Le doublage is so silly …

Very illuminating article. Thank you.

I saw the première of Bullit on the Champs-Élysées when I was a kid visiting Paris. I grew up speaking French, but it was all I could do to keep from laughing every time Steve McQueen “spoke,” because his French voice-over spoke in a deep, gruff and gravely bass voice.

Not the Steve McQueen we Americans knew, at all. (Would hate to hear a dubbed John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe.)

France is not alone. Germany does the same, and who knows how many other countries elect to “voice-over” the actual actors’ voices rather than accustom their citoyens to sub-titles.

To me, after that early experience in Paris, dubbing a star’s voice is something that wholly undermines the integrity of a film. If a Netflix foreign DVD arrives and happens to be dubbed, without the option of sub-titles, I send it back.

The classic Grand Prix with James Garner (directed by John Frankenheimer) had one serious flaw: Toshirô Mifune insisted on being dubbed because he thought his English was too poor. Whenever he’s in the film, it truly disturbs me. Every other foreign star in the film speaks their part in English … which brings its own silliness when it’s two French people speaking to each other in heavily accented English … but there it is.