I have just finished watching this wonderful film.... in English. My mother says that she saw it some years ago and distinctly recalls it being in Italian. Were there two different versions made? The one I just saw (rented on DVD from LoveFilms) clearly wasn't dubbed as I checked the lip movement. I would love to see it in Italian if there is one available.
shareI'm not going to delete the above post as hopefully I will get people's thought's on it, but I have since discovered that I was wrong - it was dubbed, and there are a number of complaints about it on the LoveFilms website. Also the picture is pretty dodgy (apparently a transfer straight from a ropey video tape). What a shame. I hope I one day get to see it in all it's glory in the original Italian!
shareI too saw a dubbed version of a VHS presented on DVD, but by a different distributor. I was surprised that there were no setup options when I put the disk in the player. However, given the movie's age, I'm not entirely surprised that it was dubbed for a North American audience. Since this film received two Oscar nods and both Loren and Mastroianni were huge, international stars, the distributor would do everything possible to capitalize on that while marketing the film and trying to make a buck. American audiences were notoriously shy of subtitles well into VHS period.
Personally, and I know I'm in the minority here, I generally prefer a high-quality dubbed version. When presented with the choice of subtitles or an English language track I usually select to listen rather than read. I prefer to look at the faces, sets, etc rather than concentrate on keeping up with the subtitles, but that said, I've read over a thousand films in the last decade and a half. In terms of the dubbed voices, they worked quite well on this film (surprising given the sad state of the video transfer). And lest we forget, Italian films were rarely made with synchronized, recorded sound - dialogue was usually recorded separately. So, as a matter of course, most Italian movies we hold up as great examples of cinematic art are dubbed into Italian. And yes, I realize we receive only a portion of the actor's performance in a dubbed verion - ultimately, my preference would be to have command of every language so I'd never need someone to translate the film for me, but that's not going to happen, well, not until someone gives me a Babelfish.
As poor as the transfer was, the dubbing here was quite good - good enough for me to suspend my disbelief and pay attention to the story. And since my Italian is quite limited, I would still be relying on someone's translation if I were to watch a subtitled version. So while I'd love to see a restored version, say Criterion Collection release, of this film, I can also live the rest of my life quite content that I saw a marvelous, wonderful, moving piece of cinema. I would never, in a million years, have expected such words to come from the mouth of a character played by Mastroianni, but maybe it took such a womanizer to say them in 1977. And have them ring true.
I'm still in awe.
You'll be pleased to know Lovefilm now have the Blu-Ray in Italian and a perfect sepia picture.