.<.!U
..>urrertuenng tne .11Utnur:turu.;tturt
Parker, Stephen, Peter Davies and Matthew Philpotts (2004) The Modern
Restoration: Re-thinking German Literary History 1930-1960, Berlin: de
Gruyter.
Philpotts, Matthew (2003) The Margins ofDictatorship: Assent and Dissent in
the Work of Gunter Eich and Bertolt Brecht, Oxford: Lang.
Venuti, Lawrence (1995) The Translators Invisibility: A History ofTranslation,
London & New York: Routledge.
------ (1998) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference,
London & New York: Routledge.
Vieregg, Axel (1993) Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet: Gunter Eichs Realitiiten 1933-1945, Eggingen: Edition Isele.
------ (ed.) ( 1996) "Unsere Sunden sind Maulwurfe ": Die GUnter-Eich-Debatte,
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Wessels, Wolfram (1985) Horspiele im Dritten Reich: Zur InstitutionenTheorie-und Literaturgeschichte, Bonn: Bouvier.
'
------ (1996) 'Zum Beispiel Gunter Eich: Von der schuldlosen Schuld der
Literatur', in Axel Vieregg (ed.) "Unsere Sunden sind Maulwurfe": Die
Gunter-Eich-Debatte, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 13 7-54.
Wiirffel, Stefan Baldo (1978a) '"Denn heute gehort uns Deutschland": Anmerkungen zum Horspiel im Dritten Reich', in Ralf Schnell (ed.) Kunst und
Kultur im deutschen Faschismus, Stuttgart: Metzler, 129-55.
------ ( 1978b) Das deutsche Horspiel, Stuttgart: Metzler.
Take Three
The National-Catholic Versions ofBilly Wilder
Broadway Adaptations
s
JEROEN VANDAELE
KULeuven & VLEKHO, Belgium*
Abstract: In the mid-195Os Billy Wilder adapted three Broadway
shows for the screen: Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), and The
Seven Year Itch (1955). Wilder tended to modify the scripts in
line with his own standards of sarcasm, wit and (transgressive)
behaviour and language. In the process, Wilder came into conflict
with the censoring Hollywood Production Code, as embodied by
the Breen Office. While the story ofhis struggles with the Americanfilm industry s self-censorship has to a large extent already
been told, the censorship, again driven by the Catholic Church,
but implemented in a harsher and more anonymous manner, of
Billy Wilder s films in Franco s Spain remains largely unknown
to American and European Wilder specialists, and even to the
Spanish audiences who continue to watch the Francoist dubbings nowadays. This chapter unearths what might be called the
Francoist 'third take' of Wilder s original Broadway re-writes.
Sabrina s 1955 dubbing offers an insight into early Francoistfilm
manipulations. The 1964 dubbings of Stalag 17 and The Seven
Year Itch, typical products of the regimes post-1963 cultural
policies, illustrate how important a player Billy Wilder was in
Spain s hesitant move towards cultural openness (apertura)
around 1963. Even today, the 1955 and 1964 dubbings are of
great importance for the study ofthe dissemmination of Wilder s
work, as they are still the only Spanish-language versions on sale
in Spain (as of 2005), and are also found on multilingual D VDs
destined for other European countries.
Its all a question of imagination
-and Mr. Sherman has a lot of imagination.
[The Seven Year Itch]
* I should like to thank Miguel Angel Martinez L6pez, Margarita Lobo and Trinidad
del Rio (Filmoteca Espaftola, Madrid), Janet Moat (British Film Institute, London), and
280
Jeroen Vandaele
Take Three
try to suppress these same forces over the following seven years (from
July 1962 until July 1969), while the highly reactionary Catholic Alfredo
Sanchez Bella would declare war against them from 1969 until Franco's
death (1975) (Gubern 1981). The practice of Francoist translation was
part and parcel of the regime's strategy to turn the whole of Spain into a
'National-Catholic' country: patriotic, 'vaticanist' and redeemed, isolated
both from a sinful capitalist lifestyle and from Communism. With hindsight, some scholars argue that foreign texts were 'manipulated' rather than
'translated'. Others, especially translators under Francoism were- and some
still remain - sincerely convinced that they were, as professionals, indeed
producing translations, albeit ones that were occasionally 'corrected' either
by anticipatory self-censorship - a practice common until 1963 (see Garcia
Escudero 1978)- or by imposed State censorship.
On the whole, however, under Franco translation was not about cultural
mediation, in any positive sense, between Spain and other cultures. Precisely, in Vandaele (2002) I have already discussed how two famous Billy
Wilder films, Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960), were
censored and re-written in their Franco-era dubbed versions. Francoist film
translation was protectionist, untruthful, deceptive and heavily 'domesticating' (Venuti 1998), since it manipulated 'alien' values represented in
the original text. More accurately, the Francoist translational system could
be described as a "defensive" system (Robyns 1994: 60), since it (partly)
acknowledged the 'otherness' of alien intruders, but only to transform it.
This is not to say, of course, that the translators themselves had options to
act otherwise. The present chapter, then, will focus on the Francoist reception and manipulation of three earlier Billy Wilder comedies.
1. Francoism, culture and translation
After his victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), General Francisco
Franco isolated Spain culturally, politically and economically from the rest
of the world. His administration accordingly exercized strict control over
the translation of foreign cultural material. Only in the 1950s, after more
than ten years of poverty and misery, was he forced to relax his repressive,
autocratic rule (Tusell 1988: 251-62; Garcia Delgado 2000: 120); economic
modernization did not properly begin until 1957-59, and was guided
mainly by Opus Dei-affiliated capitalists (Moradiellos 2000: 26-7). From
the 1950s onwards, Franco made efforts to regain international standing
by manoeuvring his country into global political organizations, such as the
United Nations, to which Spain was admitted in 1955.
Spanish culture, however, remained very much closed until the Caudillo's death. While, over the decades, institutions changed names and/or
fac;:ades, and new leading figures and sub-ideologies took power, the Spanish
cultural system retained a highly defensive posture. In 1945, immediately
after the Nazi defeat, Franco had moved the responsibility for censorship,
through which this cultural isolation was enforced, from his semi-Fascist
party ('la Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las JONS') to the Ministerio
de Educaci6n Nacional (Ministry ofNational Education). Six years later, in
1951, he reshuffled his Government, shifting power even more drastically
from thefalangistas (the Fascists proper) and the 'liberals' to the ultraconservative Catholics (not to be confused with the later Opus Dei), who would
keep the country culturally isolated. This administrative change led to the
creation of an interesting new organ, the Ministerio de Informacion y Turismo (Ministry oflnformation and Tourism), that was to watch over tourism,
a very significant part of the new Spanish economy and an acknowledged
source of change in society. This Ministry further absorbed the functions of
all existing censorship organisms, for both foreign and domestic production
offiction and non-fiction alike (see Gubern 1981).
Tourism, but more particularly information and (foreign) fiction were
the evil forces that the ultracatholic 'supercensor' Gabriel Arias Salgado
kept under control for around fifteen years as Minister of Tourism, from
July 1951 to July 1962, and earlier, from 1941 to 1945, as Vice-Secretary
of the Falange. His more moderate successor Manuel Fraga Iribarne would
Mieke Neyens for their generous help, and Ed Sikov for his comments on an earlier
draft of this chapter.
281
I
I
%
2. Source text discourse: Wilder's 1953-1955
adaptations
In 1950 Wilder brought out Sunset Boulevard, widely seen as a, timeless
masterpiece, although the Academy only nominated it for Best Director.
