How To Watch --- Why To Watch

Take Your Titles or Dubbing Pick ...

I have a cousin who moved to Germany thirty years ago and he is still learning the language. So what’s chance of mastering Teutonic tongue however many runs of M or The Blue Angel I engage? We can raise dead that is endless arguing dub v. subtitles, or agree going in that neither are wholly satisfactory. Thing is, one must choose, unless he/she moves bag and baggage to begin thirty years Deutsch tutelage. Maybe I have those many left, but fact Latin and Spanish went badly for me in high school yields faint promise. All this to grasp M beyond “Elsie … Elsie”? Creative solution is needed, and may-be I have at least a partial one. Miracle that is Blu-Ray allows us to toggle back-forth with subtitles, or without. Having memorized M like Catechism, I know what scenes are talk as opposed to visual. Trick then is to turn off subs when, for instance, chasing is on (Lorre hiding/underworld pursuing), keep titles where opposite camps argue strategy. On the other hand, where one knows M well enough, better still to just watch and recall for yourself what is spoken. Focus can rest upon cigars lit or snuffed out, crooks doing card tricks, examining contraband, as they wait or listen, body language exhibited through intercut conferences law and outlaws conduct. They say Fritz Lang really went to town on details of set decoration here, but how does one absorb with eyes ping-pongy from body of scenes to lower margin? What it needs is to “learn” M, and The Blue Angel, but that raises question as to how many foreign films are worthy to so retain, let alone repeat watch for what remaining years destiny gifts us (my hopeful 30 … and still writing Greenbriar?).

M and The Blue Angel had multiple language versions, separate shot, in M’s case with other directors to thin soup. I feel like Stanley after Livingstone turning over spoken rocks, quest to pick the more “legitimate.” A part of me feels unclean to prefer The Blue Angel in English, as few apparently do. I ran it once at ASU, telling the audience we would hear Paramount’s Yank-friendly import as released stateside 1930. You would think I had put rat poison in their popcorn, a chorus raised to demand we hear language as uttered in the Fadderland. But wait, kind audience … The Blue Angel was not dubbed. Those voices you hear are Jannings and Dietrich, and I for one do not find either inadequate in their delivery of English, whatever some writers claim. Background is preserved by those in support speaking mostly German. The device sort-of works by having Lola ask Prof. Rath to speak “my language” so she can understand, and since that is not his native tongue, Jannings/Rath goes about it awkward, which is entirely appropriate, given circumstance the drama has set up. I understand Lola was supposed to be American for the US Angel, so we may assume Rath’s students speak with her in English to accommodate that. We get a feeling most of this cast is bilingual, at the least getting by phonetically. How much of The Blue Angel’s crew/cast understood both tongues? Jo Sternberg did. He came of Euro origin (Vienna), made effort upon US arrival to eliminate any trace of accent (was Jo really five feet four in height?). I thought Dietrich did swell by both German and English, Jannings too, as he brought real understanding and expression to what was said to be a distinct second language for him.

So how many languages could Peter Lorre speak? I am abashed by citizen-of-the-worldness as embodied in he and others who could light anywhere, do exemplary work for whatever culture, be accessible to us all. Archivists lately found an English-language print of M. It had been lost for decades. There was a French edition floating about, from which we got Lorre speaking fluent. How on earth could you dub him? There is not a voice like Lorre’s in the memory of man. Alternate M’s are understood to be largely sans Lang, other hands filling in to direct French and English dialogue (was M furnished in yet more languages than these?). Nero Films, a frayed cuff outfit in best of times, had to sell M however they could in as many markets as it might travel. We of the US presumably got the English version, though there were also subtitled German prints on view from earliest stateside release. I’m guessing art housing or German neighborhoods opted for these. What Lorre saw, and slept through, at Wilshire’s Regina triple with The Black Room and White Zombie backing M, was likelier a dubbed-to-Yank print, the Regina a scratch house catering to the less discriminatory. Lang-less M’s, not altogether so, but enough to fade his signature, are not menu of choice today, but it is fascinating to compare Lorre doing his finish speech in German, French, then English, an option we now have thanks to energy of archives, plus effort of Criterion to offer varied options. Humbling still to hear Lorre cover three bases at such accomplished level. To see this great actor ply his multilingual trade makes me feel all a more like the hick I am.

