Movies shot without sound (dialog dubbed) (1 Viewer)

[madfloyd]

I'm wondering if there's a general rule of thumb to identify movies shot without dialog recorded (where it was dubbed afterwards). I'm asking because I have been collecting a lot of older movies (mostly because I am still discovering great movies from past decades) but I find it hugely distracting (and disappointing) when actor's lips don't correspond to what I'm hearing.

Is the country of origin and/or time period a safe bet?

 

[Worth]

Pretty much anything made in Italy until about the 1980s.

 

[Ross Gowland]

Ditto Hong Kong.

However, in the UK, synch sound was the norm from the beginning of sound cinema. But of course there are occasions where scenes had unusable sound that necessitated dubbing. And sometimes actors would be completely revoiced (it happens a lot in Sixties Bond film).

Another thing you’d get in a British films, right up to the Eighties, was young boys being redubbed by women. I call it the “Dont forget the Fruit Gums, Mum” effect after this advert for the Sixties.

 

[Lord Dalek]

The biggest culprit was Italy, as their films usually starred a variety of American (ie Clint Eastwood), French, Spanish, and German actors speaking their own native languages on top of the Italian actors. Fellini rather infamously didn't even bother giving his actors lines on set and had them say random numbers instead. This is why the synch on 8 1/2 is very bad no matter what language its in.

Then you have Hong Kong which had too much city noise to make on set sound recording feasible. Golden Harvest also didn't seem to care whether the voice you heard belonged to the actor on screen or not (in the case of Bruce Lee, its because he couldn't speak Mandarin Chinese which wss the main language for kung fu flicks at the time). So Jackie Chan doesn't sound anything like Jackie Chan until Police Story III.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Ditto Hong Kong.

However, in the UK, synch sound was the norm from the beginning of sound cinema. But of course there are occasions where scenes had unusable sound that necessitated dubbing. And sometimes actors would be completely revoiced (it happens a lot in Sixties Bond film).

Yes pretty much every Connery Bond save for Diamonds are Forever was completely relooped in post.

Also the Star Wars films were extensively ADR'd.

 

[RobertMG]

How about RKOs
The Tattooed Stranger???

 

[JoshZ]

Friedkin's Cruising had to be almost entirely ADR'ed due to protestors chanting and making loud noises near to the set to disrupt production.

 

[Mark B]

It's called looping and the number of films that have dialogue recorded live on set is minimal.

 

[JoshZ]

the number of films that have dialogue recorded live on set is minimal.

That's a very odd statement. Almost all movies have dialogue recorded live on set. However, whether that recording is actually used in the final product or just used as a reference during ADR is a different matter.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Or ocassionally you have a scene that features a mixture of production sound and adr that cuts between the two willynilly.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The biggest culprit was Italy, as their films usually starred a variety of American (ie Clint Eastwood), French, Spanish, and German actors speaking their own native languages on top of the Italian actors. Fellini rather infamously didn't even bother giving his actors lines on set and had them say random numbers instead. This is why the synch on 8 1/2 is very bad no matter what language its in.

Then you have Hong Kong which had too much city noise to make on set sound recording feasible. Golden Harvest also didn't seem to care whether the voice you heard belonged to the actor on screen or not (in the case of Bruce Lee, its because he couldn't speak Mandarin Chinese which wss the main language for kung fu flicks at the time). So Jackie Chan doesn't sound anything like Jackie Chan until Police Story III.

And you probably never hear Jet Li's own voice in any of his HK movies, which were nearly all in Cantonese, because he doesn't really speak Cantonese (at least not remotely well enough... probably not even after all these years).

At the other, opposite end of such, you have Chow Yun Fat mugging his awful (not really) Mandarin so badly in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that even I (not really being a Mandarin speaker nor formally learned it) find it a tad (humorously) distracting at times, LOL -- many native speakers, particularly from northern China, really heavily criticized/derided his hackjob at Mandarin... though many of us southern and particularly HK and other Chinese Diaspora types were much more forgiving and largely just rolled w/ it...

