Publication details
Undoing the National: Representing International Space in 1930s Czechoslovak MLVs
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2004 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Cinema & Cie. International Film Studies Journal |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Mass media, audiovision |
| Keywords | film sound; language in film |
| Description | Between 1928 and 1931 the European and the US film industries tried out different strategies for adapting their sound films to markets in other countries. Regardless of their relative success, these strategies included: part-talkies, remakes of successful silent films, synopses of plot printed on cards and handed out to audiences in movie theatres, live commentators accompanying films, side-titles projected on a separate screen from slides, intertitles, superimposed titles, multiple-language versions, and different methods of dubbing or partial dubbing.' Thanks to a wide range of transformations and hybridizations brought on by the new technology of synchronized sound, the film commodity soon had at its disposal a range of variations unknown to it since its early years and the domain of exhibition gained, once again, a much stronger influence. At the same time, however, this tendency toward a greater variability was counterbalanced by a tendency toward standardization: film could no longer be accompanied by live spoken word and music to the same extent as before, and the speed of its projection could no longer be altered. This tension between the tendency toward variability and the opposing tendency toward standardization is also apparent in "multiple-language versions" (MLVs). On the one hand, the MLVs had to devise a common denominator to link up different textual variants and to minimize economic expenses through the highest possible degree of repetitiveness in the sphere of their production. On the other hand, in order to meet the expectations of different national audiences, the particular variants required differentiation with regard to the fictional time-space (which we will later refer to as "diegesis") of the subject matter and with regard to the elements of production. In the Czechoslovak production practice ofthe 1930s, foreign-language and the Czech versions were usually shot in parallel, i.e. on the same sets and with the same costumes, and often by same director. Due to restricted resources and the fast pace of shooting, no sophisticated attempts were introduced to adapt either the scenes, the costumes, the plot, social mannerisms, historic and geographic realities or political connotations to any preferences of the target audience. Following the logic of economy, any efforts to modify the film's diegetic space with regard to changes in the language were mostly very straightforward, not to say primitive. For the MLVs export it was necessary to combine maximum common denominator which would guarantee its economy with a minimum of variation which would afford an undisturbed viewing on the part of the foreign spectators. This paper will outline four basic strategies of how this economic logic affected the relationships between the textual variants in terms of diegetic time-space. |
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