Five years earlier the Austrian director had earned his first international
credentials with two more straightforward.film noir classics: for Double
Indemnity (1944), co-written with Raymond Chandler, he was nominated
for Best Director, an award that he would win in 1945 for The Lost Weekend.
But Wilder would soon experiment with other genres.
Only eight years after the end of World War II, the comical P.O.W. camp
whodunnit Stalag 17 (1953) was a strange and risky narrative, especially in
view of the negative re,~eption that his first 'war comedy', A Foreign Affair
282
Take Three
( 1948), had received, and the fact that his latest film- the bitter media satire
Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. The Big Carnival, 1951)- had bombed. Paramount's
powerful propaganda machine therefore set up a huge campaign, with
special private previews for American Prisoners of War, which helped
turning Stalag 17 into a big hit. "The Hollywood trade papers loved it, and
so did most of America's movie reviewers" (Sikov 1998: 343). Stalag 17
was a thoroughly re-written adaptation of what had been a tremendous
Broadway hit in the spring of 1951 (Sikov 1998: 335). Despite the vulgarities of the script, the cynicism of the protagonists, the setting, an extended
gay joke which annoyed American censors (ibid.: 339), and sexual references to Russian women prisoners "Wilder got ... applause, approval, and
financial return" (ibid.: 343). The Spanish censorship boards would not
share the Americans' opinion. Only 11 years after the original's American
premiere would a slightly re-written version be authorized in Spain (see
section 3, below).
Billy Wilder had acquired a taste for Broadway. Over the next three
years, he would adapt three Broadway shows for the big screen: after Stalag
17 (1953) came the romantic comedy Sabrina (1954), famously featuring Audrey Hepburn as a working-class girl who climbs the social ladder
through seduction and marriage, and The Seven Year Itch (1955), legendary
for its title and for the iconic scene in which Marilyn Monroe's skirt is lifted
by the wind coming out of a subway grate. 1 The Hepburn comedy was "a
big hit" and "[a]udiences seem not to have minded the edge Billy gave to
Sabrina", writes Sikov (1998: 359), referring to elements the Francoist
Junta would also address (see section 3).
The Seven Year Itch has always divided critics. As a Broadway spectacle,
Axelrod's "adultery comedy" was "a smash hit" in November 1952, but
liberal critics severely criticized the film (Sikov 1998: 361 ). In Wilder's
movie, the working husband does not take advantage of his wife's summer leave to have intercourse with the newly arrived neighbour (played
by Marilyn Monroe in the film). The famous New York Times journalist
Bosley Crowther observed in his devastating review that "in the [Broadway]
play, as we recall, the wishful thoughts of the fellow toward the lady were
finally realized" while "[i]n the picture there is no such fulfillment. The
rules of the Production Code have compelled a careful evasion" (Crowther
1955).2 On the other hand, Wilder expert Ed Sikov notes that the director
1
Only once, in 1957, would Wilder return to Broadway for inspiration, with the 1957
production Witness for the Prosecution, which was itselfbased on the short story (1933)
and play (1953) by Agatha Christie.
2
The issue was certainly a burning one in 1955. A "personal" letter appended to the
283
Jeroen Vandaele
and screenwriter had managed to gain approval for a film that the censors
had said they would never accept. As he notes, the Hays Office had written that "even if the play's hanky-panky were eliminated completely, The
Seven Year Itch would remain unacceptable because 'the subject material
of adultery would still be the springboard of all the comedy"' (Sikov 1998:
362). ·Sikov continues:
By the time the film was released, the Production Code Administration concluded, astoundingly, that The Seven Year Itch was not about
adultery. (Since no adulterous sexual acts were committed in the
film, there was therefore no adultery in the film.) (ibid.)
Seidl (2000) coined a phrase that, in his opinion, captures the spirit of the
whole film: The Seven Year Itch was a 'UFF', an Unfinished Fuck. Whether
it was finished or not, Francoist censors would find the plot far too sexual
to approve in 1958.
3. Francoist reception, a chronology
Of these films, only Sabrina made it to Spanish screens in the period before
the regime's first cultural apertura in 1963. All three films under consideration, even the 1964 dubbings Traidor en el infierno ('Traitor in Hell')
and La tentaci6n vive arriba ('Temptation Lives Upstairs'), would suffer
manipulative Francoist censorship.
1953
Stalag 17
Traidor en el infierno
1964
1954
Sabrina
Sabrina
1955
1955
The Seven Year Itch
La tentaci6n vive arriba
1964
Table I. Year of release of Wilder :S films in the US (left) and,
Spain (right, translated titles)
Seven year Itch script in the archives ofthe British Film Institute, dated 16 June, 1955,
from a certain John Lefebre to a certain Robert Kreier, apparently an American film
executive, pleads for the restoration ofthe element of adultery for European audiences:
"Mr. Silverstone ... mentioned ... that, for censorship reasons, in THE SEVEN YEAR
ITCH, one little scene, showing the male star on the couch all by himself in the morning, indicates that he has not spent the night with Marilyn Monroe (which in the play
he does). This, by the European public, might be considered a great mistake, and we are
sure that if censorship in your territory does not insist on this scene, it would be easy
by cutting these few meters, to let justice prevail."
284
Take Three
,..1953~
Stalag 17
State censorship
Paramount's Spanish branch tried to sell the film as a fundamentally comic
whodunnit, but the Junta de Clasificaci6n y Censura, presided over by
Joaquin Argamasilla was clear in its verdict : "NO PROCEDE SU IMPORTACION" ("Not to be imported"; April28, 1953; censorship file n. 11.779;
AGA 36/3453).3 Not much later, the Comisi6n Superior de Censura, in
theory a board of appeal, confirmed the Junta's decision. This is unsurprising, since the Committee was also presided over by Joaquin Argamasilla,
the right hand of the previously mentioned ultra-catholic minister Arias
Salgado. The objections against Stalag 17 were nevertheless political rather
than strictly moral.
This is logical if we recall Franco's efforts in the mid-1950s to rejoin
the international community via anti-communist rhetoric, a strategy supported by Falangists as well as catholicists. Since Communism frightened
the western powers, Franco speculated, correctly, that they would implicitly support his regime against any possible leftwing Republican outbreak
(see Moradiellos 2000, for instance). Hence his constant references to the
Communist threat that had been faced during the Civil War. From 1947
onwards, the American military urged its fellow diplomats to re-establish
contacts with Spain. The Embassy reopened, and although Francoist Spain
was excluded from the Marshall Plan (which began in 1947), three hispanoamerican 10-year agreements were signed on September 26, 1953. The
Junta's anticommunist comments may be interpreted in this immediate
context.
Vice-President Jose Maria Alonso-Pesquera believed that the partly
"false" and "outdated" film should be forbidden for "ridiculiza al ejercito
aleman" ("ridicules the German army") and "reverdece rencores y odios
fomentando las divisiones entre y americanos" ("revives hatred and division
among Americans and Germans"). In fact, the film paints a comparatively
rosy picture oflife in a Nazi P.O.W. camp. True, a harsh reality may be suggested by the film's opening sequence, which shows the machine-gunning
of two prisoners during an escape attempt. Likewise, as a punishment for
this attempted break-out, the Germans remove the barracks' stove, there is
3
All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.
Jeroen Vandaele
285
permanent food shortage in the camp, the German camp officers are rather
sarcastic, or sometimes just stupid, and they deceive the Red Cross inspector. But nowhere does the film transmit a gloomy atmosphere. And as for
entertainment, the plot of Stalag 17 is rather thin. The failed escape makes
the prisoners realize that there is a 'stoolie' among them, who briefs the
German officers and guards about anything prisoners do or plan. A cynical
Einzelgiinger who trades with the Germans, prisoner Sefton is the first to
arouse suspicion. As he is threatened, and later beaten up, he tries to unveil
the identity of the real spy, and in the event manages to do so.
