Are foreign language films becoming more popular?
Tuesday, 17th March 2009
In much of the English-speaking world it is fairly unusual for a film in a language other than English to become very popular.
This may be because some English-speaking audiences don’t like watching films with subtitles very much, or because some foreign films might appear inaccessible, too intellectual or too lacking in action.
Occasionally a foreign language film does become popular among English speakers. The kungfu films of Ang Lee, such as ’Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon‘ are good examples of this. Even though they are in Mandarin Chinese and have cultural-specific stories, they achieved worldwide popularity. More recently Woody Allen’s latest film, ’Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona‘, which features quite a bit of dialogue in Spanish, won an Oscar and many other rewards.
While ‘Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona’ is partly in Spanish, it isn’t really a foreign film as it has an American director and partly American cast, and Spanish is the most widely-spoken and studied foreign language in the USA, so that might make it more accessible to American audiences.
The winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and of quite a few other awards, was in fact Departures (Okuribito), a Japanese film about an unemployed classical musician who goes to work at a morturary.
One interesting trend is for Hollywood to remake films from Europe and elsewhere, a process which involves translating them into English, bringing in some big stars, increasing the budgets, and in some cases, almost completely re-writing them. The Hollywood makeover they receive is supposed to make them more accessible to audiences outside their country of origin, and while such films don’t always do well in America, they are often popular in other parts of the world. Another advantage is that they can be sold as original productions in the States because few people will have seen the originals.
Foreign language films are rarely promoted with the massive budgets devoted to Hollywood films, one reason, perhaps why they don’t attract as many people. Therefore it’s usually hard for them to compete. Low budget British films have a simliar problem. However some films do become popular through screenings at film festivals and in art cinemas, a popularity which can spread via word-of-mouth in person and online until they become big hits. If they win an Oscar or other major award as well, this can help to boost their popularity.
Tags: english, spanish, french, german, italian, festival, language
