See ya, Syndey

On Monday Sydney Pollack died. He was, as I am sure you know, an amazing director and not a bad actor either! There will be thousands of web-tributes to him, so, I will just add my voice to the crowd in that respect.

But, I am writing this because it was just Sunday night that I saw Pollack on a TVE (TV España) programme about the treatment of film by television networks. Pollack was there because of the lawsuit that the Danish Directors Guild brought against DR (Demark's nationalized TV station) with regards to the showing of a Pan and Scan version of Pollack's 3 Days of the Condor. The Director's Guild argued that it was a violation of a piece of art. it was shown in Danish court with the original cinemascope version, but a hilighted area indicating the pan and scan. It was, at times, laughable. There were fights where you couldn't see the other person being fought!

The documentary was an interesting piece, especially when it came to the area of sound. It argued against the dubbing of movies, saying that an integral part of the movie is the voice of the actors. An actor is hired not just to stand there and move his mouth, but to give life to a character in all ways, including speech. The irony is, of course, that Spain and Italy are 2 of the few countries that continue to dub - and TVE is the biggest violator, all but refusing to show subtitled films.

One interest piece of trivia was the handling in Spain of 'Fort Apache', the seminal John Wayne movie.

There is a scene in the movie where Wayne speaks to an Indian (or Native American, if you prefer) through an interpreter. In Spain Wayne speaks to the interpreter and the indian speaks in this very odd 'ooga-booga' type language. Ironically, in the 'real' version of the film the Indian is speaking Spanish! This ridiculous act of dubbing is still available in Spain today.

Anyway, hopefully Spain (and Italy, and all the other dubbing countries) will come to their senses and see films for the art that they are and leave them unadulterated.

Yeah, right.