Given this conventional whodunnit plot, the tone of the Junta's comments is revisionist by any standard. According to the fascistoid censor
Mariano Daranas, the picture supposedly created a "version tendenciosa",
or even "falsa", of how prisoners lived in German camps. 4 The properly
fascist censor Mourlane Michelena explicitly asked for a "revision" of
such "deformation" and "prejudices", and attacked the film's "caricatures":
"Estas peliculas de propaganda deforman la realidad y la pliegan a prejuicios o a supuestos cuya revision es deseable .... En este film se tiende a
la caricatura al pintar usos, caracteres y modos de ser" ("These propaganda
films deform reality, and adapt it to prejudices and suppositions in need
of revision .... There is tendency in this film to caricature certain habits,
temperaments and ways of living"). The low-profile Secretary Francisco
Fernandez y Gonzalez feared the social uproar Stalag 17 might cause ("las
perturbaciones que habria de suscitar entre los espectadores"), and the
4
In my PhD thesis, I devote one chapter to profiling 62 Junta censors who dealt with
Billy Wilder's 23 Hollywood films. In this context, 'fascistoid' refers to aesthetic and
ethical preferences related to Fascism rather than Spanish Catholicism. Fascist and
fascistoid censors are generally more tolerant than catholicists in issues of social
morality, and more forward-looking in aesthetic matters, thus respecting the imperativo
poetico joseantoniano. They are less tolerant when it comes to World War II, but join
catholicists again in their hostility towards Communism. At least half ofthe censors
were important ideologists and/or agents. Therefore, Neuschafer's assertion' that censors were "ruedecitas" ("tiny wheels") in the "gran maquinaria" ("big machine") is
historically false (Neuschafer 1994:52). Alonso-Pesquera was an actor, film technician,
Director General ofTheatre and Film, Secretary General of Theatre and Film, National
Union Member for Technicians and (Script)Writers, President of the Grupo Nacional
de Cooperativas Cinematograficas, and Professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones y
Experiencias Cinematograficas. Mourlane Michelena, personally close to the founder of
Spanish Fascism, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, was Director of Escorial, an important
cultural magazine launched by the well-known Fascists Ridruejo and Lain Entralgo,
and a contributor to Vertice, Revista Nacional de FET y de las JONS, which he also
directed for some time.
286
Take Three
ecclesiastical censors wtthin the state board, Father Garcia del Figar and
Father Villares, also condemned the film in many respects: for depicting a
"campo de concentracion aleman" ("German concentration camp") and the
"terror of war", or else for the "ridiculing of Germans" which would lead to a
"division of nations" ("reaviva las divisiones entre las naciones ridiculizando
al Ejercito y al pueblo aleman"; Villares in AGA 36/3453). Similar objections
are found in the reports written by the conservative and (until 1962) everpresent censor Alfredo Timermans, and by the anticommunist catholic Pio
Garcia Escudero, who stated that such camps "should be Russian" instead
of German ("es inadmisible, sobre todo, en los momentos actuales en que
el campamento debiera ser ruso"). 5
In the letter of appeal that the Comisi6n Superior received from
Paramount-Espafi.a, it was argued that the "topic" of the film was "rather
comedy", "without atrocity" ("una pelicula cuyo asunto es mas bien comedia,
no habiendo en ella ninguna atrocidad"; May 5, 1953); their argument fell
flat. Censor Torres Lopez really did "not understand why one would want
to show such a picture", given "the current state of the world" ("en Ia situacion actual del mundo"). Father Garau's evaluation resembled Pio Garcia
Escudero's remark. "An interesting film", he wrote, "if Paramount could
make it anticommunist, it would deserve to be seen in cinemas around
the world" ("Interesante pelicula. - Si Ia Paramount consiguiera hacerla
anticomunista, mereceria cines del mundo"). Sanchez Silva, scriptwriter
of the famous film Marcelino, pan y vino (1955), had to resort to a non
sequitur: "Out of date, hence, banned" ("Prohibida por inactual"). Since
the film did not reach the screens, the Francoist Spanish press, including
Church publications, did not cover Stalag 17 in 1953.
~1955~
Sabrina
As has already been mentioned, Sabrina was Wilder's only mid-1950s Broadway adaptation that was authorized in pre-1963 ultra-catholic Spain.
5
Given the striking parallelism between the various reports, it is fairly safe to suggest
that some kind of debate preceded the individual written appreciations. Such a debate
will have obeyed established institutional and group hierarchies: what does the President
say? How does the Priest react? In order to behave like perfect censors, censors will
look for cues from peers and higher-order censors.
Jeroen Vandaele
287
State censorship (1) The Censorship Board
On February 8, 1955, the Junta authorized that a dubbed version of Sabrina
be prepared (AGA 36/3518; Francoist file no 13 .467). The Vice-President did
not see any need for cuts, as the film was a "typical American comedy" in
which two rich brothers "entertainingly" struggled for the love of Sabrina, the
daughter of the family chauffeur ("Comedia al estilo americano ... con una
serie de peripecias entretenidas") (Alonso-Pesquera in AGA file 36/3518).
Father Villares' reading coincided quite closely with Alonso-Pesquera's,
although it was slightly more moralizing. While the plot was, in his view,
quite unimportant, the theme made the film suitable only for adults ("Argumento intrascendente desde el punto de vista moral. Por el asunto creo
solo debe autorizarse para mayores"; ibid.) The Falangist veteran Mourlane
Michelena agreed that Sabrina was a "comedia muy norteamericana" and
praised the good dialogue and acting. Censor Daranas found the comedy
"quite clean", "entertaining", and was happy with the optimistic ending
("fertil en situaciones entretenidas, sin perjuicio del optimismo del desenlace"; ibid.). Fascistoid aesthetics was notably unconcerned by moral
issues of a sexual kind.
However, pitfalls awaited Sabrina. A letter of appeal, subsequent to the
first reports, is indirect evidence of at least one suggested censorship cut,
which Paramount found unnecessary: "the following cut: Reel 9 - Delete
David and Sabrina's kissing in the garage and, hence, her phrase 'Kiss
me"' ("el corte siguiente: Rollo 9.- Suprimir los besos de David y Sabrina
en el garaje y por consiguiente Ia frase de ella cuando dice: 'Besame'").
Months later, on 28 July, the Junta members authorized the dubbed version
for audiences over 16. 6 Paramount were no doubt unamused, since their
letter of appeal had clearly stated that they had "always been certain" that an
"innocent" "funny comedy" like Sabrina was destined "for all audiences",
especially since it lacked "shocking situations" and "malevolen~e":
Siempre hemos estado seguros de que esta [sic] pelicula seria'autorizada para todos los publicos por su caracter [sic] de comedia
graciosa que no tiene ninguna dureza ni situaciones escabrosas,
pues desde el principio a! final se crean escenas que desembocan
en comicidad sin mali cia para hacer pasar un rato agradable a todos
los publicos y su argumento no puede ser mas inocente, pues se
6 Among them were, again, Daranas and Michelena, and a translator of Shakespeare,
canon Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz.
288
Take Three
trata de las naturales dudas para elegir marido unajovencita [sic].