The Blue Angel came of partnership between Germany’s Ufa and US Paramount, having done silents as a team (notably Metropolis), this a first talking venture between them. Notion to construct a star from raw material that was Marlene Dietrich came as result of seeing rushes of her Lola, a new Garbo the distinct possibility. Dietrich was brought to America, gaucheries smoothed out, her actual premiere on our shore to be Morocco, with The Blue Angel on its heels for holiday 1930 release. Angel looked Euro-crude (a good thing) beside better-oiled Morocco, but Broadway embraced Angel at its Rialto address and got, by Gotham standard, a solid hit to crush records set by Feet First and Animal Crackers of earlier that season. Here was a first exotic wedding between German and English languages, plus The Blue Angel had sex by ladle-full, Dietrich a fleshy thigh-treat audiences had not seen likes of since Pola Negri made domestic landfall. Emil Jannings was the nominal star, but this was final bow so far as his entertaining America first. “Selling The Blue Angel” as laid forth by Paramount merchandisers made “sensational flame-girl” Dietrich the priority, “having scaled a height in a few weeks that it has taken the greatest stars of the screen years to attain.” She was, as of final month of 1930, “one of the three most potent boxoffice draws in motion pictures,” so said studio boosters. Jannings meanwhile was “especially popular with critics, with customers of Central European origin or sympathies and with that portion of your audiences that can appreciate a superb artist.” Noted was Jannings being welcome “in big cities with cosmopolitan populations.”

Silents were the only truly universal language on film. We don’t feel that so much in the US for having had the best of talkie advantage, but think of markets worldwide that had to cope with crude dubbing, inexpert subtitling, loss of distinct voices our English-speaking players had. Ever listen to Edward G. Robinson or Boris Karloff dubbed? (we could name a hundred more). Real downer. I think of that Italo-Black Sabbath and how drably Karloff’s voice was covered. Result: Cannot bear to listen. Would M have worked as well, or better, as a silent? More accessible to many more people, yes, but consider what Lang wrought with his unique “sound design,” as complex or more than what had been achieved by US filmmakers. Imagine ideas that occurred to Fritz Lang, Rouben Mamoulian, and Lewis Milestone around a same time. Who could be credited with any “first” innovation where sound was concerned, what with most creative imaginations chasing a same rabbit? Lang made his smartest M moves with ambient sound, offscreen talk, cuts made sudden from one voice, to another someplace else, making them “rhyme” to unify separate scenes. French and English M’s lost much of this because Lang wasn’t there to guard his vision. But how fair was it to expect any director to shoot, re-shoot, shoot again, and make maximum effort of each? Wonder if Lang had occasion to sit through M in French or English. If so, he surely blanched.

To Josef von Sternberg came The Blue Angel as triumph to build upon Underworld and others of a Bancroft lot, collaboration with Dietrich a six-year annuity to protect Jo’s being fired for martinet (put it mild) behavior. He said a secret to success was making everyone hate you. Anyone here ever try it? The Bancrofts were fizzling by then, and Evelyn Brent was not going to work out, so Jo needed Dietrich perhaps more than she needed him. They had an affair while Angel was ongoing. Jo’s wife took the return to US boat alone and with legal reps heated up his later homecoming. The Blue Angel for all this was brilliant thanks to what Sternberg gave it, “every frame a painting” applying especial here. Subtitles weigh heavy on such artistry, and who needs them from a director for whom story was always secondary. The (German-spoke) Blue Angel playing ethnic enclaves from initial US release was per Paramount policy servicing diverse audiences with varied language versions the company produced in Europe, hundreds of talkies in work at their Joinville plant, located outside Paris to supply a show-world with whatever was needed by markets beyond an English-speaking mainstream. Joinville operated on a 24-hour schedule, films done in as many as fourteen different languages. “Foreign Version Films Swell Box-Office Draw” said Publix Opinion, Paramount’s house organ, on 12/26/30, “industrial centers” a key target, as these housed large ethnic populations. Perth Amboy, New Jersey had for instance a large “Hungarian element,” so they got Ufa-produced Melody of the Heart, spoken in native language, and performing well at venues catering to Hungarian patronage. “Biggest drawing cards of Paramount’s foreign versions,” said Para marketers, were French language (not dubbed) Slightly Scarlet, The Big Pond, and The Lady Lies. Portuguese and Polish editions were also well-received, Paramount’s outreach a most extensive in the industry.

