Maybe a song by French singer Jacques Dutronc in the 70's:
"La fille du Père Noël"
C'était la fille du Père Noël
J'étais le fils du Père Fouettard
Elle s'appelait Marie-Noëlle
Je m'appelais Jean-Balthazar
What are the english words for "père fouettard" ?
(the one who whips naughty children while Santa Claus (le Père Noël) give presents to good ones)
I'm pretty sure there isn't an English translation for "pere fouettard," at least not for Americans. That character isn't a Christmas tradition over here. I don't know about Canadians or the British, though.
shareThanks for your reply.
I suspected that, I think he comes from East of France and/or Germany.
(No German-American (if this concept is relevant) here to help ?)
He stands for the devil and/or the butcher of Santa Claus' legend.
In fact the song was on Jacques Dutronc's first album/7" released in 1966 .
I thought I was young but I did not remember I was THAT young.
In short, he discovers Santa Claus' daughter (!) in his socks on Christmas morning but she is here by mistake and love is impossible.
Jacques Dutronc is indexed is this Movie Data base as he played in several French movies.
I just remembered something I learned in German class--According to German folklore, "Black Peter" is the guy who punishes bad children by putting coal in their stockings. Maybe he whips them too, but my teacher didn't mention that part. Maybe that's who he was talking about?
shareWell, the German name of this person you're talking about is "Knecht Ruprecht"..if that helps...but what has thats got to do with what the movie-title is referencing??
shareThe French title is a line from that song. But I like the English title.
- A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.
The title is a "two-triggers" referency (I am not sure of the english for "double-gachette") : it was extracted from the lyrics of this Jacques Dutronc's song about the "Père Fouettard", this french nemesis of Santa Claus, and by construction shows at some time in your life you must not identify with your sacred father's bad aspects.
The global theme of the film is the necessary killing of the Father, in order to become a man, and achieve your own personality.
I had a chance to attend a special screening of the film which coincided with the co-script writer, Tonino Benacquista's book launch last week. He said at first they didn't have the title. One of them suggested to use a phrase from Dutronc's song as a working title and in the end they decided to keep it.
I find doctorrugger's opinion about the film is totally unacceptable. In fact he completely missed the message of the film.
"The global theme of the film is the necessary killing of the Father, in order to become a man, and achieve your own personality". What does he mean?
Tom loves his father that's why he reluctantly lends his hand to help him which leads a tragic consequence. The film is about a young man who struggles to reconcile his artistic ambition with mediocre life. Tom doesn't have to kill anyone even the very Russian thug who ordered to kill his father. At the end of the film we see Tom is a different man who used to be a lowlife and happier to find a better life.
Well, thank you for the explanation of the title! I knew the song, though not that well...
I agree with kewpie, I think that one misses many aspects of movies by just analyzing them with Freudian concepts ("to kill the father..."). And what I really liked about this movie, it's that it tried to avoid expected clichés: see the end for example. But hush...no spoiler.
In refernce to Doctorrugger's
"The global theme of the film is the necessary killing of the Father, in order to become a man, and achieve your own personality."
and Kewpie's reply
"The film is about a young man who struggles to reconcile his artistic ambition with mediocre life."
I agree and disagree with parts of both.
Tom does love his father but it is only in the tragedy of his fathers death that he can truly become himself. he is of course pained at the death but when we see him attending the concert at the end, he has left behind everything to do with his fathers influence. Despite an emotional and seemingly meaningful fling with his friends' wife Aline, it is Miao-Lin he is with at the end and we are to presume that he has no more dealings with his associates His complete detachment from his violent life can only be brought about by his father halting his strong influence iver him.
Evidence can be seen in Robert's manipulation over his son in situatuons like the "couscous" that owes money and in his dealings with Minskov. Tom reluctantly but reliably clears up after his father. Only once this cycle is broken can Tom discover who he is. The decisive climax comes with Tom holding a gun to Minskov's head, only to find he can not fire.
The ending is beautifully conclusive as the final shot concentrates on Tom's bloody hands as they tap out classic piano.
It is HIS reading of the movie and it has to be respected for what it is.
You have your own reading, he has his own.
My reading is that he had two models to follow: his mom and his father. His mom died, he followed his father's model and when he sees what his father has become he decides to follow mom's model.
Being a wealthy real estate thug or a poor but happier musician...
He has many choices to make, include many woman to sleep with.
"Black Peter" or in German "Schwarzer Peter" is actually a traditional German/Austrian card game. It became a common saying "to give someone the black peter" or to simply "having the black peter" means that you drew the a$$ card. Like you're in bad luck. Everyone's fine but it's always you who has bad luck. That's when you have the "schwarzer peter". Though, the saying is widely outdated due to the racist undertone. (and it's good that it's gone in my opinion).