Por todo ello consideramos que la pelicula en cuesti6n deberia ser
AUTORIZADA PARA TODOS LOS PUBLICOS. Fdo Andres
Sanz Ladr6n de Guevara, Gerente Sucursal Madrid Paramount
Films. (AGA 36/3518)
Their explanations were to no avail. On 26 September, President Manuel
Torres Lopez and his Junta decided by majority (AGA 36/3518) to maintain
the age restriction. 7
Jeroen Vandaele
289
'Cinderella'-story and a novelette ... pleasant, nice and entertaining"
(Ecclesia, 22.1 0.1955). However, Ecclesia continues, "[I]t is well known
that such romantic comedies are not as innocent and harmless as they seem
to be; the same goes for this film, which has this atmosphere and depicts
daring situations". Its final evaluation, "3 mayores" ("adults"), should be
understood as for 'adults for the Spanish Church', people over 21 years of
age, which is five years older than the special 'over 16' audience voted for
by the State censors. 8
,.1958~
State censorship (2) The Francoist Press
The Seven Year Itch
'Donald', the famous film critic of the largest newspaper ABC, believed that
within its soft romantic genre ("rosa"), this film was another "masterpiece",
much as Sunset Boulevard had been within a different genre. Other newspapers stressed its "cordial", "funny", "soft" and "romantic" nature (Marca),
the "enjoyment" it offered (Hoja dellunes), its "nicely told" story (7fechas),
its "unimportant but funny" narrative (Digame). Writing for the Falangist
newspaper Arriba, the future censor (and eminent film expert) Gomez Mesa
was less enthustiastic: Sabrina "brings together all the characteristics of
a trivial genre". The fascist weekly magazine Primer Plano, prominent
until the early 1960s, liked this "realistic" "re-edition of Cinderella" that
satirized capitalism, even though one major objection was issued: Wilder
had unconvincingly crafted one character, a French Baron who had taken
cooking lessons with Sabrina in Paris (Primer Plano~ 1.1 0.1955). Interestingly, Sikov writes of the relationship between the Baron and Sabrina as
being "[o]ne of Billy's most subtly filthy jokes", explaining how "Wilder
needs to suggest - but only in the vaguest, least censorable way - that
Sabrina and the Baron have enjoyed each other's company" (Sikov 1998:
357). Her father the chauffeur reads Sabrina's letter from Paris: "He [the
Baron] came to the cooking school to take a refresher course in souffles
and liked me so much he decided to stay on for the fish".
Due to Hollywood's second boycott against Francoist protectionism in 1956
(see Diez Puertas 2003: 163), The Seven Year Itch would not reach the Junta
until October 1958, three years after its US release (1955). By then, Spanish State Censorship had gone over entirely to the ultracatholic option. As
its new President, Jose Mufioz Font!in's task was to stop the "irresponsible
tolerance" of his predecessor Torres Lopez (Gubern 1981 :151-52).
Church censorship
Ecclesia, the official publishing organ of Accion Catolica, published the
moral assessment by the private Catholic censorship apparatus. The first
part is rather descriptive, in line with other Francoist publications: "[A]
7
Father Garau, Antonio Fraguas, Vicente Llorente and Francisco Ortiz voted "audiences
over 16", Sanchez-Silva and Timermans found the film suitable for "all audiences".
State censorship: The Censorship Board
Distributing company Filmax first tried to obtain an import licence for the
film, with the provisional title Maridos en Ia ciudad ("Husbands in the
City") (AGA 36/3680; Francoist file n° 18.452). The answer of Mufioz
Font!in's Junta on 24 October 1958 was negative. According to Father
Juan Fernandez, "both the dialogues and the images" were "completely
morbid", the husband dreamt "the most ludicrous and suggestive things
in sexual matters", thoughts and dreams that were "plastically shown on
stage". Fernandez saw "no way" to "adapt" the film ("noes susceptible de
adaptaciones por que no hay por donde cogerla"). Father Avelino agreed
with his colleague, as "the humour and the dialogues" were "too dangerous"
("demasiado peligrosa la comicidad y el dialogo"), as they "all concerned
sexual leanings". He stopped watching the film after three reels "No he visto
8
"Una vez mas, el tema de Ia cenicienta.... Resulta simpatica, amable y entretenida.
... Sabido es que el genero llamado 'rosa' noes tan ingenuo e inofensivo como parece;
tampoco lo es en esta pelicula, desarrol!ada en un ambiente y entre situaciones
atrevidas .... Censura del Estado: Autorizada para mayores. Calificaci6n moral: 3
Mayores" (p. 473).
290
Take Three
nada mas que 3 Rollos" (Avelino in AGA 36/3680). According to Father
Avelino, the following scenes, among others, were reprehensible: the title
of a book about the sexual instincts of the middle-aged man, the daydream
scene on the beach where Sherman supposedly resists the temptation of his
wife's best friend, Sherman's daydream of being attacked by his secretary
(Avelino writes of his attack 'on the secretary'), and the entire third reel.
Wilder's set-up was indeed very cunning. It is summertime, and too hot
for the wife and child to stay in New York, so husband Richard Sherman is
on his own when he meets a new neighbor (Marilyn Monroe). In his vivid
imagination, his rather healthy libido is in constant debate with a strong
Uber-Ich. Sherman is in constant debate with himself, with the imagined
voices of his wife and doctors, with the idealized voice of Marilyn Monroe,
and others. Repeatedly, this monologic/dialogic mode of telling (diegetic
dialogue interieur) moves to the dramatic showing mode (mimesis), in
which his imagination is visualized as a quasi-real event. Eventually, he
always returns to reality, but the realistic visualizations of his constant relapses were apparently too strong for the Francoist Junta. The high-profile
ultra-catholic censor and Secretary Ortiz Munoz did not appreciate this
mixing of "real and imaginary events" which show "a continuous obsession with sex". And no, the comic tone would not do as an extenuating
circumstance ("El tono festivo del relato no es bastante para compensar la
continua procacidad de imagenes y dialogos"; ibid.). "The mind and the
image" were "pervaded with sex", Cuartero writes, so much so that even the
happy ending, where "courage defeats desire", was insufficient ("AI final
aunque su valentia vence al deseo, la pelicula esta toda empregnada de la
sexualidad, en la mente, y en la imagen, y no tiene posible adaptaci6n ni
arreglo"; ibid.). Only Mariano Daranas finds the courage to report that The
Seven Year Itch is "even psychologically estimable in spite of its apparent
frivolity": "a good husband" finds himself"alone at home and in New york",
and goes through "the process of his conscience and sensitivity". But, he
admits, the process is too "obsessive" and "sexual" for public visualization in Spain: "Es tan obsesiva y tan plastica la preocupaci6n sexual que
no cabe dentro de nuestra moral publica su grafica representaci6n"; (ibid.).
The veto was unanimous.
,..1963, December~
The Seven Year Itch [revised version]
1963 was a crucial year in Spanish cultural politics. Economic needs had
forced Franco to allow a relative cultural apertura. The number of tourists
Jeroen Vandaele
291
had increased from around two and a half million in 1958 to nearly six
and a half in 1962 (Gubem 1981: 181). Tourism was not only the largest
source of foreign currency, it also forced Franco to present a friendlier
image of his regime. Furthermore, in the Spring of 1962, huge strikes for
better working conditions gradually took on political connotations, obliging Franco to re-organize his government (Moradiellos 2000: 161-62).
Technocrats came to power, most of them members of Opus Dei, some
others more closely connected to the Party (Movimiento ), like Minister of
Tourism and Information Manuel Fraga Iribame and aperturista Jose Maria
Garcia Escudero (in his second term as Director of Cinematography and
Theatre and, hence, President of the Junta). Previously, many Spanish film
professionals had heavily criticized contemporary national cinema in an
astonishingly open colloquium known as the Conversaciones de Salamanca
(1955), at which Jose Maria Garcia Escudero had spoken. The need for a
transparent censorship code, expressed by many during the 1955 talks,
would be one of the new Junta's achievements (the result was the C6digo
de Censura of 1962).