But really, HK movies are definitely their own thing in this regard because they typically involve various people who spoke such wide variety of dialects (or none at all in case of foreigners) and often also are not that convincing at Cantonese (whether HK flavor or not) -- yes, native/very-long-time HKers actually speak Cantonese noticeably different (at least to us native HKers' ears) from most(?) Mainlanders or even most Chinese Americans who might consider themselves reasonably proficient Cantonese speakers -- so that's probably also a significant factor. There does seem some exceptions where they still choose to use the original actors/actresses' voicing (probably still dubbed/looped back in though) for whatever reasons -- offhand, Carina Lau seems most notable (as she definitely has some kinda Mainlander accent/enunciation tendencies along w/ reasonably recognizable voice I'm familiar w/ since her earlier HK TV days)... plus Wong Kar Wai's films certainly seem to do that as much as feasible, but then again, he's also not the norm amongst HK filmmakers...

_Man_

 

[Worth]

It's called looping and the number of films that have dialogue recorded live on set is minimal.

Tell that to Christopher Nolan.

 

[JoshZ]

Tell that to Christopher Nolan.

Nolan hates looping. He also hates the audience being able to understand what actors are saying. For his next movie, he's not going to record any dialogue at all, and let viewers try to figure out what's being said from lip-flap alone!

 

[John Maher_289910]

Nolan hates looping. He also hates the audience being able to understand what actors are saying. For his next movie, he's not going to record any dialogue at all, and let viewers try to figure out what's being said from lip-flap alone!

His films have the worst sounding dialog. Simply the worst.

 

[BobO'Link]

His films have the worst sounding dialog. Simply the worst.

I'll extend it to the entire soundtrack. Absolutely unlistenable on just about everything he does. I've sworn off his movies because of them as I have to turn the sound down and watch with SDH. I could play *any* music I wanted on the stereo and it'd be just as good as what he does and I'd still be reading subtitles.

 

[Lord Dalek]

 

[Will Krupp]

The biggest culprit was Italy, as their films usually starred a variety of American (ie Clint Eastwood), French, Spanish, and German actors speaking their own native languages on top of the Italian actors. Fellini rather infamously didn't even bother giving his actors lines on set and had them say random numbers instead. This is why the synch on 8 1/2 is very bad no matter what language its in.

Isn't it also true that Cinecitta was never soundproofed? I know I've heard that somewhere before.

I believe Visconti has live on-set sound in some scenes of The Damned and I assumed that was because whatever house he used as a stand in for the Villa Hugel was outside of the studio and far enough away from the city (and the airport) to make "ambient" sounds a non-issue for those scenes.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Isn't it also true that Cinecitta was never soundproofed? I know I've heard that somewhere before.

Well considering Contempt was shot at Cinecitta with synch sound, I don't think so.

 

[Will Krupp]

Well considering Contempt was shot at Cinecitta with synch sound, I don't think so.

Well THAT'S interesting! Thanks.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

His films have the worst sounding dialog. Simply the worst.

I'll extend it to the entire soundtrack. Absolutely unlistenable on just about everything he does. I've sworn off his movies because of them as I have to turn the sound down and watch with SDH. I could play *any* music I wanted on the stereo and it'd be just as good as what he does and I'd still be reading subtitles.

Not sure that's quite completely fair/correct... as Oppenheimer (in IMAX) doesn't actually fit all that (at least for me anyway)...

I also don't really feel *quite* that way for many/most of his films released on BD/4K disc at least on my own HT setup anyway. Yeah, certainly not always easily heard/understood dialog, etc, but IMHO, not quite as bad as many seem to feel... and as far as I can vaguely recall, definitely never harder to understand than certain sequences in Dune: Part 1 (and probably a few others between Villeneuve and Alex Garland), which I also love...

_Man_