I just put this in, and it certainly LOOKS better than I expected (quite bright, colorful and professional.)
The actors lips match up with the dubbed voices, so it seems to have been acted in English. So why are the voices overdubbed in that toneless, uninflected way? It's very surreal and annoying...and alienating.
In Italy (and a few other countries), for many, many years, it was standard practice to almost never shoot with live sound--ALL dialogue was dubbed by the actors later, whether in Italian or English or whatever. (This just makes shooting technically simpler, although of course it does have kind of a disconnecting effect). I don't think the practice is used now--or only very rarely--but still was when "Baba" was made.
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It is f-ing annoying! Though I guess at least it helped them eliminate background noise!
PS: Did Fellini + Pasolini shoot their movies that way?
Absolutely they did. These days more naturalistic Italian features seem to have live sound recording.
I know this is an old post, but the reason Italian films were shot this way is because the distributors knew they were going to be exporting the film to play in foreign markets, so it seemed silly (and costly) to utilize live sound only for the Italian track. These films made a good bulk of their money from foreign distributors and subtitles aren't very popular in most markets, especially America. It was more economical to shoot without sound and dub the actors for various languages.
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