The 1962-1967 Censorship Board worked very hard, particularly on
Billy Wilder films. Specifically, they had four tasks relating to Wilder.
Not only did they re-consider - according to their newly written official
norms - the recently banned films Some Like It Hot and The Apartment
(see Vandaele 2002), they also picked up the earlier Stalag 17 (Traidor en
el infierno) and The Seven Year Itch (La tentaci6n vive arriba). Third, they
accepted there-dubbing of Five Graves to Cairo (1943, Cinco Tumbas al
Cairo) and Double Indemnity (Perdici6n ), although this was not necessarily a consequence of the new censorship code (the old dubbed copies may
have been lost, destroyed, gone out of date, or not been handed over by
the previous distributor). Fourth, and finally, the new Junta provided quick
assessments of One, two, three ( 1961, Uno dos tres; authorized for adults in
1962), Irma Ia Douce (1963, Irma Ia dulce; banned for six years until1969),
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964, Besame, tonto; banned for eleven years.until 1973)
and The Fortune Cookie ( 1966, En bandeja de plata; authorized for adults
in 1967). As a result, Billy Wilder was suddenly omnipresent on Spanish
screens, as J.M. Perez Lozano remarked in the Catholic newspaper Ya (28
January, 1964): "Yet another Billy Wilder picture this season- no other
director has seen so many of his films premiere this film year - although
some pictures, like this one, are already several years old" (Lozano 1964).
Historically, Billy Wilder was probably the most visible and talked-about
Hollywood film director in Spain during the first years of the openingup, both for critics and for audiences. His importance for the cinematic
apertura of 1963-1969 can hardly be overestimated, and has farreaching
292
Take Three
consequences. "If I had to choose one master or model, I would choose
Billy Wilder", Pedro Almodovar stated in 1987 (quoted in Kinder 1987). Six
years later, upon receiving his Best Foreign Film Oscar for Belle Epoque
(1992), Fernando Trueba famously shouted to the audiences that he would
have liked to thank God "but I don't believe in God, so I'd like to thank
Billy Wilder". In recent times, Sikov's excellent Wilder biography (1998)
has so far only been translated into Spanish, by the prestigious publishing
house Tusquets (Barcelona, 2000).
State censorship (1) The Censorship Board
On 13 December, 1963, Jose Maria Garcia Escudero and his team (Jesuit
Father Staehlin, (liberal) fascistArroita-Jauregui, the three aperturistas Bautista de Ia Torre, Auz, and Celis y Orue, and the very conservative catholic
Cano, among others) unanimously authorized The Seven Year Itch for audiences over 18, as it was a "comical clean happy farce" ("Farsa comica limpia
alegre; para mayores 18"; AGA 36/3680). Again, this did not mean that the
film would be translated as such. Correspondence between the distributing
company Radio Films and the Junta in 1963 and 1964 shows, for example,
that Radio Films first suggested the quite literal translation El cosquilleo
del septimo ano, to which the State censors made their counterproposal La
chica del segundo piso ('The Girl on the Second Floor'). 9 Finally, the Junta
settled for La tentaci6n vive arriba, another counterproposal from Radio
Films, "for commercial reasons". For the Board, a 'temptation' 'living
upstairs' may have sounded less drastic than the natural, semi-automatic,
almost Darwinian 'itch' inside the male species. In the file, a loose handwritten anonymous note stated that some publishing material had to stay
forbidden. It detailed the following scenes:
-
"En el suelo cogida del brazo" ("on the floor, [Marilyn] embraced")
"Sentada en el brazo del sofa" ("[Marilyn] on the arm of the sofa")
"Abrazados, el detras" ("Embraced, [Sherman] behind")
"Abrazados, besandole en Ia barbilla" ("Embraced, [slhe] kissing [him/her] on the chin")
"Sentada encima de el" ("She sitting on him")
9
Some other Hispanic countries know the film as La comezon del septimo ano, a literal
translation of the original.
Jeroen Vandaele
293
As we shall see in Section 4, the 1964 film itself also underwent cuts and
dialogue changes in translation.
State censorship (2) The Francoist Press
Billy Wilder's Con faldas y a lo loco (Some Like It Hot, 1959), starring
Monroe, and El Apartmento, had been released respectively on 24 October
and 19 December 1963 and were major hits in Spain throughout 1964. Small
wonder that the pressure to issue The Seven Year Itch in Spain was huge,
especially after Marilyn Monroe's untimely death on 4 August, 1962. Upon
release, the professional magazine for theatre owners Cine Asesor wrote that
"the foremost point of attraction - sufficient in itself to fill any theatre - is
the presence of the unforgettable Marilyn Monroe" (n. 19-64). The former
Junta President ( 1946-1951) Gabriel Garcia Espina was now a major film
critic for ABC: "Marilyn Monroe, bellisima,juvenil, sonriente", "resurrected
in this terrifying miracle called cinema", "present again, alive and kicking,
even though she's 'no longer there"' (Espina 1964). The catholic Ya was
more negative, referring to "easy jokes" and "boring monologues", and so
was the Falangist Arriba, where the old-fashioned high-brow State censor
Gomez Mesa had control over the film section. But critics started to show
more freedom, particularly in specialist publications. The new intellectual
review Nuestro Cine mentioned ironically that "por razones oscuras" the
film had come far too late to Spain (n. 26, January 1964: 59).
It was the magazine Film Ideal, inspired by the intellectual standards
of Cahiers du Cinema, but resolutely Catholic until 1962, that carried the
most astonishing article. In an essay spread over four pages (n. 138, 15
February 1964), the critic Ramon Moix (nowadays known as the writer
Terenci Moix) tried to rehabilitate the picture and defend the Monroemyth.10 Praising the film for its "tecnica cinemascopica", "la inclusion de
Marilyn" and "el erotismo", he declared his article to be "un catlto a Marilyn
en cuanto a sexo" ("a hymn to Marilyn as regards sex") (Moix, 1964: 13334). Moix even criticized Richard Sherman for not fighting "the absolute
reality of imposed norms, of sick conformism", for his "incapacity to defy
morality" (ibid.). Without irony, he regretted that "el adulterio no llega a
consumarse", not even "in mentis" (ibid.). "En Espana el mito Monroe no
existe", he concluded, and "the myth will probably never exist" (ibid.).
Possibly, Moix deliberately wrote a self-defeating prophecy, because from
10 Sikov ( 1998:370) mentions that cahieriste Fran9ois Truffaut- not really a Wilder fan
- loved The Seven Year Itch for its sexual ambiguity.
294
Take Three
1964 onwards admiration for Marilyn Monroe has been a constant feature
in broad sectors of Spanish society. 11
As far as Church censorship is concerned, Ecclesia had stopped
publishing its censorial moral reviews by the end of 1963. The defeatist
ecclesiastical censors openly admitted that they could no longer maintain
control over an immoral society, nor pressurize the many lax State censors.
State censorship had indeed also changed. Stalag 17 would be measured
by different standards than in 1953.
~1964~
Stalag 17 [revised version]
State censorship (1) The Censorship Board
Ironically, it was the Francoist producer-distributor CIFESA, once the
Regime's propaganda machine, that asked to reopen the Stalag 17 file (n°.
