FILM
Titles a la Francaise
/ Jon Frosch
06.20.06
A cinephile arriving in Paris quickly understands the French reverence for movies. From the first motion pictures by the Lumière brothers at the end of the 19th century, through the avant-garde and New Wave movements, to a fascination with cinemas from all corners of the world, film in France has always been accorded the same intellectual respect as the country’s cherished impressionists and its canon of sacred writers like Balzac or Hugo.
The French passion for film also has long included a love affair with Hollywood. American auteurs like David Lynch, Woody Allen and John Cassavettes have obsessive French followings, and a celebrity needled about a personal scandal in the City of Angels might be found at a French Legion of Honor ceremony in the City of Lights. There is, however, one small twist in France’s relationship with American movies: the title.
It seems that ever since American films started landing on French shores—and the French box office—French distribution companies have been tinkering with the titles, either translating them for language reasons or taking creative liberties, at times to humorous or provocative effect. French marketers have sometimes forgone the problem entirely by using the original title, as they did with movies as varied as Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, The Breakfast Club, Pulp Fiction and George Clooney’s recent Good Night and Good Luck. Other American titles have been translated faithfully: The Wizard of Oz, Some Like it Hot, The Godfather and Spike Lee’s latest, Inside Man, to name a few, were converted into their exact French equivalents (Le Magicien d’Oz, Certains l’aiment chaud, Le Parrain and L’homme de l’intérieur).
Occasionally, the French translation of an American title is literal to a fault: The titular “pieces” in Bob Rafelson’s early-70’s classic, Five Easy Pieces, were piano songs that Jack Nicholson’s character learned as a child, before he abandoned his prodigious talent to become an oil rigger. In France, the movie was called Cinq pièces faciles—a word-for-word translation, except “pièce,” in French does not mean piece of music. The resulting title evoked, rather, Five Easy Coins, Five Easy Rooms, or Five Easy Plays. A more flagrant gaffe was committed with Edward Zwick’s Brad Pitt schmaltz-fest, Legends of the Fall. The “fall” in the title was of the Biblical sort—a fall from innocence; in France, the movie was named Légendes d’automne, a title that referred to the season between summer and winter.
Of course, such gaffes are more the exception than the rule. Earlier this year, French film marketers deftly avoided a potentially uncomfortable linguistic snag with Bennet Miller’s Capote. The French word “capote” is a colloquialism for “condom,” and rather than mislead people more familiar with the contraception than the American literary figure, the writer’s first name was added to the title, resulting in the unambiguous Truman Capote.
The French passion for film also has long included a love affair with Hollywood. American auteurs like David Lynch, Woody Allen and John Cassavettes have obsessive French followings, and a celebrity needled about a personal scandal in the City of Angels might be found at a French Legion of Honor ceremony in the City of Lights. There is, however, one small twist in France’s relationship with American movies: the title.
It seems that ever since American films started landing on French shores—and the French box office—French distribution companies have been tinkering with the titles, either translating them for language reasons or taking creative liberties, at times to humorous or provocative effect. French marketers have sometimes forgone the problem entirely by using the original title, as they did with movies as varied as Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, The Breakfast Club, Pulp Fiction and George Clooney’s recent Good Night and Good Luck. Other American titles have been translated faithfully: The Wizard of Oz, Some Like it Hot, The Godfather and Spike Lee’s latest, Inside Man, to name a few, were converted into their exact French equivalents (Le Magicien d’Oz, Certains l’aiment chaud, Le Parrain and L’homme de l’intérieur).
Occasionally, the French translation of an American title is literal to a fault: The titular “pieces” in Bob Rafelson’s early-70’s classic, Five Easy Pieces, were piano songs that Jack Nicholson’s character learned as a child, before he abandoned his prodigious talent to become an oil rigger. In France, the movie was called Cinq pièces faciles—a word-for-word translation, except “pièce,” in French does not mean piece of music. The resulting title evoked, rather, Five Easy Coins, Five Easy Rooms, or Five Easy Plays. A more flagrant gaffe was committed with Edward Zwick’s Brad Pitt schmaltz-fest, Legends of the Fall. The “fall” in the title was of the Biblical sort—a fall from innocence; in France, the movie was named Légendes d’automne, a title that referred to the season between summer and winter.
Of course, such gaffes are more the exception than the rule. Earlier this year, French film marketers deftly avoided a potentially uncomfortable linguistic snag with Bennet Miller’s Capote. The French word “capote” is a colloquialism for “condom,” and rather than mislead people more familiar with the contraception than the American literary figure, the writer’s first name was added to the title, resulting in the unambiguous Truman Capote.