“If you don’t have a good actor, it all sounds fake”, said Stanley Kubrick about choosing voice actors in a telephone call with Mario Maldesi, director of dubbing for Full Metal Jacket. These days we often prefer the “original versions” to the dubbed versions. But are we certain that dubbing is only involved in the final phases of filmmaking? What has been the significance of this practice which, used for the first time in the United States, has become so widespread in our country? Take Fellini: would his films have been the same if he had not used dubbing? Would he have had the same freedom to choose his faces and bodies, if he had not known that he could later give them the voice he wanted? And Pasolini, who wanted voice actors from Lecce to convey the feeling of a “southern koiné” for his film Arabian Nights? And why did Andy Warhol choose Pasolini to direct the Italian dubbing of the film Trash? This is a journey from Rome to the Accademia della Crusca and the Fondazione Zeffirelli in Florence, the Università per Stranieri in Perugia and the Cineteca di Bologna, to understand a practice that, perhaps without realizing it, has influenced the creativity of our cinema, the language that we speak and our culture. Which is to say: what we are today.
DIRECTOR: Filippo Soldi
NATION: Italy
YEAR: 2023
RUNTIME: 89′
Original version with subtitles