11. 779). As CIFESA's domestic products were desperately out of fashion,
the company was in need of cash. On 30 April 1964 it was decided that
the film could be imported to Spain "without adaptations". Father Staehlin
found the picture suitable for adults over 18, Father Fierro - the censor
who reportedly made L 'Osservatore Romano condemn Buiiuel 's Viridiana
(see Camicero and Sanchez Salas 2000: 139)- saw no "harm" in the film
("No es pelicula que pueda perjudicar"). The various censors had different
reasons to authorize the film. Pascual Cebollada, founder of the secretive
and moralizing Church censorship, having now infiltrated the State board,
opposed any kind of revisionism. This film was a "correcta exposici6n de
un hecho hist6rico" ("correct presentation of a historical fact") which was
"essentially a whodunnit that triggered purely human reactions". If the
Catholic censors were generally more inclined than old Fascists to authorize
wartime satire, this time all censors seemed to react favourably.
In Jose Maria Garcia Escudero's diary we read that he believed his new
Vice-President Florentino Soria to be the right man for cultural aperturismo. Soria was tolerant indeed. "No objections", he reported, "it is a war
film with some extravagant humour. It contains no vicious attack on the
Germans" ("una aventura guerrera con cierta desorbitaci6n humoristica. No
hay ensafiamiento contra los alemanes"). The former ecclesiastical censor
11
For example, at the time of writing (April2005), the front page of the official Marilyn
Monroe website (http://www.marilynmonroe.com) refers to a huge exhibition 'Marilyn
Monroe: Life of a Legend' at the Centro de Cultura de Ia Villa (Madrid).
Jeroen Vandaele
295
Cano preferred to read the film entirely in terms of the whodunnit genre:
"El nucleo del argumento esta centrado en el descubrimiento y fracaso del
espia aleman", and its comic tone was what impressed the liberalfalangista Arroita-Jauregui, a participant in the 1955 Salamanca Conversations,
director's assistant for the famous neorealist film Calle Mayor (Bardem,
1956) and, later, critic for Film Ideal: "El tono de comedia ... quita cualquier
peligrosidad", the comedy removes all danger. The open-minded- some
Francoists reportedly called him a communist (see Garcia Escudero 1978:
225)- Victor Auz would even have authorized Stalag 17 for audiences over
14, but the majority stuck to the "adults" restriction. On the other hand, this
meant that no manipulation was needed, as censor Zabala's notes indicate.
Some, "few", shots ridiculed the German guards ("en algunos pianos, en
pocos"), and presented them as cruel beings "but not to the extent that the
film should be forbidden; especially if the following shots are deleted:
8lrets (It is voted by majority that no shots be cut)" ["Phares (Por mayoria
se acuerda no practicar ninguno)."].
State censorship (2) The Francoist Press
The intellectual Catholic magazine Film Ideal focused on the story-line,
criticizing Wilder for what he always did: taking the side ofthe cynic. Sefton
"only unmasks the traitor when it affects him personally" (n. 160, 15 January 1965: 69). Also, the 'translators' were under attack for their bad title
choice "Traidor en el infierno"- 'in hell'. This "campo de concentraci6n"
seemed more like a playground for Billy Wilder, wrote Film Ideal's Jose
Maria Carreno, and it bore no resemblance to hell. On the other side of the
spectrum, we find the ABC critic and former Junta President (1946-1951)
Garcia Espina, a man with a Fascist background, who saw the film as a
"tragedy of war", "a document full of drama", that "revive.s" "long-lost
wartime emotions" and the "hostile barracks" of "prisoner cap1ps". This
seems to corroborate reports that in some Spanish circles Stalag 17 served
a mildly revisionist cause in 1964. Indeed, if it were 'hell', 'hostility',
'tragedies' and 'prisoner camps' that were shown in this film, then maybe
the hellish German camps were not too bad a place after all.
Church censorship
Defeated by Spanish practice, Ecclesia had stopped publishing its moralizing censorship reviews. According to the official statistics from the Ministry
of Education and Culture, only 18,681 spectators saw the 'praiseworthy' El
296
Take Three
heroe solitario (1962, The Spirit ofSt. Louis), while 154,155 were registered
for the 'immoral' Confaldasya lo loco (1963), 211,953 for the ambiguous
El apartamento (1963), 183,852 for La tentaci6n vive arriba (1964), and
294,623 for Traidor en el infierno (1964). 12
4. The logic of Francoist translation
11"'1955~
Sabrina
The version of Sabrina (1955) under consideration is the second oldest Francoist screen translation from the Spanish Billy Wilder corpus that I gathered
in Madrid between 2001-2003 and thus constitutes an invaluable source
for understanding translation practices in pre-1963 ultra-catholic Spain. 13 It
was the first Wilder film Paramount commissioned to the Barcelona-based
Voz de Espafia, a famous dubbing studio founded in Republican times
(1935) but later co-run by Miguel Angel Puche, a man close to the Franco
regime (Avila 2000: 51). Carmen Lombarte took Audrey Hepburn's part as
Sabrina, William Holden was dubbed by Juan Manuel Soriano, Humphrey
Bogart by Felipe Pefia; other voices were provided by Juan Ibafiez and
Maribel Casals (see Vandaele 2006). All Voz de Espafia dubbings of Billy
Wilder, although technically excellent, exhibit manipulation of content
(ibid). Although the film was meant for audiences over 16, the Francoist
manipulation of Sabrina was drastic.
The original voice-over introduction of David, Sabrina's husband-tobe, and the youngest of the two rival rich brothers, reveals that he "went
through several of the best Eastern colleges for short periods of time, and
through several marriages for even shorter periods of time". In Spanish, he
merely went through countless "engagements" ("paso tambien por incontables noviazgos"). Comments on David's adventures, made by characters
in the story-world, are also streamlined. Thus, the older, more serious and
business-minded brother Linus has David listed "as a 600 dollar deduction" on his "tax return", whereas the Spanish David has been assigned a
"600 dollar year salary" ("tiene asignado un salario anual de seiscientos
dolares"). Similarly, when a maid sarcastically remarks about David that
12 Figures taken from the database of the Instituto de la Cinematografia y de las Artes
Audiovisuales. (www.mcu.es/cine/)
13 Only the first dubbing of El gran carnaval (1955) is older.
Jeroen Vandaele
297
"he's getting married again ... number four", the translator consistently goes
for a "tenemos otro compromiso de matrimonio en puertas", "el numero
veinte" ("we've got another engagement coming up ... number twenty").
However pervasive the multiple-marriage theme was in the original version,
for dubbing purposes it was decided to switch to "engagements". The abovementioned changes are not mere formalities, as they morally 'upgrade'
David, with whom the audience's favourite Sabrina has fallen in love. In the
same context, another, more sophisticated joke is sacrificed. As Linus keeps
on pushing David to marry "Elizabeth Tyson of the Oyster Bay Tysons",
for reasons of financial empire-building, David cynically replies:
DAVID: One thing you overlooked. I haven't proposed to
her and she hasn't accepted.
LINUS: I proposed and Mr
Tyson accepted.
DAVID: Did you kiss him?
DAVID: Olvidas un pequefio detalle: ni
yo me he declarado a ella ni ella me ha
aceptado.
LINUS: Pedf su mano para ti al sefior
Tyson y ella concedio.
DAVID: ~Pediste su mano?
[Backtranslation]
DAVID: There's one detail you forget.
I haven't declared my love to her, and
neither has she accepted me.
LINUS: I've asked for her hand and Mr
Tyson has given it.
DAVID: You've asked for her hand?
