What's Hollywood in French?

By Tom Kando

Today I thought I’d amuse you instead of riling you up about the presidential election and other nasty stuff. 

Although I grew up in 4 different countries, one thing to which I was exposed no matter where I lived, was Hollywood. In the 20^th century, the American century, nothing  was more ubiquitous than American cinema, no matter where you lived.


I saw all the classics as a child in Europe, as did hundreds of millions of others. Alan Ladd as  Shane was my  hero when I was 10, as was Gary Cooper in High Noon. I was perplexed by Humphrey Bogart in  Casablanca  and in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  I did not understand  Burt Lancaster’s anger in   From Here to Eternity and in Trapeze, but I did want to emulate him. I could think of no more beautiful women on earth than Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze ,Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind,   Elizabeth Taylor in Ivanhoe and Rita Hayworth in Salome (that red hair!).

The movies were usually dubbed (in France, always).  Sometimes they used subtitles (in Holland). I grew up seeing and hearing all these magnificent men and women speak the language of whatever  country where I  saw the movie (many of them in France).

What is most amusing, in retrospect, are the foreign titles given to Hollywood  movies. A few examples, from my own personal experience:

When I first saw Gone with the Wind  in Paris in 1951, the movie was called  Autant en Emporte Le Vent, So Much is Taken Away by the Wind. A few years later, I went to see it again, in Amsterdam. There,  it was  called Gejaagd door de Wind, which means  Hunted Down  by the Wind. In Germany, they called  it  Vom Winde Verweht, a pretty accurate translation meaning  Blown Away by the Wind. 

I saw  the great westerns High Noon  and   Shane when they  first came out,  in 1952 and  1953.  I was still  in France at the time, where High Noon was called  Le Train Sifflera Trois Fois, (= The Train Will Whistle Three Times). Shane was titled   L’Homme des Vallees Perdues (= The Man from the Lost Valleys).

Other films which came out when I lived in Paris include  The African Queen  (1951), Monkey Business (the  remake with Ginger Rodgers and Cary Grant, 1952) and  From Here to Eternity (1953). I also saw  these  the moment they arrived in France. Over there, they called The African Queen L’Odyssee de l’African Queen (The Odyssey of the African Queen), Monkey Business Monnaie de Singe (Monkey Money) and  From Here to Eternity came out as  Tant qu’il y aura des Hommes (As Long as There are Men).

Another film I saw during that period was  Grapes of Wrath. The French called it Les Raisins de la Colere (The Grapes of Anger).

What about other countries? While I never lived  in Asia, I heard  that in China, Pretty Woman  is called I Will Marry A Prostitute and Save Money. In Japan,  The Horse Whisperer is titled Held by Wind in Montana.

But it’s the French, again, who are the most amusing: There, the movie  Jaws   is called  Les Dents de la Mer (The Sea’s Teeth), and I saw on the Internet that a  suggested title for  The Matrix   was  Les Jeunes Gens qui traversent les dimensions en portant des lunettes de soleil (The Young People Who Traverse Dimensions While Wearing Sunglasses).

           

I suppose the French (and many other foreign countries?) like things literal and descriptive.  Is the American language unique in leaving much to the imagination? leave comment here