Cinema: Gift of Tongues

Far fields—South America, Europe, Asia—look green to U.S. moviemakers. But there are many fences to jump. One of the highest: the language barrier. Subtitles are only half an answer. Much of the potential audience is illiterate. Dubbing in a translator’s voice for the actor’s is not much better. The actor’s lips say one thing, another comes out.

Last fortnight Manhattan’s Eastern Sound Studios practically cleared the barrier with a new and amazingly good method of dubbing. Evidence: Spellbound in Spanish.

Principal innovations: 1) translations were cut as close to the English sound pattern as possible; 2) translating actors were made to memorize lines, really play the parts themselves; 3) corrections were made by expert sound technicians.

Said the New York Post’s Film Editor Archer Winsten: “The illusion was inescapable that Ingrid Bergman . . . had learned how to speak Spanish.”