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igenlodeI've just come across the Romanian version of the film "Ma-ma", or the tale of the wolf and the five little goats (made as a tri-lingual production, from which I've seen clips in Russian of Boyarsky as the Wolf, and about half the film in its BBC English version); it is noticeably different not only in the soundtrack but in the lighting, timing and composition of each shot. So it's true that they really did re-shoot the film three different times on the same set, exactly as in the days of early sound films when stars like Anna May Wong or Buster Keaton were required to repeat their performances in multiple languages -- and apparently with different directorial choices to suit the target audience...! (Or just the impossibility of duplicating the same shot exactly on multiple takes, perhaps -- but I get the definite impression that the English version is a lot keener on extreme close-ups and extra explanation in the dialogue ("Let's go down the slide, Mummy! Yes, let's", "Better be careful!"), while conversely the scene where the actors mime out putting one of them in a sack and carrying him off is so abbreviated in this version that I didn't even realise that was what they were doing until I came across the same scene in the Romanian version, where it was quite obviously a kidnapping threat, despite the fact that I couldn't understand a word of the lyrics :-O)
The other very obvious difference is that the singers in the Romanian soundtrack are obviously leaning much more into the 'animal' interpretation of their vocal roles. There seems to be a lot of argument about whether the principal actors were really singing in multiple languages -- I think it's pretty obvious that Boyarsky isn't singing in English, because we know his accent is *nothing* like that good :-p, and the Romanian singer has a completely different voice. On the other hand, the lip movements do appear to correspond precisely to the accompanying dubbed soundtrack in each case (presumably why the films had to be physically re-made shot by shot), so the Russian performers must have had to learn their dialogue phonetically in two completely unrelated languages so that they could at least mouth it while simultaneously dancing and performing in character -- eek!
Of course nobody in the audience was ever expected to be in a position to do a parallel comparison! On the whole, from what I've seen so far I think I prefer the Romanian director's take (and I have heard, admittedly from the Russian end, that the English version is allegedly the worst of the three). It just has the slight problem of being verbally incomprehensible :-p
Admittedly the burnt-in Norwegian subtitles on the English-language print are a bit off-putting...
I have seen very little of the actual Russian version, since I was saving that until I at least had some idea of what the dialogue was supposed to be -- just enough to make me curious enough to look for it in the first place :-)
The other very obvious difference is that the singers in the Romanian soundtrack are obviously leaning much more into the 'animal' interpretation of their vocal roles. There seems to be a lot of argument about whether the principal actors were really singing in multiple languages -- I think it's pretty obvious that Boyarsky isn't singing in English, because we know his accent is *nothing* like that good :-p, and the Romanian singer has a completely different voice. On the other hand, the lip movements do appear to correspond precisely to the accompanying dubbed soundtrack in each case (presumably why the films had to be physically re-made shot by shot), so the Russian performers must have had to learn their dialogue phonetically in two completely unrelated languages so that they could at least mouth it while simultaneously dancing and performing in character -- eek!
Of course nobody in the audience was ever expected to be in a position to do a parallel comparison! On the whole, from what I've seen so far I think I prefer the Romanian director's take (and I have heard, admittedly from the Russian end, that the English version is allegedly the worst of the three). It just has the slight problem of being verbally incomprehensible :-p
Admittedly the burnt-in Norwegian subtitles on the English-language print are a bit off-putting...
I have seen very little of the actual Russian version, since I was saving that until I at least had some idea of what the dialogue was supposed to be -- just enough to make me curious enough to look for it in the first place :-)