The Unexpected #5: Max Von Sideshow
What’s unexpected in this image from Mauro Bolognini’s amazing, strange GRAN BOLLITO, is not the sight of Max Von Sydow as a woman. Oh no, my friends, that would not be enough to qualify for “The Unexpected”. What’s unexpected is the sight of Max Von Sydow as a CONVINCING WOMAN.
Briefly, Shelley Winters plays a housewife in fascist Italy engaged in murdering her neighbours, most of whom are played by men in drag, and turning them into soap. Yes, it’s one of those kinds of films.
The movie is in fact pretty compelling and I’d write more about it except it’s unavailable with subtitles of any kind (the Italians have yet to develop the subtitle, it sometimes seems) and so I would have to get our film benshi, David Wingrove, to translate it again. And there are so many OTHER films that need translating…
shadowplay 
November 3, 2010 at 1:44 pm
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by dcairns, Bags. Bags said: RT @dcairns: Max Von Sydow at his most… feminine… https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/the-unexpected-5-max-von-sideshow/ […]
November 3, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Ironic that it’s not available in English, considering the film was probably shot (at least partly) in English to begin with.
As far as I know, neither Max von Sydow nor Shelley Winters nor Rita Tushingham (who also appears briefly) is (or was) a fluent speaker of Italian. It certainly ain’t Shelley’s voice on the Italian soundtrack!
Whatever the language, GRAN BOLLITO is a gorgeously deranged near-masterpiece that deserves to be better known.
Allegedly, Roman Polanksi was slated to direct at some point – but Bolognini took over when RP’s life and legal problems got in the way!
November 3, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I think she looks remarkably like Lady Agatha Ascoyne, the famed Ealing Suffragette. Perhaps they are related.
November 3, 2010 at 2:47 pm
The Italians dub everything everywhere it is shown in the country. Even in 2010.
And none too well, I might add.
(I wonder why they are so resistant to subtitles . . .)
November 3, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Max’s body language is a joy in this film. I guess he had help with the voice, probably.
The English track might not have been usable — Italians often recorded only a guide track, which might well have the director yelling all over it. A proper English soundtrack would only be prepared if a US release were intended. Which, with this cast, you’d think it would have been, but who knows?
The ability to direct during a take may be what the Italians like best about dubbing their own films.
Resistance to reading subtitles is generally down to laziness, I find. Subtitles are popular in countries where the idea of engaging with art and putting a bit of effort in to get more reward out, is embraced. And where film is included as an art.
November 3, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Bolognini is an Italian semi-master very much deserving of reappraisal, particularly for his collaborations with Pasolini.
November 3, 2010 at 3:04 pm
November 3, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Or maybe Italian audiences just engage more strongly with the visual aspects of a movie, and find subititles to be a distraction? And is that altogether a bad thing?
After all, compare the ‘look’ of your average Italian movie with your standard UK or Hollywood product. The Italians definitely have the edge where visuals are concerned. Fellini, or so I’m told, didn’t even bother to write dialogue until after he’d finished shooting.
One last word in defence of dubbing…truly bad movies (and I mean this is a compliment) seem to come into their own when dubbed into Italian or Spanish. The local actors who do the dubbing discover levels of hysteria that no mere Hollywood ham could ever reach.
November 3, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Dubbing also offers the possibility of completely overwriting the original lines for censorship purposes. Berlanga said that when he first saw MOGAMBO, in Franco’s Spain, the dubbing revised the relationship of the characters played by Donald Sinden and Grace Kelly from husband and wife to brother and sister – avoiding adultery but falling, with the inevitability of a Freudian nightmare, into incest.
November 3, 2010 at 3:20 pm
In my view, Bolognini was not just a semi-master but a total master – one of the genuinely great film-makers that Italy has produced. Films like LA NOTTE BRAVA, LA VIACCIA, AGOSTINO, UN BELLISSIMO NOVEMBRE, BUBU, DOWN THE ANCIENT STAIR and LADY OF THE CAMELLIAS are all up there with the best.
Nobody working in Italian cinema today has even the smallest fraction of his talent. Even his final film LA VILLA DEL VENERDI (a relative flop from 1991, with Julian Sands and Joanna Pacula) is head and shoulders above anything that Italian film-makers are doing today.
November 3, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Although, as Godard proves again and again, subtitles can be considered as much a visual part of the movie as any other.
November 3, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Oops…one exception to that is Marco Bellocchio, whose recent VINCERE comes close to being a flat-out masterpiece.
But apart from Bellocchio, who is there? The ghastly Nanni Moretti? The insufferable Roberto Benigni? The terminally fatuous Luca Guadagnino? The last good Italian film I saw was CERTIFIED COPY…made by the Iranian Abbas Kiarostami.
November 3, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Yes, image = text and text = image for JLG.
I recall Svankmajer dubbing Alice to avoid distracting from the images with subtitles, but the downside is that I don’t think he was sensitive enough to the English voices he used. In particular, the narrator’s repeated “Said Alice” became rather annoying.
