How old were you when you first saw a foreign language film?

They even didn't want us to watch their tv (but local radio/tv shops could change that with a special module). Radio was (and still is) free - I preferred the Canadian Forces Radio CAE due to better music than the the BFBS until they closed the station in 1970.

Ugh, they didn't? How stupid, how stupid, in retrospect, in my opinion.

Well, maybe there were crowds there, as it was. Was it? Didn't they have movies on base? I don't know, of course, but guessing, they were screens back then, invented way earlier. I suppose they owned or leased the spaces and were servicing the apparent needs of the Services. No interest in connecting to the area? Sounds like a smack-o to the area.

I am guessing the usual thing, otherness, security, was going on, but maybe it was just a space question.

Reminds me of a song.
Paranoia strikes deep..


It is still how the world works.

Do films more or less without words count? 'Cause if they do, I think I was six when I saw The Red Balloon.

I think I saw it too, but not sure, much less when that would have been.

The English subtitles for this 34 minute long film...

05:31 Could you hold my balloon while I'm in class?
05:36 Don't let it go!
09:35 Glazier! Glazier!
09:39 Glazier! Glazier!
09:46 Balloon,
09:48 You must obey me, and be good!
10:08 Balloon! Balloon!
14:14 Come along.
14:19 Come, Pascal.
15:13 Silence!
15:17 Be quiet, now!
18:03 Hurry up, get out of here!
18:06 Get lost, you little pest!
21:20 Hey fellas, look at him!
21:28 Wow! Amazing!
21:48 He outfoxed us.
24:00 Balloon, wait for me here.
25:37 Balloon! Balloon!
26:09 Come here, balloon!
27:59 Hurry up, fellas!
28:49 Catch him!
29:13 Fly away, balloon!
29:17 Fly away, balloon!
29:19 I got it!

Why not?😊

It's a classic!😁

5 years old at the most. I already knew how to read, then.

Only Disney animated features were dubbed, so the first one must have been some Disney comedy I don't remember.

The foreign language film I vividly remember having seen it the longest ago is "The Parent Trap", with "Hayley Mills & Hayley Mills". I was seven.

My filmgoer experience has several strange language combinations. These 3, for example:

I saw "Sutjeska" in Marshall Tito's house, with no subtitles. One of his generals translated it live from Serbo-Croatian to Spanish. The general was also depicted in the film (a guard came to me, pointed to the screen and said, in English, "that man who conquered the hill is the one translating the film").

I saw "Etat de Siege" in Belgrade. French with Serbo-Croatian subtitles. Asked my Yugoslavian friends the phrases I couldn't understand.

I went to see "Lucky Luciano" thinking it was in English and Italian. It was in English and (mostly) Napolitan dialect. No subtitles. Had a hard time trying to understand it.

There was a theater in the Bronx that showed a lot of foreign language films. I think I was in my mid-teens when I saw my first one. I can't remember what it was, but I think it was Italian.

I refused to see a foreign language film with dubbing.

Probably "Seven Samurai" when I was about 17. Maybe "Hard Day's Night", with the Beatles speaking Liverpudlian, about the same time. Or "La Dolce Vita".

When I was very little I saw some of the Don Camillo films on TV. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but they weren't dubbed. I distinctly remember Don Camillo and the Communist mayor sharing a glass of milk after milking a load of cows, and saying "Salut!" with "Cheers" appearing in the subtitles.

Don Camillo was on TV? Where from? My parents had the book, and I read it a couple of times and smiled, not knowing anything about the politics of it. Never knew it was a TV show too somewhere. Or were they movies?

There were some old black and white shorts on the BBC. I don't know if they were made for TV or film. There was a radio 4 programme on Don Camillo the other day, and less than half of the stories have been translated into English.

I have listened to some of the Radio 4 half-hour dramatisations of Don Camillo stories; they suffer, in my opinion, by having the villagers speak with heavy Northern English regional accents. Varied ones, I mean, one person a Scouser, another a Geordie. Don Camillo sounds like the vicar in The Archers. Not that I have anything against people from Up North, but I found it a bit unconvincing, seeing as they are rural Italians. God speaks with a very posh accent, and lots of echo.

The Radio 4 programme was presented by Peter White. He was blind from birth, and got into Don Camillo because most brail books are aimed at the older generation, most people go blind in later life. The Don Camillo books were some that were suitable for a young boy. The programme was a documentary about the writer and the setting, not a dramatisation.

sometime in high school, there was an art house theatre in the "little italy" section of windsor, known locally as the "garlic opera" (hey it was the 70's)

it was probably this



though it could have been



i would have been about 16, given that the Fassbinder was from 1979, and even though Munch is from 1974, i saw them around the same time

the Bloor Cinema in Toronto showed a regular double feature in the 80's that included a French film and an American film, i saw it every opportunity i could



and

I just reserved a copy of Stardust Memories from the library. Have yet to see it. Thanks for the inspiration DJ.

Not sure about the double feature though.

The first one I saw in the theater may have been Das Boot