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Manhattan in Florence

May 12, 2017 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

I was excited silly to pass this movie poster yesterday morning at the Stensen in Florence – for shows this weekend of a revamped version of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, in English – and as my kind co-parent was with me, he agreed to mind the kids that evening so I could go to and see it. And I did!

This really is a treat for me. As a parent I don’t get to see many movies at home, and I definitely don’t get to the cinema very often. As a parent abroad I don’t get to see many films in English, that is, subtitled and not dubbed – “in v.o.” or original version. And in glorious black and white? A Woody Allen classic? On my own?!!

Italians are very serious about their cinema. Everyone seems to have studied the great masters, know all about Italy’s place in neo-realism, key directors and movements. When I studied in Florence back in the early 90s I took a course on the history of Italian film. Needing a break from Antonioni and Pasolini I felt a strong need to attend each week’s English-language programme in Florence, Hollywood specials. I had no TV then nor, oddly, any internet either – so what did I do?

On Thursday nights I’d cycle across to the other side of the Arno and join the other temporary foreigners outside the Goldoni Theatre (now thankfully back in service as a theatre). The ticket was, I think, 4,000 lire and there was a bar, which still seemed out of my studenty capacity. There was usually a double-bill and a couple of us were known to find a way to stay out of sight, with the help of the enormous red velvet curtain in the foyer, to ensure we got to see the second film.

This was 1993, the year of Schindler’s List, Fearless, The Age of Innocence, The Fugitive, The Piano, In the Name of the Father. Wasn’t I lucky?

I’m a middling Woody Allen fan and it’s been years since I’ve seen any of his films – they never showed up on Norwegian tv, are in the local library here (see my other blog post on that experience) and I’m too old to be a downloader. What I’ve been craving about him, or at least his old classics, is the New York spirit only he can endow us through his words, images and neuroses. I lived for 4 years in New York and studied some photography courses, going to many movies there too, so it’s in my bones.

So how was the film?

Someone from the cinema stood up to give the requisite Italian lecture before any public event. He was younger than me and I was younger than the rest of the audience, but he was the expert in the room. He explained that this was a digital version made from the original negative: “I can see there are a lot of movie buffs in the cinema, I’m sure you’ve all seen this classic many times on TV, but you should know the story well so you shouldn’t have any trouble following the subtitles … the people in Bologna offered us a dubbed version, and we all of course love the great Italian dubber from the original … but I’ve watched the first bit and I’m sure you’ll find the dialogue easy to follow … and the philology fits with this overall genre, such as it is …”, more waffle and then shuffling of feet “…. anyway let’s roll the film“.

Seeing a Woody Allen classic after many years, and now as a parent, I saw it in a different light. It turns out I am now the age Woody Allen was in the film, 42. Imagine! I found the story to be very tender, not much happens except relationships folding and unfolding. I’m sure many have found it dated, out of whack, hard to relate to, but I enjoyed its honesty and simplicity

“I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.”

I was surprised to find the female characters to be just as interesting and grownup as the men, it wasn’t quite as sexist as other old movies we’ve been watching with the kids at home, although everyone in the cinema (and most of the characters in the story) seemed a bit squeamish about Woody’s 17-year girlfriend. The main supporting character is of course the gorgeousness of New York, shown off with a lush Gershwin score. The style of filming is amazing, the photography fantastic and the city is still fresh after all these years.

“Why can’t we have frankfurters?
– Because, this is the Russian Tea Room.”

No-one in the film has a cellphone or laptop, Diane Keaton (who’s amazing) has one up on Woody Allen by having a typewriter in her apartment (smoking while she taps away at it), and people went for walks, sat at the movies, got bored, and most of all – had long conversations. Do they still do that in New York? They ceratinly do here in Italy and that was the most old-fashioned thing about it. It wasn’t dated though, the anxieties, feelings, confusions of the characters feel just as fresh to me, though no doubt many other updated viewers will disagree.

“I can’t express anger. That’s one of the problems I have. I grow a tumor instead.”

The Italians in the audience chuckled as much as I did, mostly at the same jokes. They were a very appreciate audience, one of the best parts about going to the cinema. I noticed that almost all the superlatives in the film – terrific, wonderful, amazing, awesome – were translated to Italian as perfetto (perfect). That’s quite a task for a translator – Woody Allen.

