Palme d'Or Champions: En francais, s'il vous plaît

by Cláudio Alves

Apologies for my absence in the past few weeks, dear readers. Two back-to-back festival makes up a daunting task, when it involves over fifty write-ups. Anyway, eager to jump back into The Film Experience. To ease the way a curious trifle. As I was browsing through Twitter, I came across a curious conundrum in the form of a new French poster for this year's Palme d'Or winner, and the title splashed across its badly Photoshopped self. While Ruben Östlund's latest is called Triangle of Sadness or a direct translation in nearly every territory, those French distributors had another idea. In the land where it won the Croisette's highest honor, the film is known as Sans Filtre…

Wacky French titles for imports are nothing new if you've ever perused the darkest recessed of IMDB – Silver Linings Playbook was rebaptized as Happiness Therapy, for example. Still, considering its premiere at France's most prestigious celebration of cinema, wouldn't it be logical to have its naturalized title be as close to the original as possible? Apparently not. Indeed, going down the list of Palme d'Or winners, one finds a few other quirky variations. Here are some examples:

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• Triangle of Sadness - Sans filtre (Without Filter)
• Shoplifters - Une affaire de famille (A Family Story)
• The Piano – La leçon de piano (The Piano Lesson)
• Wild at Heart – Sailor & Lula
• Kagemusha – L'ombre du Guerrier (The Shadow of the Warrior)
• All That Jazz – Que le spectacle commence... (Let the Show Begin…)
• The Hireling – La méprise (The Misunderstanding)
• Friendly Persuasion – La loi du Seigneur (The Lord's Law)
• The Lost Weekend – Le poison (The Poison)
• Union Pacific – Pacific Express 

Because I'm Portuguese and couldn't diminish my curiosity, I also decided to look at what titles those honored films have worn when screening at Portugal's finest cinemas. Some of these are even weirder than the French ones. Take a look: 

• Shoplifters – Uma Família de Pequenos Ladrões (A Family of Little Thieves)
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley – Brisa de Mudança (Breese of Change)
• All That Jazz – O Espetáculo Vai Começar (The Show is About to Start)
• The Conversation – O Vigilante (The Vigilante)
• The Hireling – A Lady e o Motorista (The Lady and the Driver)
• Blow Up – História de um Fotógrafo (Story of a Photographer)
• The Knack…and How to Get It – Lições de Sedução (Seduction Lessons)
• Friendly Persuasion – Sublime Tentação (Sublime Temptation)
• Miss Julie – Vertigem (Vertigo)
• The Lost Weekend – Farrapo Humano (Human Rag)
• Union Pacific – Aliança de Aço (Steel Alliance)

For those whose curiosity has been piqued by Miss Julie's Hitchcockian new title, you'll be glad to know that Vertigo also suffered a substantial transformation as it arrived in Portuguese theaters. Here, the film was called A Mulher Que Viveu Duas Vezes, meaning 'The Woman Who Lived Twice'. It's a spoilery alternative, but one wouldn't want it to be confused with that Scandinavian Palme d'Or winner.

What do you think of these alternative titles? Do you prefer any of them to the original?

Comments

[Ryan T.]

Fun stuff! Though I think you meant "Without Filter" for the translation of Sans Filtre?

[Peggy Sue]

Sailor et Lula with a French accent sounds sexy!

[Richter Scale]

I mean, it kind of makes sense that they would go for something else with Triangle of Sadness, given that it refers to a very specific thing that happens on your face that may not be translatable everywhere. Sometimes titles are altered because the original title only makes sense in its language of origin, though of course, other times it's because distributors think the people of their countries need different titles that draw audiences (I live in Mexico and you wouldn't believe the kinds of stuff we have here, Rain Man was named "Cuando Dos Hermanos Se Encuentran", which translates to "When Two Brothers Meet"... Million Dollar Baby was named "Golpes del Destino", which means "Punches of Fate"... or lately they will leave the original title and add a corny subtitle).

[Gallavich]

In Italy we had the worst choices by far:

Intolerable Cruelty-Prima ti sposo, poi ti rovino (First I marry you, then I ruin you)
Eternal sunshine of the spotless-Se mi lasci ti cancello (If you leave me I erase you)
CODA-I segni del cuore (Signs of the heart)
My own private Idaho-Belli e dannati (Beautiful and damned)
King Richard-Una famiglia vincente (A winning family)
Vertigo-La donna che visse due volte (The woman who lived two times. THAT'S A SPOILER!)
All about Eve-Eva contro Eva (Eve vs. Eve)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-Non aprite quella porta (Don't open that door. WHICH DOOR?? )
The night of the hunter-La morte corre sul fiume (Death runs on the river)

[Dieter Rogiers]

My favourite alternate title remains the French version of High Noon. There the western was called 'Le train sifflera trois fois', which translates to 'The train will whistle three times'.

[marco70ve]

@PP92,
When it comes to Italy, let's not forget that "Vertigine" (Vertigo) was the italian title for Otto Preminger's 1944 movie "Laura"; and that, in order to be ACTUALLY spoilerish, "the woman" in Alfred Hitchcock's movie should have lived three times, other than twice.
I will add another favorite translation, that for the 1972 Sydney Pollack movie "Jeremiah Johnson", that became in Italy "Corvo Rosso, non avrai il mio scalpo!" (Red Crow, you won't have my scalp)... which is particularly interesting since there is no character named Red Crow in the movie.

[DAVIDE]

Fun topic! Italian distributors frequently change the titles. Sometimes for obvious reasons, such as when the title contains a play on words. For example, Meet the Fockers became the equivalent of "Will you introduce your parents to me?" and Little Fockers became the equivalent of "Let me introduce our family." Staying in a Streisand vein, What's Up Doc became the equivalent of "Who made you do it?" and The Main Event became "What are you, crazy?" Maybe the tendency to introduce question marks into Streisand's film titles is associated with the sing-song question-like cadence typical of some of her speech patterns.

[DAVIDE]

Other oddities:

Rachel, Rachel became "Jennifer's First Time"
Midnight Cowboy = "A Sidewalk Man"
The Sound of Music = "Everyone Passionately Together"
Elmer Gantry = "Son of Judas"
You Can't Take It With You = "Eternal Illusion"
Hidden Figures = "The Right to Count"
The French Connection ="The violent arm of the law"
The Oxbow Incident = "Fatal Dawn"

The current trend is to simply replicate the original film title, even if it is as obscure as "Zero Dark Thirty" would be to non-English speakers, or to translate it literally.

[John From]

I believe Claudio means Farrapo Humano (Human Rag). "Farrapo em Chamas" (Rag in Flames) is too crazy, even for those standards.

Although Vertigo has a literal translation to Portuguese (Vertigem), in Brazil, Hitchcock's masterpiece was also retitled to Um Corpo que Cai (A Body That Falls). I wonder why.

[Antônio]

The brazilian title for Zero Dark Thirty is “A Hora Mais Escura” (The Darkest Hour), so when the actual Darkest Hour came out, it was randomly called The Fate of a Nation.