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FILM

Explained: France’s passion for dubbing films

Historically France has been known for its enthusiastic dubbing of movies, but times are changing and streaming has led to more people watching subtitled original versions - although it might be too early to say adieu to French dubbing stars.

Published: 13 September 2020 09:46 CEST
Updated: 30 October 2023 11:35 CET
Explained: France's passion for dubbing films
France is historically known for dubbing movies. Photo: AFP

In amongst the tributes pouring in for the American actor Matthew Perry was one that might have surprised non-French people.

“It is an immense sadness” – the emotion of Emmanuel Curtil, French voice of Matthew Perry. 

While hardly a household name, Emmanuel Curtil has a voice familiar to any French fan of Friends – as he dubbed Mathhew Perry’s Chandler Bing into French. 

You can check out his work here.

In fact, as is common in the dubbing industry, Curtil voiced all of Perry’s roles in their French translation.

Likewise when voice actor Patrick Poivey died in 2020, social media overflowed with tributes. 

While those who aren’t French might think “Poivey who?”, to French audiences he was a superstar – dubbing iconic actors such as Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Kevin Costner.

The reaction might seem peculiar to foreigners, but the dubbing tradition has long been firmly rooted in France’s cinema culture.

But as streaming platforms take over more and more of the screen time in France, some fear the curtain will fall over the French dubbing industry as more people get used to watching subtitled versions of films rather than the dubbed VF (version française).

Dubbing is the norm

France, along with Spain, Italy and Germany, is one of the EU countries that dubs the most of its foreign programmes. 

Reader Question: Can you avoid seeing a dubbed film in French cinemas?

With streaming making it easier to watch a show in its original language and sometimes allowing early access to new releases that haven’t been translated yet, will it mean the end of the dubbing industry? 

“I don’t think there is a debate,” Anthony Panetto, a dubbing artist and secretary of the ATAA (association of translators/adapters of the audio-visual), told The Local.

“In fact, multi-lingual versions on TV have been available for 15 years in France, and more recently on platforms, and the dubbing industry is still strong.”

During the pandemic, Netflix France considered it was important to explain to the French public why dubbed versions of several of its programmes were missing. 

In a tweet, the company explained that dubbing companies were closed due to the Covid-19 crisis, and that it chose to offer the possibility to watch the shows and films with subtitles rather “than nothing at all”. 

“We want you to know that as soon as we’ll be able to add the missing VF, we will do it,” tweeted the company. 

Dubbing does seem popular, yet as of today, there haven’t been any official surveys on the number of viewers who choose to watch the dubbed version over the original version.

“We are trying to organise with other bodies to ask for a study with numbers regarding the relation between the original version and the dubbed version,” said Panetto.

“Until recently, it was considered that 90 percent of the population watched a show in French, but that subtitled original versions were becoming more popular,” he said.

And while many actors remain in the shadows, some have been gaining more and more esteem with the ATAA’s Award Ceremony, which acknowledges the work of these behind the scenes translators and voice actors, with Manga or TV show fairs where voice actors can meet the public.

“With the internet and social media, voice actors are coming into the limelight because the ‘voxophile’ community (voice actor fans) can reach out to them more easily,” said Panetto.

History

If many people in France prefer watching movies in French rather than English today, it is also a product of a deliberate government policy that sought to challenge the United State’s post-war cultural hegemony.

“In 1949, to face Hollywood’s power and to boost its movie industry, France implemented a law which required a foreign movie to be dubbed in studios located in France in order to be released,” wrote filmmaker Thierry Le Nouvel in the book Le Doublage et ses métiers (Dubbing and its jobs) in 2007. 

For decades, watching a movie in its original language was impossible in France.

“Over the years, our country became an expert with a unique savoir-faire, with the use of the rhythm band, which can be considered as ‘the expression of a real cultural exception’,” Le Nouvel wrote. 

English skills at fault?

One reason the French still prefer dubbing today is linked to France’s relatively weak English skills. According to the EF English Proficiency Index, France ranked 23rd out of the 33 European countries included in 2019.

Charlotte, 31, who used to watch her movies in French, recently decided to switch to original versions. “I realised that I was missing the emotions and that I wasn’t getting as much into the movie with the French versions,” she told The Local.

“I always watch a foreign programme in French and when it hasn’t been dubbed I watch it with subtitles,” Melina, 25, told The Local.

“I am not fluent enough in English to watch shows exclusively in English and it may be lame, but we don’t all have the chance to speak fluent English,” she said.

A 2007 study showed that a programme aired with subtitles could result in a 30 percent decrease in audience numbers.

But even if someone’s English is good enough, many French people still prefer to watch programmes in their mother tongue rather than in the original language.

“Some watch a programme in the original language because they think it’s cooler, but honestly watching it in French allows me to really look at the images instead of watching the subtitles, and to better immerse myself in the movie’s atmosphere,” Raphaël, 35, told The Local.

Paris vs. Regions

For years now, there has been a strong divide in France between those promoting movies in their original language and others promoting films dubbed in French. 

In fact, people who watch a film dubbed in French are often considered as being lazy because they don’t want to read the subtitles or listen to a foreign language, while people who prefer movies in their original language consider subtitles or dubbing as being un-artistic.

