the subtitle vs. dubbing issue

The question whether dubbing or subtitles should be preferred has come to the fore many times on this board.
There is no doubt that our view is to a considerable extent influenced by what we are used to see. In Scandinavia almost all movies are subtitled. Dubbing is almost exclusively limited to children’s movies. – But already here there is a difference between Denmark and Sweden. In Sweden animated animals will talk with ordinary human voices. In Denmark they will talk with something of Donald Duck-voices. The Donald Duck character of the voices may even be more exaggerated than in the American original version.

There are several reasons why I hate dubbing.

The acting of the dubbing actors is general of much inferior quality. One example from “Va, vis et deviens”. In the original movie three languages are talked: Amharic, Hebrew and French. I own the original, which is throughout subtitled into French, even when the actors talk French. And quite evidently I can manage written French better than spoken French. I also own an edition dubbed in French and with English subtitles.
Now, when the 9-year-old black boy from Ethiopia tells his adoptive mother the story of the monkey and the thorns he is talking French. And no one would deny that he shows a remarkable talent for acting, and that the director shows a remarkable talent for person direction.
In the dubbed version the voice of the boy is mediocre. Evidently no director has tried to make the performance of any of the actors excellent.
This is a very common pattern.
In the original version the boy may be at the wedge of crying when he tells this story. And so may you.
When watching the dubbed version, neither the boy nor you will be very touched by this scene.

Joseph Losey himself made both a French and an English version of “Eva”. He has said that he only acknowledged the French version as his own work. Well, the French version is longer, perhaps 20% longer. But I do not feel that anything more happens. Instead the same things happen though more slowly. Already because of this reason I do not prefer the French version.
But many of the actors are Englishmen and have highly individual voices. And I perceive no flaw if an Italian actor having the part of an Italian editor speaks English with an Italian accent.
By contrast, the voices of almost all the French dubbing actors are so similar that you will have to watch carefully on the screen to find out what actors is saying this or that.

More should be said about “Vis, va et deviens”. The 9-year-old boy had eventually grown up, had finished his studies as a medical doctor, and had married. But not until she was pregnant did he dare to tell her his secret: he is not a Jew. In Ethiopia he was a Christian, but a Jewish mother whose son had just died took him with her on the transportation to Israel.
The wife becomes very upset, but not because he is not a Jew but because he did not trust that she would love him as much whatever he was. Her lines of anger, disappointment, frustration would lose much of their character without the many guttural consonants of the Hebrew languages (to say nothing about the probable fact that the dubbing director did not care much about the emotional character of her lines).

I am dumbfounded by the fact that the dubbing actors and the dubbing directors do not even try to do a good job.

Around 1950 Germany released a movie with a title something like “Berlin Ballad”. Apart from the actors of a normal movie there was a more or less continuous speaker. In Denmark he was dubbed into Danish, and this would for obvious reason be the only possible solution. But although I have not seen this movie for 60 years, I still recall the voice of the speaker – who was Ib Schönberg, one of the utmost best Danish actors at that time. And whether he had a separate director or he directed himself, the direction job was superb, as was the acting job.

Then I have recurrently mentioned one movie which in my mind should be an exception, viz. “Ein ganz gewöhnlicher Jude” (A Quite Ordinary Jew) by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Almost the entire movie consists of one single monologue. But human beings cannot read as fast as they can listen, and every word in this monologue is important. Therefore there is no other choice than dubbing. I would like the movie to be dubbed into at least English, French and Spanish. I am not competent to choose other languages. – But an excellent director and an excellent actor should manage to make an excellent dubbing, and not the usual mediocre performances some of us are so used to.

Greetings Max