English as she is parlezed!

English as she is parlezed.

I cannot speak French, so I am unsure if the title of this story is the title that I want. Maybe it will become clearer, Dear Reader, as the story progresses. I actually can speak a little bit of French. In my youth I could say Champs Elysee, Tour Eiffel, Danielle Darrieaux and Brigid Bardot.

 Way back in 1983, when I travelled through Europe in a campervan with my family (now, there is a story), I learned to order a baguette by saying, “Cher verdrae, un baguette, si vouz plait”. I cannot vouch for my French spelling, but that is what I would say to the shop girl whenever I wanted a baguette. Of course, as soon as I said it the shop girl would burst out laughing and I would have to point to the bread stick that I wanted.

Having digressed from my theme before I even started, I will try to get back on track. In my childhood days I used to go to the matinee movies at the Civic Theatre in Inglewood  on Saturday afternoon. We did not call them movies those days. We called the “The flicks”.

It was in a time during, and just after, the world war, the second one. Many of the films would be about Errol Flynn or John  Wayne fighting heroically against the Germans. Any Germans that appeared in the film would speak English but with a very heavy German accent. Films did not seem to have sub titles in those days.

In fact, the first sub-titled picture that I that was, “Bitter Rice”. I saw it around 1956 in the Liberty Theatre in Murray Street. The Liberty used to only show foreign films, which was a nice way of saying Rude Pictures. You had to be over 21 years of age to get in. I was only 17 at the time but I wore a gabardine raincoat and a scarf to smuggle myself past the stunningly beautiful usherette. I can still remember her. She was tall, blonde, with long legs. Around her ankle she wore a thin gold bracelet, which, in  1956 was the sign of a very bold and brazen hussy. She smiled at me as she took my ticket.

“Bitter Rice” was an Italian movie starring Sylvano Mangano, a voluptuous, dark haired beauty who spent most of the film leaning over in rice fields. She had large breasts and a small blouse which made the leaning over quite breathtaking at times. When I wasn’t looking at the lovely Sylvana’s blouse, I read the English sub titles that appeared at the bottom of the screen. When the picture finished, I walked up Hay Street and turned into William Street. I waited just outside the Metro Theatre in William Street for the number 19 bus to take me home to Mt Lawley. While I was waiting, I studied the books in the bookshop window next door to the Metro Theatre. I was surprised to see that one of the books featured in the window display was “Bitter Rice”. Since then, I have always claimed to be one of the very first people in the world to have “Read the movie and seen the book.”

Of course, since the mid fifties many, many films have been made with subtitles and, not only foreign films. From the 1960s onwards, film makers could have English speaking movies with the Germans speaking in German and having English subtitles underneath.

Recently, however I have been intrigued by the latest artistic techniques of film makers and the use of language and sub titles. I first noticed this in the detective series, Maigret, starring Rowan Atkinson in the title role. Maigret is a fictional French detective created by Georges Simenon. In this TV series all of the actors spoke English. I cannot recall any subtitles, but all the signage was in French. I thought it a bit odd that, despite having all the French characters speaking English, the newspapers, street signs and store fronts were all printed in French.

I became even more intrigued when I watched the latest TV adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Misérables. When I was a boy, I loved comics. My favourites were Superman, Captain Marvel and Classics Illustrated. The latter came out monthly and were extremely well written and illustrated stories of classics such as Moby Dick, The Man in the Iron Mask, Captain’s Courageous, Two Years Before the Mast, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Black Beauty and so on.

On the last page of each issue they would print graphic information about next month’s classic tale. At the time, I was living in Aberdeen Street, Perth, with my very extended family, which included my two older cousins, Maurie and Raymond Carr. I was probably about ten years old. I idolised my older cousins and, in an effort to impress them, I told them I was looking forward to reading the next issue of Classics illustrated because it was all about a fellow named Les Misérables. Well, Maurie and Raymond fell about laughing. Eventually, they explained that Les Misérables was not the name of a person. It was French for “The wretched” and was pronounced phonetically as Lay Mizz-er-rahb. (See, even aged ten, I could speak French).

This latest screen adaptation of Les Misérables has respected British actor, Dominic West playing the central character, Jean Valjean. Now the story is obviously set in France but, as in Maigret, all the characters speak English. The high-ranking French characters speak excellent English. The quality of the spoken English descends downwards; those on the lower rungs of society speak with thick East London or cockney accents.

Again, as in Maigret, despite the English dialogue, the signage is in French. It gets more complicated, because occasionally, these English-speaking French characters will start counting out money in French, greet each other with Bonjour or occasionally speak English with a French accent. It can be confusing.

Actually, I am already confused because the arch villain of Les Misérables is Inspector Javert of the French Police. I first saw Javert portrayed on the screen in a 1930s film in which Frederick March played Jean Valjean and Charles Laughton gave an unforgetable performance as Inspector Javert.       

For some reason, the film makers of this latest picture decided that Javert’s character would be portrayed by what I would have called a negro, but I believe negroes no longer exist. Apparently, negroes have been killled of by Political Correctness.  In this TV series, Javert is a coloured man who speaks impeccable English.

Then, along comes Wallander. The British TV series starring Kenneth Branagh, not the Swedish series starring a Swedish person who speaks Swedish and has English subtitles. In the British TV series of Wallander, which are being re-run on Perth TV at present, everyone speaks English, even Branagh, who disguises the fact that he can speak commanding English, like Sir Lawrence Olivier, by talking like a ventriloquist with very  little lip movement.

What is really strange about this Wallander series is that, despite everyone speaking English, not only is all the signage in Swedish but they text each other on their phones in Swedish. Thankfully, English subtitles tell us what the Swedish texts say. Not only that, the other night Wallander was using his computer to chat with a lady he was growing fond of. When it showed us his word processor screen, all of the text was in Swedish. Subtitles told us what was going on in this embyonic cyber romance

Thank goodness for those English subtitles where people speaking in English write and read in foreign languages.

I hope my story’s title makes some sort of sense, now?