The thing is, for most fluent readers, subtitles are not particularly distracting.
It’s true that the Italians do routinely pay more attention to visual aesthetics than the Brits, and they actually seem to UNDERSTAND visual aesthetics. Which has nothing to do with just making things pretty, although that’s a frequent and pleasing side-effect.
Hollywood movies are frequently magnificently photographed, but when the intention behind them is ugly, that has little palliative effect.
November 3, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Off-Topic, but — It’s Patrice Chereau Day at Dennis Cooper’s!
As I trust y’all know I consider Chereau to be The Cats. Dennis has kindly lent me the cyber-floor to run amok.
November 3, 2010 at 5:44 pm
If I’m remembering Svankmajer’s ALICE correctly (which I might not be – I fell asleep, like I fall asleep during all Svankmajer features), it wasn’t just the voice that was annoying about the “said Alice” and “said the White Rabbit” segments. Doesn’t it always cut to a close-up of lips saying those words? Annoying all around. As always with his movies, it’s worth braving the irritating bits and struggling to stay awake in order to experience the brilliant parts.
Haven’t seen Sileni yet, but I’m dreading/looking forward to it.
Related: IMDB has started giving foreign movies arbitrary titles. I’ve always seen Jan’s Otesánek called “Little Otik” on video, and now its default title is “Greedy Guts”. “Unsane” is now the default title for Argento’s “Tenebre”, but “Cat of Nine Tails” gets to keep its Italian title. And they decided some Fritz Lang films are best known as “The Shadow vs. the Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse”, “The Tomb of Love” and “By Rocket to the Moon”.
November 3, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Chereau is both the Cat’s and the Bee’s. Check it!
Brandon, I was annoyed by the lips, but I reckon I would not have been annoyed by the lips if they had not been a prissy posh kid with a hectoring, pedantic tone. I was never annoyed by the disembodied lips of Billie Whitelaw or Richard O’Brien, after all.
Yes, the IMDb redesign has also unleashed a mania of retitling. Since you posted, By Rocket to the Moon is now Girl in the Moon, even though the DVD cover attached reads Woman in the Moon, which is the only title apart from the German one that anybody’s ever used.
The Public Enemy is now Enemies of the Public.
November 3, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Some of IMDb’s film listings are choked with AKAs. I suppose that IMDb is never going to correct release dates while they do all this silly shuffling. I found enough of those wrong on old films that I don’t trust it.
November 3, 2010 at 9:39 pm
thats Max Von Sydow?..I thought it was Maggie Smith..
November 4, 2010 at 2:26 am
Maggie was still kind of glam back then…
I had just about given up the idea of hoaxing the IMDb, but the stupid alternative titles thing is sort of new, it’s gotten much worse than it was, and some protest is required…
November 4, 2010 at 5:36 am
IMDb wouldn’t take information from me that was true and verifiable, so I see no hope for them. I see a lot of minor actors in films having their character’s name unnamed or misnamed, the actor misplaced in a multipart film, or the actor just not listed in some films. When it was a collaborative effort, it was worth fixing, now I hardly bother. I throw something at them about once a year just to see if they accept it (they have only once), but generally I stay away. Oh yeah, I use NoScript and ad blocking software just so I read the damned thing. Otherwise it’s too ghastly to deal with.
November 4, 2010 at 9:34 am
Let’s TAKE THEM DOWN.
November 4, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Everyone who cares knows how error-filled their database is, it’s a running joke in many places. Coordinated efforts against it are the only way I see now to do it any harm, and really, who has the time? You need an army of obsessive F. Gwynplaine McIntyres (rest his twisted soul) to damage it further. I suggest zombies: they’re obsessive and work tirelessly. Being dead helps them with that pesky need for sleep that burdens the living.
November 4, 2010 at 3:21 pm
here are the subtitles to be downloaded made fome some from the english subtitles
http://rapidshare.com/files/406661439/Gran_bollito__Mauro_Bolognini_1977_.srt
i hope you are able to watch that movie with them
November 4, 2010 at 5:17 pm
If you go into IMDB site preferences you can amend the title display option to ‘original country’. Since recent changes the default setting displays the titles that it associates with your resident country. So if you live in the UK even some classic Hollywood films can be confusing, I mean who ever thinks of ‘They live by Night’ as ‘The Twisted Road’ ?
You can also revert back to the old page style of IMDB in site preferences too.
November 4, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Nico, awesome, thankyou!
Specterman, I wish they would TELL us these things! I will now change back to old IMDb look. I’m not quite satisfied with the option of choosing resident country though, since in most cases there’s a universally recognized title which may have nothing to do with the country you’re from.
November 4, 2010 at 11:23 pm
When you get to the site preferences chose ‘original’ under the ‘Title display country’ option. This will give you the title used in the films country of origin. This of course used to be the default setting on IMDB (in more saner times).