Withholding Subtitles - West Side Story

It’s cool. Turned out I was wrong anyways. Sorry about that.

And all this time I thought you were Donny Osmond or Haley Joel Osment. At one point I thought you might be "Professor Marvel" a.k.a. Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs!

Either way, I like the cut of your jib!

There are more films which double-dip on production than I realized.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-language_version


Production of these tapered off considerably in the 1950s.

It's all good.

Totally random I know but dammit, it's Nicolas Cage.

I watched an entire movie in a foreign language I didn't understand.
I couldn't figure out why there were no subtitles.
Then I realized I had the TV screen on "Zoom" the whole time.

It's impressive that you watched the whole thing. It would be interesting to see how far a director like von Trier could push an audience. Start out in a native tongue and then switch to a foreign language with no subtitles and just keep going. How far could it go before losing the audience and derailing the film? Everyone seems to try to outdo each other for the longest "one shot" or "oner" -- this could be a new challenge.

People in my filmmaking class did say that you should be able to understand an entire movie with the sound turned off and no subtitles. But I did try this with a couple of foreign films and there were times I was lost. I think that dialogue is sometimes necessary to help explain what is going on.

I’ve done that a few times with Danish, Swedish and all sorts of Nordic languages which I don’t speak. Doable, depends on what the film is. But sometimes annoying.

I wouldn’t want to not understand Lars, though, as to me his films are mostly deeply philosophical & dialogue does matter.

I think it is a good exercise for a filmmaker to be able to always tell their story visually, but to say all movies can be understood this way is nonsense.

I'm sorry I hadn't replied to this. I haven't seen the film so I really can't speak about the use (or lack) of subtitles per se, but I know the opinions among local critics and people here about that detail is mixed. As for the film per se, the general consensus among local critics seems to be that, although Spielberg does "fix" some of the issues of the original, it continues to be a misrepresentation of Puerto Rican culture spearheaded by white people.

__________________

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek maintains that a problem with Westernism is that it still hogs agency for the powerful. The enlightened person, weighted with the guilt of their sin and sure of their continuing power are "the ones" who are chosen to sacrifice themselves, who must tell the world how bad they are and to fix it with noble gestures of emptying. He explains this with a joke.






In our modern films and television, this has translated into a sort of treadmill of erasure whereby the dominant group (be it race, gender, ethnicity, etc.) makes a show of stepping out of the way, but still manages to stay on the screen for the entire film or manages to stay in charge of production and direction and so on and so on (Zizek fans will understand what I did there...) while marketing it as being emptied of the bad old stuff. For comparison, imagine how Prince Charles must feel at this point, a seemingly immortal mother sitting on the throne, old but stately, seemingly near death, but possessing the longevity of the Sphinx. "Yeah, yeah, I'm the future King alright."

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With my luck, the Queen will die this week and I'll take the blame for somehow causing it or dishonoring her memory.

With my luck, the Queen will die this week and I'll take the blame for somehow causing it or dishonoring her memory.

Long Live the Queen!

What surprises me is, usually when filmmakers want to address a certain demographic complaint, the complaint is, not enough POC represendation, not enough LGBTQ representation, etc.

But has there ever been complaints about too many subtitles in movies, by any groups of people?

Yes, we call them "Americans"

Lol I guess I missed the subtitles complaint specifically. And I've always loved Spielberg and have always defended him as the best Hollywood filmmaker of the last few decades. I was always glad he didn't all of a sudden go nuts, but now he seems to have all of a sudden gone nuts just because he could I guess. Why Steven, why?

I’m an American. 🤨

Well I guess a very dialogue driven movie like 12 Angry Men could be understood somewhat without subtitles to a person who didn't know English. You would understand that there is one juror who may not agree, and that that juror may have influenced the others, but I think that is all you would understand in the entire plot.

I think you might manage to pick up the general thrust of what was happening in 12 Angry Men. Of course, a lot of the nuance would be lost, and all the shading in of the characters would be probably impossible to pick up...but if you're paying attention to each shot, I think you could give a synopsis of what happens. Just not a very good one.


But there are some films out there which would be absolutely indecipherable if we don't hear the sound or dialogue. A lot of post modern work, where what is seen on screen might be being contradicted by what is being said, would become pointless. Or a film like My Dinner With Andre, where almost all of the action is delivered through monologues, would obviously not work at all. You'd be left with 'bald guy frowns at pheasants' and 'guy in sweater won't shut up'.



Anyone who says all films 'should' work in a particular way (ie. be entirely understood simply through images), are undercutting the nuance that what the characters say adds to plot centric film. But also seem not to understand that there are also many other types of films that don't operate by these basic principals they are championing. And so as usual, those who profess such dogmatic takes on how art should work, are completely wrong and should be eye-rolled to death.

Yeah good points. I also think that a movie like Oldboy for example, would be impossible to understand if you didn't know Korean or had subtitles if you didn't.

"People in my filmmaking class did say that you should be able to understand an entire movie with the sound turned off and no subtitles. But I did try this with a couple of foreign films and there were times I was lost. I think that dialogue is sometimes necessary to help explain what is going on."

Understanding a movie with no sound doesn't register for me. Why would I do that when the film makers went to so much trouble to do sound production? Sound has been with us since the 1920's and the movie is made with the assumption that there are images accompanied by not just dialog but sound FX too. I can't see giving that up except in the case of an occasional novelty like The Artist.

I'm also of the opinion that, if a movie doesn't communicate, why have it at all. Facing facts, most American movie goers are English speakers, so again, it doesn't make sense to NOT communicate with your audience. Subtitles for Spanish or any other language seem fine to me. I've seen plenty of subtitled movies and they work far better that bad dubbing jobs. I want to know what the characters are saying without somebody pushing a language agenda that's somehow larger than my movie experience today.

If there's some irony to this in West Side Story, it is that, like most musicals, especially song and dance musicals, the dialog is mostly disposable. Once I established who was in what gang, nothing much else happened in the plot that needed elaborate exposition, but I would prefer to know what that Spanish speaking characters were saying.