A Problem of Language

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 436, 31 October 1947, Page 25

A Problem of Language

LE PERE TRANQUILLE

(Les Films Corona)

[JDURING the past few weeks I have seen, by accident rather than intent, almost as many French films as American and British ones.

In the majority of cases there have been sub-titles in English printed at the bottom of the film and, apart from a slight tendency to induce what might be described as "rocking-horse neck," | this strikes me as being a satisfactory device: it gives one the gist of the dialogue and a certain feeling of satisfaction when one recognises, or thinks one recognises, various words and phrases. It is also, I imagine, a pretty | good method of brushing up one’s French. I have not come across any recent examples of the technique known as "dubbing," whereby English® speech is actually put into the mouths of foreign players; but there ate obvious difficulties in this method, and unless it has been greatly improved in the past few years, I doubt if it has, on the whole, many advantages over sub-titling, However, one of the French features to have come my way in recent weeks, and six French documentaries, had neither sub-titles nor "dubbing"-they were "original" versions, French all the way. The feature was Le Pére Tranquille; the documentaries Tanged from a fascinating and most comprehensive film about Matisse and his Painting, through a film about the ancient craft of barrel-making that was an éffective blend of imaginative treatment and straight documentation, to a longwinded discourse on bees and their habits that, frankly, left my head buzzing. * x * [™ would be idle for me to pretend that, in any of these all-French films, my knowledge of the language, remaining over from school and university, was adequate for more than a few isolated sentences. Seeing such films is probably a very useful adjunct in Jearning French, if only because it gives one the "feel" of the language-but how one wishes those Frenchmen would slow up a bit! Incidentally, when the hero of Le Pére Tranquille temporarily put

on the brakes for the benefit of some cross-examining Nazis, I felt almost kindly disposed towards these nasty characters because of the linguistic telief they afforded. It is not, however, idle for me to say that I found these French films, particularly the Matisse and rr feature, absorbing and even exciting’ When the language is unknown, everything depends on the acting and the-direction to make the action intelligible. This is the severést possible test. Yet in Le Pére Tranquille it is remarkable how little of the story one misses, thanks to the performances of Néel-Néel and the supporting players. This is a drama of life in a small French town during the German Occupation, with Néel-Néel portraying a_ typical middle-aged, middle-class Frenchman who is really head of the local ResistanZe group, but. whose apparent aloofness /from the war and preoccupation with harmless pursuits has earned him the nickname of "The Imperturbable Father." Even though you may only be able to guess, at any given moment, at what they are actually talking about, this Frenchman, his wife, daughter, and son are very real people; their family life is something one can share; the atmosphere of tension which surrounds the activities of the Resistance workers is, one feels, genuine and not merely the product of melodramatic situations. As for the photography, it is superb throughout. Clearly there is no general market in New Zealand for a film like this, lacking either sub-titles or dubbing in English. It would, in fact, be urfteasonable to expect it. But equally clearly, the oftproclaimed excellence, even the superiority, of the French cinema is no myth either. LLL |