Every time you want to watch a foreign film in this country, you're forced to read about 90 pages of dialog. You have to have your eyes glued to the screen every second. You can't get a dubbed version of anything.
Jacques Tati filmed simultaneous versions of Mon Oncle in French and English and Werner Herzog filmed Nosferatu in both German and English, but, as far as I can tell, only the subtitled versions are now available. There's no argument for that. The preference for subtitles when there's an identical English language version with the original cast doing their own live dialog is purely an affectation.
I talked to a kid in Russia a few years ago. I wish I had stayed in touch with him. He wanted to learn English well enough to translate movies. The Soviet Union was never part of the International Copyright Convention and people there still aren't shy about copyright infringement. The kid was talking about doing underground, unauthorized translations of movies that would otherwise be unavailable to them. I hear that's a popular thing there.
That's what we need in this country. Just record the dialog separately and play it while you watch the movie.
Doing a fake dubbed version of these things wouldn't be that hard, would it? You'd need a couple of people to simply read the subtitles into a microphone as they watch the movie. In Russia and other eastern European countries, the dubbed version is only one voice translating the whole thing.
Look at the movie Mr Arkadin. Orson Welles dubbed several of the voices. You don't need that many.
We just need some brave individuals, maybe some destitute, judgement-proof cineastes with nothing to lose, to do some recordings the rest of us could freely enjoy.
Of course, cineastes who don't like subtitles might be hard to find.
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