The guy you are talking about, the one with the coals is actually "Knecht Ruprecht" (Germany) or "Krampus" (Austria) and traditionally appears on the 5th of december followed by Nikolaus-Day on the 6th.
use this: http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/IA57/LeMarmot/fouettar.htm
with this: http://www.google.ca/language_tools?hl=en
and should get some answers to some of ur questions.
interesting fact is when i typed 'pere fouettard' in google's language tools, it translated it as 'bogeyman'. i think this character exists in most occidental countries. he just has different names as well as various origins.
as for the title, i havent seen the movie yet but i read some about it and made myself a general idea of the subject. to me it was refering to a dark life period, the kind everyone experiences at least once in his life. some are longer than others. some lucky people know why they are not happy and hopefully change their life style in order to fit their own personnality or needs. for many possible reasons others are just blind and will eventually die unsatisfied. it works for both language. as for the french title, without passion, life is tasteless. it's like a little death, like the heart stops beating. and later on in ur life when u remember this wrong path u once followed u could think of it as a beat that ur heart would have skipped.
nice thread btw.
gl & hf.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
To me, you hear the line the mother says when he's listening the recording of her, i believe it goes "i can't play, i have the feeling like my heart has skipped a beat" or something of that ilk, so from then on we are led to believe it will be when he plays the piano at some point ie for a big concert his heart will skip a beat, a great moment. Yet i felt that his heart skipped a beat when he had the opportunity to kill the russian.
Then again i could be misreading it completely, just my first impression.
Although it would tie in with his choice between the artisan and the thug or the mother and father. There is also the connotation of skipping beats, musicians feeling the beat or absence of music...i dunno.....hope this makes sense to someone.
alex
I think I agree.
I think the mother at the beginning says "my heart is beating too fast," but I could be wrong - only saw it a couple of hours ago but my memory is appalling.
Further to what you said, skipping beats makes you (or me, anyway..) think of missing out, getting timing wrong, and then missing opportunities. Which is fairly relevent to the film, heh.
“We've got to go on living no matter how many skies have fallen."
You're right, there is something the mother (actually Duris' sister) is saying on the tape, but also it's the song by Dutronc, and Audiard says in an interview he just put that line from Dutronc down because he was listening a lot to Dutronc and he needed to put down something to refer to the film by. I found this on the Nouvelle Observateur site http://artsetspectacles.nouvelobs.com/cinema/cinema2105_086.html:
une des raisons pour lesquelles (en hommage à la chanson de Dutronc) le cœur du héros s’arrête de battre, c’est que son père (Niels Arestrup) sombre, et que le jeune homme va devenir grand en le prenant en main. «J’ai voulu, explique l’auteur-réalisateur, parler de ce moment-clé de toutes les vies humaines où l’enfant, mûrissant, devient brusquement le père de son père. On pense à Dumas fils: "Mon père, cet enfant que j’ai eu quand j’étais petit."»
This explains the concept: not killing the father, but taking on the role of the father of your father, which we see Tom doing with Niels Arestrup's character in the film when he has to protect him and nurse him. As I understand this passage roughly it means: "one reason why (in homage to the Dutronc song) the hero's heart stops beating is his father (Niels Arestrup), and that the young man is going to grow up by taking him by the hand. 'I wanted to talk about this key moment in every human life when the child, maturing, all of a sudden becomes the father of his father...'" Remember this situation is what the character, Tom's pal, is talking about in the opening scene, when he's telling Tom about how in his father's last days he had to take care of him just like a little baby and it made him sad as hell but he loved it too.
SPOILER
If this explanation is the right one (not sure)...There is an othere moment when his heart skipp a beat. It's when he does the audition and finds out that he cannot play... But again we might be far stretching here
At the end he become neither a Thug, nor a Pianist but an impressarion of his Wife/gf... What his father was calling previously a Pimp (in reference to his mother impressario)...
Makes me think he finaly choose a sort of Middle way. Being an impressario (a pimp/a sortof bad guy) in classical music ???
Well, I am sorry that my "killing the father" theme was inadequatly interpreted. I think I am mainly responsible of it, for my feable knowledge of english language can have led to an over-simplification of my thought. What I meant was "killing the father as a father image". At the beginning of the film Tom's father is both the representation of Strength and Righteousness in his son's mind. The theme of the film is the story of the fall of this Commanding image. Only lingers the legitimate love of a son for his father, even a destitute father.
Don't forget that Tom's father is basically a "bad" person (the "père fouettard" of the song)and Tom manages to struggle his way out of his negative influence by the grace of music.
