Playing in Peoria: Subtitled or Dubbed Movies Rarely Make it to American Movie Screens

Picture John Wayne as Genghis Khan, his head encased in a spike-topped wok, and wearing baggy Mongolian trousers which stop four inches above his ankles. He claps his hands imperiously. Bring on the dancing girls! Hand gripping the pommel of his scimitar (cryptic movie symbolism, you understand), Wayne leers through narrowed eyes at Susan Hayward, who is swirling tempestuously in something diaphanous, and declaims the immortal words, "I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says: Take Her!"

Yessir, this wonderful American movie moment really exists. Since you ask, it was in a 1950s Hollywood extravaganza called "The Conqueror", a jewel of the movie-maker's art which all concerned doubtless spent the rest of their lives drinking to forget.

You think Genghis 'Duke' Khan sounds funny in English? Wait until you hear him dubbed into German. "Dieses tatarische Weib ist für mich, mein' ich...." Ouch! Indeed, according to aficionados of TWMMOAT (i.e. The Worst Movie Moments Of All Time), you haven't really lived until you have sat through an entire John Wayne Western dubbed into Japanese. Heaven only knows what the Japanese make of it all.

The trouble is, movie alienation is a two-way street. American movies, like some vintage wines, may not travel well to other parts of the world, but movies from the rest of the world have a tough time getting into America at all. If you're making "Memoirs of a Geisha" you need bankable, Hollywood-recognized stars, even if they are Chinese instead of Japanese. If movies are sub-titled, they may as well abandon the attempt to reach US audiences. Americans just won't sit and read little white writing at the bottom of the screen and call it entertainment. It's a culture thing.

Which is a pity, because it means that a cornucopia of wonderful movies, and an opportunity to watch how other cultures conduct their business, is passing America by. Successful US movies can take hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office in their domestic market alone, some powered by little more than fright-masks or a series of fart jokes. Yet, as Newsweek International reported (www.newsweek.com "Lost in Translation", Feb 27th, 2006 edition), last year only ten foreign-language movies managed to break America's $1 million revenue barrier, despite 2005 being a banner year for movie creativity worldwide. 2006's most successful foreign film, "Kung Fu Hustle", made no more than $17 million in the US, and did not make America's top 100. Even if it had, it would still not exactly be in the same league as Akira Kurosawa, Francois Truffaut or Pedro Almodovar.

The world is supposed to be getting smaller, and communications technology ought to be bringing nation closer to nation. Yet America has rarely seemed less interested in other countries and cultures, more preoccupied with its own narrow and provincial focus. The legendary movie-maker Harvey Weinstein is worried that the industry's intrinsic isolationism is denying Americans the chance to learn from other cultures.

The US media don't help by neglecting to give coverage to good foreign films. Television simply doesn't air them, convinced that no-one will watch, which of course becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a bit like refusing to eat carrots on the basis that "I've never tried them because I don't like them." DVD distribution companies like Netflix could be the solution, but of the million-and-a-half titles they ship each day, less than 6% are foreign-originated.

But wait. What about the Oscars? Surely the Academy is helping, with its annual Best Foreign Film Award? Don't bet on it. The countries that regularly win the "rest-of-the-world" Oscar learned long ago that they have to make flicks as similar as possible to Hollywood fare to even get in the running. The 2006 winner, "Tsotsi" (Thief) from South Africa is a worthy winner, but director Gavin Hood says that "The issues in the film are very much about the gap between the haves and have-nots. We wanted to make a film about a young guy who's angry and struggling with his own identity. It's a coming of age story, a universal story, that just happens to be set in a quite an extreme place, a shanty-town on the edge of Johannesburg." Translation: not too much would change if it were set in Detroit.

Like it or not, it looks like American movies and entertainment will continue to dominate the home screen. Maybe that's what they mean about the world getting smaller.