Many theatres had two or more prints in the booth to service mixed populations, the number of runs for a foreign version depending on  representation the respective group had in that city or neighborhood. A non-English version might alternate days through an engagement, or be used for a midnight show only, all depending on how much ethnic presence there was. “The local situation should invariably dictate the type of engagement,” said bookers, being careful “that the theatre incurs no risk of alienating its regular English-speaking patronage.” A wrinkle, or rankle, for exhibitors playing The Blue Angel was barest compatibility between prevailing Western Electric sound systems used in the US and Germany’s Klangfilm recording process. Specific instructions sent to showmen, as shown at left, amounted to dance upon heads of pins, a challenge among many for those projecting sound film in the late twenties. I have read of The Blue Angel not doing well after metropolitan runs. Could that have been result of venues lacking tech proficiency, or proper guidance, to supply playback folks could hear? We enjoy The Blue Angel with sound at highest digital standard, restored to levels topping what could be achieved for 1931 playdates. I lately watched both the German and English versions, juggling act as follows: Songs in German as composed by Frederic Hollander and lyricists … Dietrich for one preferred Deutsch words, was never happy having to sing, from there on, “Falling In Love Again” with English lyrics (she performed the song in German for much of live Euro appearances). I go with English for dialogue between Jannings and Dietrich, because for me they both deliver well, to a point where I regret Jannings not coming back to the US and sparing his legacy terrible damage for Reich-turn he later took in Germany. Subtitles are buzzing flies over Sternberg, clutter we don’t need to distract from clutter he splendidly uses to decorate, that we do want.

NY Times critic Bosley Crowther lit a fuse on 8/7/60, with a follow-up column later, wherein he said outright that “subtitles must go!”, this in a thick of art-housing and purists that attended them. Crowther surely knew he was flaming Gotham patronage, but had courage of convictions and stood by them. He called the English subtitle “a thoroughly inartistic thing when you come right down to thinking hard about it,” which I have, and yes, they are inartistic, plus distracting and not an enhance to what I’m watching. But what is the cure? Dubbing, says Crowther, “so skillfully accomplished and controlled, with voices matched so finely, and lips so deftly synchronized, that only the most expert observer can detect the lingual trickery.” Had such mastery of dubbing been achieved by 1960? (sure wasn't when I saw Rodan) Two Weeks In Another Town (1962) makes dubbing look doable (the “Kruger sound”), and when you look at Fritz Lang’s late-50’s Indian epic, with its mosaic of languages spoke … well, why not bring them under a better-understood umbrella? Crowther: “Anyhow, it is time we abandon the somewhat specious and even snobbish notion that foreign-language films (some of which have even been dubbed in their own language!) are linguistically inviolable. Let’s give the general audience a chance to hear what they are saying.” Crowther knew, as did those who distributed imports, that subtitles typically translated less than half of what was being said on screens, so what did that say about their authenticity? The outspoken critic got an expected drubbing … you’d think Crowther was forum-writing fifty years later online. Frog march off the Times for later daring to speak his mind re Bonnie and Clyde was a pink tea beside furor Crowther roused on this occasion. I admire the man for stepping off chalk lines, nourishment for thought by a critic maligned and reputation-wrecked since losing his desk in 1968. Arguments re subtitles/dubbing meanwhile continue. What foreign films I glimpse on stream basis appear to be mostly titled, or is dubbing so “skillfully accomplished and controlled” that I no longer notice it?

From Greenbriar's Archive circa 2014: M in America --- two parts.