When you think about it, the commercial success of foreign films in the US has waned somewhat in recent years. One wonders whether the Europeans are still actively pursuing the market?

The formula seems simple enough. Take a couple of high profile American stars, add a few locals (Italians will do), film in Spain or somewhere that looks like the US, change the names of any Italian people to English sounding names, get a good plot with a little European spin and then do a high quality dub of all the actors with American voices.

The spaghetti western was simple and fun. It was also stylistically different from US fare but it worked.

When will the Europeans get their act together an provide the US with some competition?

cheers Peter

Film maker Paul Gerber once described Danish film industry to me like this: "The difference between American and European film industry is that you don't have one". To some extent he's right - at least where Danish films are concerned. Most of our productions are Government founded!!

Many US films are actually made in Europe and many US films are re-makes of European films (Mostly French) because a large fraction of US filmgoes (most of them I'm led to believe) doesn't understand foreign languages. Sometimes the remakes don't improve over the "Americanization" - only "bigger and louder".

Examples of EU films remade in the US: "Three men and a Baby", "Breathless", "Cousins", "Down and out in Beverly Hills", "Point of no Return", The Birdcage", "Insomnia", "Nightwatch", "Scent of a Woman" and "Vanilla Sky" to name a few.

The recent trend in this country is to make "Danish" films in English like "Smilla's Sence of Snow", "Dancer in the Dark"*), "It's all about Love" and "Braking the Waves". Personally I don't like Triers films, but I feel that in order to raise money to make the films, they have do them in English. So much for our culture - or is it globalization acted out in the movies.

*) Filmed in Sweden to double for the US with Icelandic star and directed by a Dane - confused?

Finally, does it matter where the films are made, or must they nessesarily be made in the country where the action takes place? In that case how about "Star Wars" and the like?

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Cheers, Thomas
www.in70mm.com
www.dp70.com
www.70mm.dk

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Sometimes the remakes don't improve over the "Americanization" - only "bigger and louder".

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Agreed, but the Western is purely an American genre. Sergio Leone loved them. So do I... my favorites are B-Westerns. Especially the Wayne Lone Stars and Hoppy (Wm. Boyd).

The Clint Eastwood/No Name trilogy is great! The Spain locations definitely give them a "mood".

Sometimes the recreation is actually quite good. Sometimes it is good, but not quite as good as the original foreign language film.

Many films now are coming out of Australia for production now. As Peter Jackson found in pre-production for the Rings trilogy, that down under you get three times the production for your US dollar. So when they spent $180 million dollars for the production of the three movies, they would have spent three times that if filmed in the states, or in other words, $540 Million Dollars!!! That is why much of the Matrix and its sequels are produced in Australia, to get more bang for the buck. The original movie only cost $50 million to produce as a result of its production location.

In comparison, DEATH TO SMOOCHY, also cost $50 million to produce. That film should have cost no more than $10 million, TOPS. But it was produced here in the US, where we have very tight union controls on production and the costs skyrocket if you want to shoot a film as SAG/AFTRA production.

I think that foriegn films are due for a big hit in this country. We have been deluged with crap for years, and people are really starting to see that the markets outside the states rarely get hit with this level of crap, and maybe just maybe it is worth a look.

Dave

Aren't B-Westerns great? High action and adventure, and perfect escapism! If they could only make movies like that today. Would've loved to see them on the theatre screen. I did have a 35mm print of Lash LaRue in "Stage to Mesa City", but it was in bad shape, and a decent 35mm Gene Autry "Strawberry Roan". Still, I never got to see them on the big screen.

Keep the flame burning, saddle pals!

Dubbing doesn't have to be nasty. Although I'm not a big fan of dubbing there is good dubbing and bad dubbing. Bad dubbing is when you get one person to do several different voices in the one film. Good dubbing involves careful timing and the use of a range of good native voices carefully chosen.

I have found the dubbing in Sergio Leone films I have seen thus far to be quite acceptable. After a while you grow accustomed to it. Certainly many overseas audiences have become accustomed to seeing english language films dubbed into the native language. I think that if a quality dubbing is good and the film itself is good enough to appeal to a native audience then it can work. Perhaps Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon proves my point.

The problem as I see it is that the Europeans need a concerted strategy to crack the American market. They need to get together and produce a series of films good enough for people to watch them and then aggressively market them in the US. After a couple of years of successful films the market should get accustomed to watching films from overseas.

Another strategy might be for an overseas Government to buy a film chainin the US and then offer 2 for 1 deals whereby patrons get to watch a US film and a foreign film on the same bill. This might help start getting US audiences interested in foreign product.

I thought that 'No man's land' was a step in the right direction in getting a couple of English actors to head the bill. The difficulty was that subtitles were necessary to due to multilingual nature of the films.

I'm surprised that Taxi and Taxi II weren't agressively marketed also. These two films are as good and as commercial as you can get and are arguably classics of their genre. I'm surprised that an American version hasn't been made yet also.

Returning to the topic, the time seems ripe for a return to the spaghetti western. Audiences need something different and it would be great to see a followup to the Good the Bad and the Ugly. Hopefully Clint would be prepared to do it.

cheers Peter

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It pains me to admit it but there is a place for dubbing. For those people who can't read or whose eyesight is not 100% dubbing is quite a useful tool.

I don't think dubbing itself is the evil - rather bad or cheap dubbing is the evil. The problem is simply that much dubbing of European films is done on the cheap and it ruins the film. When a dubbing outfit does the job properly and takes time and care to reflect the feel and inflexion of the original voices the results can be acceptable. This involves careful mixing of the original soudntrack and attention to audio detail something that takes time and money.

Personally I prefer to see films with their original soundtrack because nothing is as good as the original soundtrack but if dubbing is the only way to get Americans to watch foreign films then I support it if well done.

cheers Peter

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As for the spaghetti westerns (mostly filmed in Techniscope!) the dubbing is a deliberate part of the effect. Leone grew up watching US westerns in dubbed versions so he tried to create the same sort of disconnected sense when he made his own movies. Note also that when those were made the traditional archetypical American western was for the most part out of fashion. Leone's films turned the ordinary western convention on its ear. Bad guy or semi-bad guy as protagonist etc. It was like a breath of fresh air for a tired old genre. (Later there would be other revisionist westerns, too, like The Wild Bunch.)

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