“In the 1930s, it was really difficult to watch subtitled movies outside of Paris, because of an official regulation which drastically limited the number of movie theatres that could show subtitled versions,” according to French audiovisual translator Jean-François Cornu in La Revue des médias.

“This is why films dubbed in French have long been associated with the regional public, while films in their original language are supposedly meant for people living in Paris or in important French cities,” wrote Cornu.   

Today this situation still lives on with a clear predominance of films in their original language in Paris, while the split between those in favour and against the French language versions remains strong. 

“People who say watching a movie dubbed in French is cheesy are snobs,” said Panetto. “This amounts to trashing any foreign art that is translated.

“People think reading a text on a rhythm band is easy but in fact voice artists are real actors, who often play in theatres or do voice over,” he added.

“Some people are really attached to the voices, there is an intimate relationship with the voice,” Panetto told The Local. 

By Olivia Sorrel Dejerine  

French vocab

If you want to know whether the film at the cinema will be dubbed or subtitled, it’s all in the acronyms.

If you’re watching a foreign film, its listing will include either VF, VSOT or VO.

VF – Version française – this film will be dubbed into French

VSOT – Version Originale Sous-Titrée – the screening has the original soundtrack and (French) subtitles.

VO – Version Originale – in its original language with no French subtitles

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FRANCE EXPLAINED

Why are berets so synonymous with France?

If you walk by a tourist shop in Paris, the chances are very high that they will have a full assortment of berets to choose from. But why is this fashion choice even associated with France?

Published: 13 May 2024 14:36 CEST
Why are berets so synonymous with France?

If you were to believe the TV shows and movies about France’s capital, everyone in the city owns a beret, drives a moped, smokes cigarettes, and carries baguettes under their armpits.

While some of these stereotypes might be more true than others (hint: baguette transportation), the anglophone world has been convinced that berets never go out of style.

READ MORE: Baguettiquette: Weird things the French do with bread

These days, a person walking around Paris in a beret is just as likely – if not more likely – to be a tourist than a French person.

That being said, the English-speaking world does have good reason to associate berets with the French.

The word beret is thought to be of Gallic (pre-French) origins, dating all the way back to the Romans, though similar styles of headgear have been found in archeological sites across the ancient world.

Officially, beret begins to appear in the French dictionary around the 15th century, and by the 19th century the waterproof headgear had become popular.

Napoleon associated them with the Basque country and the Pyrenees, though different versions of berets were worn across the French countryside, including the people who would go on to be known as ‘onion johnnies’ in Brittany.

French Onion Johnnies

Brits have a specific reason to associate the French with berets, according to writer Margo Lestz with the Curious Rambler blog.

From the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, it was common for Brits to see French men in berets, riding bicycles and carrying onions.

“These beret-wearing, onion-laden cyclists arrived in the UK every summer to peddle their wares. They came from the area around Roscoff, Brittany in western France. This area was (and still is) known for its special pink onions. They were sweet, had a long storage life – and the British loved them.

“As it happened, many of these onion-sellers were called Yann, a common Breton name which is the equivalent of Jean in French and John in English. The British soon took to calling them “Onion Johnnies”. The Johnnies didn’t mind and happily adopted their new English nickname.

“They would go door to door from July through December across the UK, then would return to Brittany. Since the Onion Johnnies were the only contact that many Brits had with a Frenchman, they naturally assumed that all Frenchmen wore berets,” Lestz wrote.

READ MORE: Why we think the French all wear berets and carry onions

Military gear to street fashion and revolutions

Another reason we associate the French with berets has to do with official military uniforms. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing into World War I, France’s Chasseurs Alpins, infantry soldiers the Alps, began to wear berets as part of their uniform. 

Aloïs Guinut, the author of the book ‘Dress like a Parisian’ told 20 Minutes that “Shepherds wore them first, then soldiers, schoolchildren, and then golfers, mountaineers, and even cyclists adopted it.”

Guinut said that once the headwear became popular with athletes, it started to became stylish in general.

“Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel was one of the first to use it as a fashion accessory in the 1930s,” Guinot explained, noting that around that time French cinema was growing in popularity, and more French actresses were sporting berets, including the leading lady Michele Morgan in the film ‘Le Quai des Brumes’.

READ MORE: Where does the ‘romantic, sexy French’ stereotype come from?

By the 1940s, berets were so connected to French identity that they became an essential accessory for the resistance during World War II.

Afterwards, other resistance movements began to incorporate berets too, including the revolutionary Che Guevara.

What about now?

Several military uniforms across the world include berets, including parts of the French military like paratroopers and the French foreign legion.

As for Parisians, “there are [some] who do wear berets. I see them regularly. But it’s true that tourists love wearing berets when they visit Paris, so it is a bit of a tourist accessory,” Guinut said.

It continues to be part of the ‘Parisienne’ appearance as luxury fashion companies use it in their yearly collections – like Dior in 2017.

Meanwhile, tourist shops play up the beret, while pop culture continues to give us images of the beret-wearing Frenchwoman – most recently, Emily in Paris, with the main character frequently accesorising with a bright red beret.

Let us know what you think about berets in the comments below. Do you consider them stylish?

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