I think the final image of the film is very telling. The hands - the mother, the pianist, the artist - moving as if playing, spattered with blood - the father, the violence. The two are still present. He has not shaken off the father, nor fully matched the achievement of the mother.
shareIf this explanation is the right one (not sure)...There is an othere moment when his heart skipp a beat. It's when he does the audition and finds out that he cannot play... But again we might be far stretching here
I don't think that you are, not at all. It is that beat that his heart keeps skipping, which is caused by the chaos and the commotion in his life, which was preventing him from reaching the inner calm required in order to become a skillful pianist. And he skips that beat even more so at the audition, considering the commotion he had gone through the night before. His mother couldn't play when her heart was beating too fast, and neither could he - but his heart was already set on beating fast, it had become its way of beating in those past 10 years since he had been tending his father's business.
Considering all this, he had managed to make the best out of himself. I mean previously he was his father's protector, it seems that he had made a profession out of pimping, so becoming the pimp of a beautiful piano artist was still a way of escaping the gutter. A sad way, though the back door, but out of the gutter nonetheless...
Words, Mr. Sullivan, are precious things. And they are not to be tempered with!
Could a native French speaker please translate the idiom "De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté" both literally and figuratively? I speak French as a second language (verrry "second"), and if I'm not mistaken the literal translation is
"To beat, my heart stopped"
This seems somewhat different from the English idiom "The beat my heart skipped". In English it's no big deal, like "I got goosebumps". It's usually used to refer to people falling in love or having a mild scare. But when ones heart "stops"...oooh we're talkin' Death.
Could someone plz clarify this?
Not exactly the answer to your question, but this was the answer to the same question I happened to ask my SO (who is native French) yesterday, after watching the film at Cinefranco Toronto. I was curious which part in the film was it that the character's heart "skipped a beat".
It turns out, that the title is simply the result of rearranging the phrase "Mon coeur s'est arrêté de battre", which translates to "My heart stopped beating" (as you might know already). By putting "de battre" in front, it put more emphasis on that part and makes it more poetic.
In other words, the English title was not an exact translation :-)
Thanks! That pretty much confirms what I was thinking. The French title seems to have a lot more gravity ("My heart stopped beating"). I interpret that to mean more or less "A part of me died."
shareAt first I was a bit puzzled by the English title too. In French it seems entirely simple - My heart stopped beating - so why complicate things by changing the English title so much?
And then I realised that the English version of the title allows it to gain an extra level of meaning that isn't present in the French. 'Beat' has a double meaning in English (heartbeat/musical beat) so it manages to embody the central issue of the film; the struggle between the violent, physical world and the artistic, metered world. This contrast also represents other important ideas such as control versus lack of control, true love versus frivolity and mortality versus immortality.
(Also beat is associated with violence, i.e. to beat someone up, and with triumph, i.e. to beat someone in a competition. I'm sure these secondary meanings could be tied in with the overall meaning of the film too. Bravo to the translator!)
It seems that the equivalent of the "père fouettard" would be the "Grinch",
although he might just be an American "character" if I may say so...
The title could be a reference to Louis Malle's "Murmur of the heart"...there are certainly thematic similarities between the 2 films.
share[deleted]
Did anyone else hear his heart beat at the very, very end of the film? It's a couple seconds before the credits. Listen closely. So I assume he's found his place in life in what he's doing at the moment. (I shan't reveal anything, just to be spoiler-safe.)
shareIn Belgium, there is no Santa Claus. Actually, Santa Claus comes for an andvertissement of Coca-Cola in the 5Oth I think. He's the american transposition of Saint-Nicolas, the saint that protected the children and the students. Saint-Nicolas is not fat, he wears the same clothes than a bishop and he has a donkey instead of reins. Each year on 6 december since centuries, Saint-Nicolas makes presents to children in Belgium (also Netherlands and part of Germany and France but it's along to Santa Claus that doesn't exist in Belgium)if they have been wise and the père fouettard is censed to punish them if they were not wise. Saint-nicolas still existed along with Santa Claus (Père Noël) in the french regions that border Belgium. This tradition of Saint-Nicolas and Père fouettard has absolutely no link with christmas. The fact that Saint-Nicolas is still known in a part of France probably explain why they still know Père fouettard.
Here is a Link if you want to see what they look like : http://images.google.be/images?hl=fr&q=saint-nicolas%20et%20p%C3%A8re%20fouettard&btnG=Rechercher&cr=countryBE&sa=N&tab=wi
Anyway, There is absolutely no link beetween this legend of Saint-Nicolas and Père fouettard and the title of the movie. The title simply means: "To beat my heart has stopped to" or something like that. I'm not fluent in english, sorry.