“It’s an interesting group of people, your friends are.
– I know.
Like the cast of a Fellini movie.”

Call me when Annie Hall is showing.

Filed Under: Florence, Italy Tagged With: Cinema, Manhattan

Finding Hitchcock

January 12, 2017 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

The time has come for us to start weaning our children off the films that only they want to watch. In the age of Netflix it’s so easy to leave them to their  own devices, literally, and we have to make an effort to sit together and watch a film as a family: their dad and I are reliving our own glowing memories from childhood of enjoying films as a family together on the couch (including hiding behind it as Indy battles with the snakes).

So to start our plan to watch more interesting films, together, we started with Star Wars (it took a couple of goes but then they really took to the fantastical element of it and have now seen every film), Singin in the Rain (who doesn’t love Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds?) and then Back to the Future (lots of swearing and we had to explain what a Walkman is).

But we needed a good adventure film, with spies and suspense and action. My own favourite is North by Northwest – so we thought we’d start with that. We’re unapologetically old-school and we like watching a physical movie on the TV screen, so before going jumping onto Amazon to buy a copy I thought I’d try the library. Yes, very old-school.

Over our years of living in foreign countries, we’ve become experts on making the most of the library system wherever we are, especially for browsing films. This goes back to our time in New York (around 1999-2002) when we lived close to the fabulous Brooklyn Public Library. We would indulge in raiding their film catalogue, scanning each shelf at a time and carting home our tote bag laden down with a few brick-like VHS tapes, many of which then refused to work that Saturday night. But we enjoyed catching up on some random choices like Powell & Pressburger and Kurosawa, and watching anything with music by Michel Legrand or hair by Veronica Lake. We were also lucky during our 7 years in Oslo to live close to the central library there (the grandly named Deichmanske Bibliotek) and had lots of cinema to choose from, though the foreign-language films often had no English subtitles so we no doubt missed out on a few years’s worth of Brazilian and Hong Kong blockbusters.

So here I am now looking for the 1959 Hitchcock classic to watch with our kids and I head to our local library in Fiesole – it’s a small town and we’re lucky to have a library. It actually has a decent selection of classic and modern films on DVD, and still some VHS. Because there are surely some Tuscan households that still use one.

I start to browse through the DVDs for North by Northwest. I look for the letter N in the titles. No joy, the titles are all a bit jumbled and not shelved according to any alphabet I know. I look to see if they might be organised by genre, or then by country – Italian vs non-Italian. Still no luck.

I interrupt the librarian at her desk, she looks up and smiles (as they do the world over). “How are your DVDs organised?” And she answers, “Oh they’re shelved according to director”.

Of course they are. This is after all the nation of cinema lovers: Italians take their cinema extremely seriously and worship their filmmakers as much as their Renaissance artists. Who wouldn’t know their Pasolini from their Fellini, or even their Spielberg from their Scorsese? Fair enough, I’ve actually studied some of this stuff myself and I can find them on these shelves.

But when it comes to more popular movies, what do you do? What about all those mindless action movies, sequels, random 1970s family movies? Could you name the director of any Bond movie or the auteur behind Frozen?

Still, I have an easy one and I find the Hitchcock selection.  Here’s a nice range of his titles, but they’ve changed all the names! (I’m sure they didn’t do that in Norway.) But these do sound quite nice in Italian: “I 39 Scalini” (The 39 Steps) and “Rebecca, La Prima Moglie” (the first wife). But no sign of Cary Grant in his immaculate suit. I do take home the Man who Knew Too Much (which proved to be a bit spookier than I’d remembered, Hitch uses lack of music to great effect).

With no luck at this library I check the central library in Florence next time I’m in the centre of town. It’s a relatively-recent library, in a lovely renovated old convent. But the contents are a different story. Their cinema section proves to be less organised than our own up here and it’s clear they get a lot more customers, or at least ones who have DVD-players equipped with steel teeth. The films are here organised differently: by title. Heimat sits between Harold & Maude and Heat. Who makes these decisions? Who knows?

The DVDs are shoved downwards into pull-out shelves and you have to make an effort to look through them. Still, I stumble on some fun titles I wouldn’t otherwise see, like this collection of four Jacques Tati films (which has about half the contents intact):

But still no North by Northwest and then I realise – of course they’ve changed the name of that one too! Taking out my phone I cobble onto the sickly Wi-Fi offered by the library and discover online that I should actually be looking for “Intrigo Internazionale” – International Intrigue. (Which is odd, as the film doesn’t go much further than South Dakota.) They don’t have it, but at least now I’m armed with more information.