The parallelism between "I haven't proposed to her and she hasn't accepted"
and "I proposed and Mr Tyson accepted" is a fine Wilder quip, which finds
no equivalent in the translation. More importantly, David's ironic retort
"Did you kiss him?" is removed, and so is its double meaning: (a) David's
negative, sarcastic evaluation of Linus' move; (b) the suggestion tha~Linus
would indeed propose to a man, and kiss him, for financial reasons. The
nice parallelism foregrounds the figurative meaning of "I proposed and
Mr Tyson accepted", but David's retort implies a malevolent literal interpretation, which was (until then) less salient for the spectator. Moreover,
the literal interpretation immediately takes on a new more metaphorical
meaning- sex for money. Why lose this intricate joke? For its homosexual
connotations? Such an explanation would be in line with previous findings
on Wilder translations (Vandaele 2002), and also throws light on the next
fragment, in which Linus tells us why he can't marry.
298
I would be unfaithful to my wife
every day of my married life with
Vice-Presidents, boards of directors
and slide-rule accountants.
Take Three
Seria infiel a mi esposa todas las
noches de mi vida matrimonial con
cambios de bolsa, consejos de administracion, reuniones de peritos.
Jeroen Vandaele
SABRINA: That's a very unusual
song. How did they ever think of
those words?
LINUS: Yes, they are clever, aren't
they?
...with stock exchanges, boards of
directors, expert meetings.
Quite obviously, one can literally be unfaithful to "Vice-Presidents", "accountants" and (even) "(boards of) directors"- definitely an intended joke
-,whereas unfaithfulness to "stock exchanges", "(expert) meetings", and
"boards of directors" is certainly of a more figurative kind. Note how even
the "boards of directors" are personalized in English, through the presence
of "Vice-Presidents" and "accountants", and depersonalized in Spanish
through "cambios" and "reuniones".
It took Sabrina a Parisian course in fashion to become David's favourite.
A French baron in her cooking class put it plainly: "you must stop looking
like a horse" ("Y le advierto a usted senorita que ya no se lleva la cola de
caballo") ("May I say to you, young lady, that ponytails are out of fashion").
But Sabrina does win David's heart and at his own engagement party with
Elizabeth Tyson, he and Sabrina arrange a secret date on the family's indoor
tennis court. Linus understands the situation in both versions, but much of
Linus' practical, even cynical, business wording is lost in translation:
If you love her, take her.
Que triunfe el amor.
Love should prevail.
Linus is straightforward when he mentions his own capitalist aspirations,
he is an entrepreneur by nature, and "it's purely coincidently that people
who've never seen a dime now have a dollar". In dubbing it turns out that
"thousands of unemployed who lived in misery suddenly have a nice day's
pay" ("miles de desocupados que vivian miseramente ganan de pronto un
buen jornal").
However, on a romantic boat tour, while David is still recovering from
an accident with broken champagne glasses, tough Linus does seem to melt
for Sabrina's charms. Linus has now taken a record player on the boat, but
Billy Wilder lets Sabrina comment rather naively on a tune Linus is playing, Yes, we have no bananas!- possibly a caustic musical reference, by
Wilder, to Linus' life without women. The Spanish dubbing has Sabrina
remain intelligent, and Linus polite.
299
SABRINA: Es una cancioncilla
muy pegadiza.
LINUS: Si, muy pegadiza.
SABRINA: A very catchy tune.
LINUS: Yes, a very catchy tune
(indeed).
Sabrina's subsequent English remark is certainly more carnal than the
Spanish:
It's so strange to think of you being
touched by a woman.
Es dificil imaginarse que haya podido querer a alguna mujer ...
It's hard to imagine that you'd have
loved a woman ...
Just before the boat trip, Larrabee Sr. understands from Linus that he
plans to conquer Sabrina in order to save David's engagement with Elizabeth
Tyson and, hence, the Larrabee-Tyson merger.
LARRABEE Sr.: I only hope you
remember what to do with a girl...
LINUS: It'll come back to me, it's
like riding a bicycle.
LARRABEE Sr.: Supongo que no
habnis olvidado como se conquista
a una chica.
LINUS: Ya lo recordare ... Es como
volver a tocar el piano.
LARRABEE Sr.: I guess you
haven't forgotten how to win a
girl's heart.
LINUS: I'll remember ... It's like
playing the piano again.
For the Francoist plot it seems important that Sabrina makes up her mind,
and chooses Linus. Thus, when she returns home with Linus she replies
"mucho" ('very much so') when David asks her if she had a good time with
his brother ("l,Te has divertido?"). In the original, she is less sure, answering "so-so". As we know from the Junta records, the following scene was
cut from the Spanish tape:
300
Take Three
SABRINA: Kiss me, David.
DAVID: I'd love to, Sabrina. (He
kisses her)
SABRINA: Again. (Long kiss) That's
better.
(Cut.)
It concerned a passionate kiss, requested by the girl, but the cut also
helped to reorient Sabrina toward Linus. Meanwhile, the latter does everything possible to save the merger, and decides to put Sabrina alone on a boat
to Paris. However, even the original Sabrina is a romantic comedy after all,
a genre whose strongest convention may well be the happy ending. In a very
Wilderian, paced ending, David now understands Sabrina has fallen in love
with Linus, enters the family conference room where Linus is cancelling
marriage and merger alike, declares his love to Elizabeth Tyson, and urges
Linus to rush to the transatlantic boat and join his beloved Sabrina to Paris.
And so it happens. And all's well that ends well, especially for Francoist
narrative purposes.
,.1964
Jeroen Vandaele
301
Interestingly, the British Film Institute also possesses a later script with very
detailed "INSTRUCTIONS TO TRANSLATORS" (in capital letters). On
its first page we read:
. .. In this column are the titles which you are to translate. Each title
has been carefully edited to fit the available footage. In general, you
will adhere as closely as possible to the English title, but not to the
detriment of your adaptation. Try to use all the footage available
for your title. A title so short that it can be read more than once is
nearly as annoying as one which is too long to be read in the time
it remains on the screen. (Emphasis added)
The words in italics show how concerned Twentieth Century Fox was with
the integrity and quality of translations. At least one example leads me to
conclude that the Spanish translator(s) may have used a similar annotated
script. Sherman comes home and declines a second invitation from his
pretty neighbour. Throughout the picture, the slang words (underlined) are
glossed for the translators at the end of each line. Here, the Spanish version
literally accepts the gloss.
~
La tentacion vive arriba I The Seven Year Itch
The dubbed version of The Seven Year Itch was approved on 13 December
1963 and was premiered on 27 January 1964. This 1955 Twentieth Century
Fox film, filmed in Cinemascope, was dubbed in 1963 at Estudios Sevilla
Films (then located in Madrid's Chamartfn district), with Vicente Bafi6
interpreting Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) as the lonely husband who falls
under Marilyn Monroe's spell (dubbed by Maria del Puy). Other voices
are Mari Pe Castro, Antolin Garcia, Jesus Puente and Ana Diaz Plana. The
screenplay was co-written by Billy Wilder and George Axelrod. It was finalized on August I 0, 1954 (British Film Institute archives). One scene from
the original script did not make it to the final cut. When Marilyn Monroe
and Sherman come out of the cinema theatre, two subway trains come and
refresh Marilyn's legs. At the second train's passing, she was to say:
Oh, here comes another one. This one's even eooler. Mttst be an
express. Don't yoo wish yoo had a skirt? I feel so sorry for yoo in
those hot pants.
The crossed-out words do not figure on my 2003 DVD-copy of the original.
- SHERMAN: This girl's a pistol.
... Whew. It's going to be Quietsville
around here tonight, I promise you
that. ("=dynamite")
- Esa chica es dinamita.... Pfff.
Hoy vamos a disfrutar de paz y
tranquilidad, te lo prometo.
- That girl's dynamite .... Whew,
today we're going to enjoy peace
and tranquillity, I promise you that.
Inside the script, numbered instructions are given in a very specific way.
