esrosedotblog

SUBTITLES

A.O. Scott today in the NYTimes:

A Golden Age of Foreign Films, Mostly Unseen

One of the saddest results of our culture is the almost total exclusion of subtitled films from prominent view.

I have bemoaned this before.

One of the gladder results of our culture is that these same films, ignored by the big screen distributors and audience, are available on disc and most prominently on Netflix.

More than a third of the films that I watch are subtitled and another third are independent films shown only, for the most part, at the few art cinemas left.

In our Valley of desert cities and numerous cinemas, only one features art films and few of those are subtitled. This is for a population of 200,000 people. And movie addled people at that. The viewership here is very high. We are, after all, close to the industry and many industry people live here.

But still, the so called foreign film does not exist.

This is not to knock US product, but the quality is pretty low.

I only watch a small percentage of Hollywood films. Most are crass and superficial. Violent and obsessed with potty words and sexual clichés.

Scott describes how the Hollywood apparatus, most prominently the Oscars, keep non US films down and out of sight.

I can see someone raising their hand to tell me that there are films that do make it through.

The Kings Speech for example. But this is Hollywood product and of a shiny ornamental kind that is quite familiar in the run of things. Foreign actors imported into the Hollywood machine and away from their national ciinema. This is not a bad thing. I am happy for Colin Firth who I admire, but it doesn't help art cinema much.

When I moved to Boston in 1954, I fell in love with art film. In that city there were at least ten good sized theaters showing subtitled and old films.

When I left, there were only one or two for a huge city.

Too bad.

Labels: films