BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Capital letters not surprising/relevant. It's Italian. They capitalize different. Proper English would capitalize different words.

Proper english = They capitalise differently.

[MichaelB]

Under virtually all other circumstances, it would indeed be Il vangelo secondo Matteo in Italian, but 'Vangelo' is capitalised for religious reasons, in much the same way that we generally write 'the Gospel'.

But in general, Italian is one of the easier languages to get to grips with in terms of capitalisation - usually the rule is that the first letter of the title and any proper names get capitalised, but the rest are left lower case.

[zitherstrings]

Capital letters not surprising/relevant. It's Italian. They capitalize different. Proper English would capitalize different words.

Proper english = They capitalise differently.

No, if different is in the title it is capitalized. Such as: A Different World

Though yes, they also capitalise differently. Such as: Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

[otis]

I'm still in favour of the change.

Whatever the ins and outs of the original Italian phrasing, there is no doubt that the word 'saint' does not appear - and so adding it to the English version constitutes an editorial decision by definition. In this particular case, it also runs the risk of adding a spiritual dimension to the title that Pasolini may not have intended.

So it seems to me that the easiest way of avoiding that risk is to opt for a completely literal translation - which, handily, also happens to read well in English (unlike Thieves of Bicycles or Whisperings and Cries). Even more handily, the end result is almost identical to the previous "official" title, to the extent that it's hard to imagine anyone getting confused as to which film is being released.

I wasn't arguing against the translation that MoC are using, just suggesting that the booklet note seems to be to be over/mis-interpreting the significance of the original title.

[Perkins Cobb]

Like I'm going to listen to the English ... they can't even spell capitalize right.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Like I'm going to listen to the English ... they can't even spell capitalize right.

Precizely. A propos precizion please don't characterize all British people as "English."

[MichaelB]

Like I'm going to listen to the English ... they can't even spell capitalize right.

No, we spell 'capitalise' correctly.

[evillights]

A few notes on the title presentation:

-The title-card presents the film in all-caps. It's anyone's guess as to whether the proper Italian rendering would be "Il vangelo secondo Matteo" or "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo." It's a matter of whether the author (Pasolini) felt that the gospels were the Gospels, or the gospels. We do not know. Relying on instinctive sensibility and osmotic inference, we went with "Il vangelo."

-The no-saint/saint thing: There's no "saint" in the Italian. Precedent in other English translations (e.g., "St. Matthew's Passion") might append the "St.,", and there might be good cause, or not. My feeling is that what's there is there, and that it's a feature of the Italian that it can incorporate at once both an acknowledgement of "no-'St.'," and of "'St.'," simultaneously — or one as opposed to the other. All languages have their features. For example: it's slightly ridiculous that "le boulanger" might be translated as "the baker" while "la boulangère" be translated as "the bakery girl." Why not "the baker man," and "the baker," respectively? One solution — inelegant, but to humor the discussion of solutions — would be: "the bakerman" and "the bakerwoman." The translation of "La Chinoise" as "The Chinese Girl" has always completely sucked.

On another point, one could always take issue with transposing the Italian-conception-of-Matthew-as-"Matteo" to "Matthew" plain and simple. Why not 'The Gospel According to Matteo'? The debate here would follow similar faultlines (though a bit more theoretically, a bit more pedantically), than the French referring to Raúl Ruiz as "Raoul Ruiz", or Aleksandr Sokurov as "Alexandre Sokurov" (or particular Americans and Brits referring to him as "Alexander").

Everything is a matter of flux, sensibility, and making a decision without coming off as a total fusty-bot in the way that filmmakers tend not to be, but critics and pedants usually are.

ck.

[Hail_Cesar]

This is why I prefer original language cover versus translation... (people can actually talk about the films instead of the translation)

[peerpee]

Original language cover, on a well known film, means that few people can find it to buy it. With everyone searching for "THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST MATTHEW" at least "THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW" will hit. Even folk that might locate "IL VANGELO SECONDO MATTEO" might not know it's what they're looking for.

[swo17]

Might I suggest the following more ambiguous, less controversial write-up:

A NOTE ON THE TITLE: While Pier Paolo Pasolini’s work may engage with religious themes, symbols, and ideas, it might also not? His work might not be religious in any straightforward understanding of the term, but could be very much so in a more roundabout way. Indeed, Pasolini is believed to have been an atheist (but probably wasn't--who can say?) The director’s complex, deeply considered relationship with religion, which all things considered was actually fairly casual, is apparent in the titling of his 1964 film...or is it? Notably, the original Italian (Il vangelo secondo Matteo) does not include the word “saint” (i.e. santo) though we could be wrong about that. Despite this deliberate choice, which may or may not have been an accident, Il vangelo secondo Matteo was distributed in the UK (and in other countries where English is rumoured to be spoken) according to some people who say they saw it but are probably lying, under the title The Muppets Take Manhattan. In a 1969 interview with himself, which was possibly only imagined, Pasolini responded in unequivocal, ecumenical fashion.

