Original soundtrack?

Some other threads here, as well as an entry in Wikipedia, explain that *ALL* the sound for this and many other films of the time was dubbed. All spoken dialog, even that in the target language, is re-recorded, as is all sound effects. This allows the director to basically ignore all sound issues during filming and gives greater countrol over the final sound quality.

Some modern films, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, still do that. IIRC the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring shows the Council of Elrond scene as originally recorded from various angles and compares it with the edited version. This director did record the original sound, for reference, but the quality of the recorded sound was lousy. I guess getting good sound during filming is not all that easy.

I should also say that the film was intended for both the Italian and the American markets. Some actors did their lines in English and some did them in Italian. As far as I can tell, some actors (like Terence Hill) did some in each language. So, some dubbing HAS to be done for ANY target language.

I guess the advantage of this is that SOME of the lines are in English, so English viewers get comfortable in part of the film and Italian viewers get comfortable in other parts of the film. However, with the old dubbed Japanese movies, English viewers never get comfortable at all since it is ALL dubbed from Japanese into English.

My daughter was an extra in the movie "Nowhere in Africa," and it is obvious that the movie was filmed in FOUR languages (though mostly English and German). Since that movie was about German Jews living in British East Africa, those two languages made sense, and the German characters originally spoke German and the English and African characters spoke English or an African language. It all worked out pretty realistically and well for use English viewers.

In summary, since some dubbing must be done, why not re-record all the lines? (I don't know if that was done for Nowhere in Africa.)

Terence Hill didn't even do his own dubbing for the Italian language version.

His own voice can only be heard in his very first movies and in the Don Matteo TV series from 2000.

I don't know about Spencer (it sometimes sounds like him), but he probably was dubbed by someone else in a couple of movies as well.