Dubbing is Beautiful?
If a restaurant served spaghetti-o's when you ordered spaghetti alla marinara, would you send it back? And if the suggested Chianti Classico turned out to be a domestic red, would you complain? Americans have willingly accepted second-rate, bland imitations of Italian cuisine for generations, force-fed overcooked versions of the simpler, tastier, authentic fare. The newly-released English-dubbed version of La Vita È Bella is another commercial attempt to foist an unpalatable serving on an unsuspecting public.
Bring the Bambini?
The dubbed version had its world premiere screening on Tuesday evening at the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival in New York City. On Friday, August 27, Miramax is releasing the altered film in thirteen theaters in New York and Los Angeles to test-market reactions prior to scheduled video distribution in November. Mark Gill, president of Miramax/LA, admitted: "We know this is a difficult thing to pull off. You're introducing a new concept to a lot of moviegoers."
Depending on box office results, after its initial run the film will be released in other markets. The decision to make available both Italian and English versions on video came after retailers made the recommendation about the enhanced commercial value for those who dislike reading subtitles.
Messing With Success
The supposedly independent studio is tampering with a film that, in its Italian version, grossed $57 million and ultimately won three of its seven Academy Award nominations (for Best Actor, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Original Dramatic Score).
Described by the The New York Times as "the funniest Italian you've probably never heard of", the director-actor Roberto Benigni gave a hilarious, charming acceptance speech at the presentation ceremony that conveyed his manic, gleeful energy as well as his sincerity. Later, when asked in a backstage interview if he had planned to jump on the seats, Benigni replied "...the exuberance, how can I restrain this? I let my body do what it wants to when there is – when you are in love with somebody, how can you organize your body? You let it free, and so..."
The film's enormous popularity has served to boast the Italian filmmaking industry, which has accounted for an unprecedented twenty-six nominations for Best Foreign Language Film but has suffered an artistic and commercial slump. With the exception of films such as Cinema Paradiso, Ciao Professore!, and Il Postino, very few Italian films have been critically acclaimed or succeeded in the international market in the past decade. The tragicomedy, about an assimilated Jewish Italian who uses humor to protect his 5-year-old son from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp, received mostly rave reviews for his haunting portrayal of the Holocaust.
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