_niente" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

I'm curious why they chose Gabe Klinger to present these films, aside from the fact that he has an ubiquitous presence on the Internet as one surfs around film websites. He's a dapper young man, but he offers so little information in his off-handed, conversational style, particularly when compared to the material in the booklets. At one point, he refers to "Jimmy Plant" smashing his guitar in Blow Up (and wasn't it Jeff Beck who does this?), which, I realize, may just be a brain fart rather than actual ignorance, but I would think he or MoC would want to script these introductions a bit more in order to avoid such credibility-stripping moments, if for no other reason than the fact that these extras are for posterity. If someone who likes Klinger could lead me to a better representation of his work as an Antonioni scholar, I would love to read it (or hear it), but I thought these introductions were pretty weak.

Which, of course, takes nothing away from the films themselves or the material in the booklets. I am so happy to have these editions. Just a minor quibble.

[Jun-Dai]

but I thought these introductions were pretty weak.

I finally watched La Signora (what a great movie!) and when I opted to watch the introduction, I made it about 5 minute in before I had to turn it off. I don't know anything about Gabe Klinger, but whether an Antonioni expert or not, you would have thought he'd have researched something to say. It really felt like they dragged an awkward film student that had just seen the film into an interview and told him to summarise it off the top of his head.

Incidentally, I really like these quotes from Lucia Bosé in this interview:

Do you live with another man now?

Good heavens, no! I’ve lived alone now for thirty years. I never found the right man after that. Perhaps the right man doesn’t exist.

What is this time of life like?

I am enjoying my sixties, and I wouldn’t go back to my twenties, to age twenty-five or thirty, for example. I started living more serenely after age forty. Unfortunately, you start to lose dear friends, but those were wonderful years for me. I am a person who is content with her happiness. Everyone needs to create their own happiness.