Question: “Who controls things like changing the title of a film – because you presumably know Il vangelo secondo Matteo was changed in England…”

Answer: “You do not know that. Nothing is knowable.”

It is for this reason, i.e. to confuse people named Matthew, that we present Il vangelo secondo Matteo under the second title that came to our heads, just to be difficult.

[knives]

Criterion did have a note on L'Avventura and they didn't even translate that title, so a tiny note in then booklet is probably the best way to solve this problem.

[MichaelB]

Criterion did have a note on L'Avventura and they didn't even translate that title, so a tiny note in then booklet is probably the best way to solve this problem.

L'Avventura is one of those titles, like La dolce vita or Pierrot le fou, that's so widely known in the original that it's hard to imagine a viable English version - I've never seen The Adventure, The Sweet Life or Crazy Pete (yes, that is indeed the official English title!) referred to except in a context identical to this one.

It's impossible to predict what will work in English or the original language. Certainly, the original language version has to be immediately graspable and pronounceable by a native English speaker, so there was never any chance of Ostře sledované vlaky or Człowiek z żelaza prevailing over Closely Observed Trains/Closely Watched Trains or Man of Iron - though we did nonetheless get Sátántangó instead of Satan's Tango, presumably because it's close enough and the accents make it look enticingly exotic. And I wonder whether Baise-moi! was simply considered more acceptable (at least in terms of advertising) than Fuck Me!?

[knives]

I was referring to the note that mentioned all of the connotations that avventura has in Italian so something like La dolce vita isn't comparable to what they did. It's just a little note saying that avventura can mean adventure or fling. Something similar here stating that while santo is missing from the original title it is difficult to say definitively Passolini's intentions because of certain aspects of Italian grammar in regards to the word, but considering the realist intentions of the film they feel that ambiguity is important to keep.

[John Edmond]

[accatone]

German titel for Pierrot is Elf Uhr nachts - which is "11pm at night"…very interesting translation. One wonders where this is coming from?

[Tommaso]

Germans can't pronounce French, that's why. They also changed "She wore a yellow ribbon" to "Der Teufelshauptmann" (i.e. The devilish captain, although this translation doesn't really convey the German connotation of Wayne being a daredevil or at least a cool guy).

[knives]

Devilish can have that connotation, ala devilish wit, even if that's not the first thing that comes to mind.

[Hail_Cesar]

Germans can't pronounce French, that's why. They also changed "She wore a yellow ribbon" to "Der Teufelshauptmann" (i.e. The devilish captain, although this translation doesn't really convey the German connotation of Wayne being a daredevil or at least a cool guy).

Some American English pronounce Breathless "A bout de soufflé". I always have a good laugh when it happens... Crazy Pete is just awful though...

Some sticker with the English title on the wrapping over the original title would be nice.

[Gregory]

The funniest English rendering of a film title I've seen was on Auteurs/Mubi a couple years ago. Someone had posted a Buñuel filmography with all the titles translated into English, and El was listed as "The."

[otis]

German titel for Pierrot is Elf Uhr nachts - which is "11pm at night"…very interesting translation. One wonders where this is coming from?

And the Italian title is Il Bandito delle 11 - "The 11 o'clock Bandit":

[zedz]

Further information for the title translation issue, make of it what you will:

In the first ten minutes of Sopralluoghi in Palestina (which is all I sampled), Pasolini does indeed refer to John's Gospel as "In vangelo secondo San Giovanni."

And in the A futura memoria documentary there are a couple of even more perplexing / intriguing instances.

First, Franco Fortini, who had his first big falling out with Pasolini over the movie, calls Pasolini's film "Il vangelo secondo San Matteo." I was wondering whether or not he was trying to score some obscure rhetorical point by so doing, but then the politician Giulio Andreotti also refers to the film with the "San" intact, in a much more casual context, as if he'd never noticed that that wasn't actually the title of the film.

I'm wondering if the "San" is just automatically added in oral Italian but normally left out when the title of a gospel is written down, or some other peculiarity of usage. It's pretty hard to account for these three instances of "San" being included (versus none of it being omitted) otherwise if the information upthread about its non-use in Italian is correct.

[frenzy]

Just stumbled across this in "Lutheran Letters" from translator Stuart Hood: "His next film was a passionate and faithful rendering of The Gospel According to Matthew [the attribution 'saint' was deliberately omitted]." This is from 1988.

[evillights]

Full release details for disc and booklet, now live at the MoC site.

[ellipsis7]

Seriously impressive and tantalising package!