International versions of Hollywood movies from the 1930s
BY ANDRE SOARES. LOS ANGELES (CINEMA MINIMA) — The little-seen 1934 melodrama NADA MAS QUE UNA MUJER | NOTHING MORE THAN A WOMAN by Harry Lachman, a unique example of the many Spanish-language versions of Hollywood films made in the 1930s, will be screened 2008 October 19, Sunday, 7:00 PM at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood in Los Angeles.
NADA MAS QUE UNA MUJER will be followed by the 1933 romantic comedy NO DEJES LA PUERTA ABIERTA | DON’T LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN by Frank R. Strayer and Miguel de Zárraga, starring Raul Roulien of FLYING DOWN TO RIO. Both restored, 35mm prints will be screened with English subtitles.
This will be a great opportunity to become acquainted with “foreign-language” (international) versions of Hollywood movies made during the first decade of talking pictures, a time — before adequate dubbing and subtitling — when Hollywood studios and independent producers were doing what they could so as not to lose their “foreign” (international) markets.
NADA MAS QUE UNA MUJER is particularly important because it marks one of the rare film appearances of legendary Argentinean stage performer Berta Singerman, a poetry interpreter who has been compared to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. [The Alternative Film Guide]
Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution
The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930, by Scott Eyman. Nowadays the “talkie” seems, like some other technological breakthroughs, to have obliterated its less-advanced predecessor, the silent movie, in one fell swoop. The reality, of course, is more complex. As Scott Eyman writes in his prologue to The Speed of Sound, “To examine this period of unparalleled industrial change, it is necessary to reverse the perspective, to give a fair, detailed idea of what silents were like to the people who made and watched them, and how talkies permanently changed the creative and personal equations.” Eyman’s eye-opening book fulfills this mission. He focuses on just five years — 1926 through 1930 — but tells the story on many levels. We learn about the technology, the details of actors’ and technicians’ lives, the elaborate business machinations associated with the rise of sound, and the resulting transformation, of not just the movies, but of Hollywood itself. Your purchase at Amazon.com through this link supports Cinema Minima.