In the end I find the movie in the Feltrinelli bookshop near the Duomo – they have a cheap DVD section upstairs. For 8 euros we can keep it all to ourselves and build up our own little library at home. And sort them however we like.

P.S. The kids really enjoyed it and had loads of questions about it afterwards, mostly about guns and kisses.

P.P.S Here’s a list of all the Hitchcock titles in Italian if you’re interested.

Filed Under: Florence, Language, Translation Tagged With: Cinema, Library

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Wash Your Language

Wash Your Language

Musings on language and daily life in Ireland with memories from Canada, Italy and Norway

Wash Your Language

2 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Here's one from the archives - back before I had a dog, I'd spend many waking hours looking at other peoples' dogs. Whatever the breed. ... See MoreSee Less

Besotted by Bassets - wash your language

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It’s becoming a saga – this business of our family not yet having a dog. My elder daughter and I spend a lot of time discussing breeds and looking at other people’s dogs. Like this little fella ...
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Wash Your Language

3 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Ever feel like your day is full of cliches? Check out this piece written by my clever, fellow Dublin writer, Stephen Brady. -------At the crack of dawnI rose and shoneHad a breakfast of championsAnd blew out the stopsGrabbed the bull by the hornsAnd hit the streetTo meet and greetThe great unwashed;I wended my wayTo join the clubWaiting for the rubOf the greenTo set the sceneOf what might have been.I left no stone unturnedWhile the home fires burnedAnd the powers-that-beHad an air of mystery.But the empty vesselsMade an unholy noiseAnd the unstoppable forceMet the immoveable objectAnd the next thing I knewIt was an open-and-shut caseOf “we are where we are”where I was.At the eleventh hourIn my ivory towerI circled the wagonsGot my ducks in a row;I let sleeping dogs layWhere every dog has his dayAnd all the world was a stageWhen we were on the same pageI was flavour of the month‘Til I was yesterday’s newsMy talk was cheapBut I didn’t lose sleepThen it hit me like a ton of bricks!I’d been out of the loopLanded right in the soupAnd I was the last to knowI should have gone with the flow. At the end of the dayIt was a game of two halvesI was ahead by a noseBut got pipped at the postBy the Host with the MostAnd if turnabout is fair playYou could colour-me-amazedWhen the chickens I countedDidn’t come home to roost.For the grass it is greenerWhere the rolling stones gatherNo moss.(No loss.) Too many cooks spoiled my brothAnd a soft answer turn’d away WrathBut there were too many chiefsAnd not enough indians.Many hands made light workOf my best-laid plans(I’d had the whole world in my hands!)So I beat a retreatTo a threadbare roomWhere I quietly fumedTil the sun was under the yardarmAnd the daydodgilydamnablydone.-----Also available on the Inkslingers blog here. inkies.ie/record-of-a-day-rendered-entirely-in-cliches-by-stephen-brady/ ... See MoreSee Less

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Wash Your Language

3 months ago

Wash Your Language
Here's a (true) story I wrote and told at an event in Belfast last year. It's the tale of the accordion that travelled many places with me and which I decided to pass on to someone who would need it more than me. The nice folk at BBC Radio Ulster recorded some of the stories from the event and you can hear it here (the first one). www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fr7t46 And if you have an instrument to donate in Ireland you can find the Gift of Music to Ukrainians page here. www.facebook.com/groups/5018344234885700with Tenx9washyourlanguage.com/the-accordions-tale/ ... See MoreSee Less

The Accordion's Tale - wash your language

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I wrote down this tale of an accordion looking for a new life, and I told it at a storytelling event in Belfast last November – the wonderful Tenx9 monthly event. The theme was Small World, and so t...
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Wash Your Language

4 months ago

Wash Your Language
Amazing! ... See MoreSee Less

South African firefighters sing and dance after arriving at Edmonton's airport

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More than 200 South African firefighters deployed to help combat Canada's wildfires performed a dance at Edmonton's airport.Subscribe to CTV News to watch mo...

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Wash Your Language

6 months ago

Wash Your Language
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Wash my language?

Språkvask is the Norwegian word for proofing text. Literally it means “language wash”; a more poetic way of saying it!

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