Today’s post will once again belong to the category of “knowledge which the world doesn’t really need, but that must be spread anyway”! ;) The day before yesterday I watched again the wonderful movie “The Name of the Rose”. At one scene, I was a little confused, because the narrator voice of old Adso of Melk suddenly sounded different and way too young, but I dismissed it as imagination for the moment. But then, in a later scene, the unforgivable happened: For a short time, Sean Connery’s lovely German Captain Kirk dubbing voice made way for another one, which, according to some people, sounds as if it came from an old, cheap porn movie – and they are right.
How could that happen? In my memory, I can still hear that scene being spoken by my beloved Gert Günther Hoffmann voice. There was nothing wrong with it, the content was the same, there was no error in the text. So why has it been re-dubbed?

One can only speculate, but it probably happened somewhat like this: In 1986, the movie was completely dubbed as usual with the “old”, familiar voices. Some time later, the movie was aired on TV by ZDF, and since it was probably a little too long for the evening program, a couple of rather unimportant scenes were cut out. So far, so good. But then the Warner company decided to release a DVD version of the movie in 2004. And for some reason they were apparently unable to find the uncut German movie sound track for that DVD. Instead, they took the sound track of the shortened ZDF television version and had the apprentice from the human resources department quickly re-speak the scenes that lacked synchronization. (Ok, I made up the apprentice, but the rest is true. ;) )

I’ve cut the two scenes together for comparison. First you hear the original synchronization, then the cheap one by Warner. I don’t know if it comes across well in this short clip, but if you’re watching the whole movie and have already immersed yourself in this epos for over an hour, the sudden change of voices really destroys a lot. (Apart from that, the second Ubertino suddenly tells us that a “net” will be falling from the sky instead of a star, and William envies Ubertino’s “side”. Linguistically, the translation is just as crappy as soundwise.)

So, if you plan to get this movie or watch it again in German and you want an undiluted movie pleasure, make sure that it’s not the normal or special edition by Warner, but for example the newer DVD or Blu-ray disc by Kinowelt from 2010. (Don’t be irritated by the trailer that you can watch on Amazon – they used yet different voices there again! However, that is not the case in the movie itself.)

PS: Funny, what the Google translator suggested me while I was translating this post.