In the introduction, an off-screen narrator tells us about the early Irtdians of
Manhattan, who "sent their wives and children away", "every July when
the heat and the humidity became unbearable", but "stayed themselves",
(9) "to attend to business", (10) "setting traps, fishing, and hunting". The
script states: "TRANSLATORS: Before translating the above ~itle and titles
9 and 10, see titles 14, 15 and 16 and make the wording match as closely
as possible":
(14) Husbands still send their wives and children away and
remain behind ...
302
Take Three
(15) ... to attend to business, setting traps, fishing ...
(16) ... and hunting.
At ( 16), images show Native American men turning their backs on their
wives and children in the canoes, and lasciviously following the steps of a
beautiful young girl passing by. As a matter of fact, such 'echoic structures'
-where lines ( 14)-( 16) repeat lines (9)-(1 0)- are found throughout Wilder's
work. In an earlier article, I have shown that the dubbings of Some Like It
Hot, and especially of The Apartment, often did not pay attention to this
linguistic resource, especially when the echoes were aggressive, ironic, and
interspersed with indecency (Vandaele 2002). My Seven Year Itch copy is
a legal commercial Spanish VHS-tape which still mentions the 'age 18'
requirement and the Censorship file number. On this copy, the opening
scene has been translated as such- although there is a strange shift in colour
quality just before and after the young girl passes by, possibly hinting at a
later commercial restoration of the Franco tape. Later it will be shown that
the tape bears other, more blatant traces of mutilation and restoration, but
let us first focus on the lost echoic structures with an edge.
As has already been mentioned, Sherman imagines long conversations
with his wife, in which he insists on the 'animal' attraction he exerts on
women of all kinds. In an imaginary beach scene parodying From Here to
Eternity (Zinnemann, 1953), his wife's best friend Elaine repeats once more
what countless women have said before (albeit in Sherman's vivid mind):
- Elaine (to Sherman): What is this
strange, animal thing you have? It
bothers me. It's bothered me since
the first time I saw you and it will
bother me always - from here to
eternity.
Elaine: (,Que hay de extrafio en ti
que asi me abrasa? Me confundes. Me
desconcertaste desde la primera vez que
te vi. Me confundinis siempre. toda una
eternidad.
-
- What strange thing is it in you that
consumes me? You confuse me. You
disconcerted me from the first time I
saw you. You will always confuse me,
always, eternally.
The woman is not allowed to pronounce the word "animal", it seems.
The language shifts to a vocabulary in which "something strange" "con-
Jeroen Vandaele
303
sumes" and "confuses" her, certainly to the detriment of the funny echoic
structures, which in their original verbatim repetition of previous sequences
can be interpreted as being thoughts springing from one and the same mind,
Sherman's, and not those of the various women. 14 Also in Vandaele (2002),
I have demonstrated how Con faldas y a lo loco and El apartamento sought
for conservative gendering, even in the post-1963 era. Here again, in the
same period of aperturismo ( 1963-1967), even imaginary women are not
allowed to refer to animal instincts. The manipulative hypothesis is especially convincing because the original Twentieth Century Fox script insisted
on a verbatim rendering, because other harmless echoic mechanisms are
maintained ("confundir" appears elsewhere), and because crucial humorous elements are sacrificed, since Wilder's echoic structures mutually
enhanced each other, crystallizing into stylistically fore-grounded patterns,
or "nexuses", as Van Peer (1988) would call them, and turning Sherman's
words into preposterously false renderings of female declarations that we
suppose were never made. The dubbing preferred decent female gendering
to subtle narrative ironic polyphony. This is to argue against translators
who would minimize the semantic impact by referring to the formally
insignificant linguistic shifts.
In Con faldas y a lo loco, the Spanish version of Marilyn Monroe's character comes across as being far less stupid than Wilder had made her seem
in the original. To be sure, Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch were
dubbed shortly after the actress' tragic death, and de mortibus nisi bene. But
these translational decisions are also consistent with a principle of female
decency and respectability, still in vigour in 1964 Spain: women- especially
Marilyn Monroe- must not be ridiculous or ridiculed. The Seven Year Itch
is the ultimate meta-Monroe film. As well as blending diegetic imagination
(Sherman's soliloquy) and mimetic/dramatic representation (Sherman's
visualized imagination), Billy Wilder also cruelly blends stereotyped reality (Monroe) and fiction (her nameless character). Some derisive Monroe
jokes are translated but a particularly nasty scene is given a strange,twist in
dubbing. As Sherman invites her in for a drink, Monroe's drinking problem
is not thematized in Spanish. 'What would you like to drink?' ("(.Que va a
tomar?"), he asks in Spanish, instead of the original "You do drink, don't
you?" The new Spanish question leads to soft innuendo ("Because that's
what you came for, right?"), ("Ha venido a eso, (,no?"), but may also fit
14 The fact that the Francoist title translation De aqui ala eternidad is not used, may find
its explanation in the Francoist censoring of Zinnemann's beach scene. (http://www.
cervantesvirtual.com!historialtertulias/tert_ 4-12-0 l.shtml).
304
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in with what some progressive critics called the picture's conservatism, in
that the protagonists dare not face their deeper desire to have intercourse.
While Sherman desires to share his bed, as a good husband he consciously
hopes to share no more than a drink with Monroe's character. Secondly,
there is something absolutely derisive in Monroe's speech quality, child
talk with a strong peasant American accent, whereas the Spanish Monroe
merely sounds uninformed. Monroe's original childishness and Sherman's
astonished reactions are turned into a more affirmative Monroe and a more
polite host, respectively.
There were, however, more radical manipulations. Even though our
tape is the one commercialized in Spain until 2002-2003 (when DVDs
took over from videos), at least four parts of the VHS-version show obvious physical traces of censorship cuts. As they are partly repaired, we can
often only wonder how much original footage was cut in Francoist times.
On the VHS-tape there are at least two visual- and visible, almost clumsy
- cuts in the scene when Sherman has invited Monroe over to his apartment without knowing, at that point, that she is not exactly an expert in
classical music. He still imagines her to be quite delicate, an amateur of
Rachmaninoff. As Sherman stands in his living room, he fantasizes about
how she will descend the stairway, enter his apartment, hear him play the
grand piano, passionately lean back on the instrument, and confess, in an
affected semi-British voice: "Every time I hear it, I go to pieces". In this
fantasy, she comes and sits next to him, until he rests, and then they firmly
embrace and kiss. Then, in a narratologically interesting way, the camera
pulls back from the piano stool behind the back of the real Sherman who
is still standing in the middle of the room watching his own fantasy image.
In one and the same sequence, the story-world's 'real' bell rings, and the
camera moves with Sherman's attention to the 'real' door, through which
he expects the 'real' girl to enter. Now, whereas this sequence is originally
one continuous shot, the Francoist version displays two cuts, most visibly
just before the camera pulls back behind the 'real' Sherman. As a result, the
thoroughly creative blending of Sherman's fantasy and reality is undone.
It is quite possible that the fantasized scene was entirely cut under Franco,
especially since the 'real' piano scene does not echo the one daydreamed
by Sherman. Where Wilder made Sherman repeat the words spoken by
Monroe in his fantasy ("go to pieces"), in an attempt to seduce her, the
Spanish version opts for "se derrite" ('[people] melt') instead of Monroe's
imagined words "Sucumbo a su impacto emotivo" ("I succumb to its emotional impact"). This last line may have been a quick, later addition by a
Jeroen Vandaele
305
translator who lacked a thorough knowledge of the film.
A second major cut concerns the iconic scene in which Monroe finds
refreshment in the subway's breeze. The wind lifts her skirt, and Sherman's
"Isn't it delicious?" takes on a different connotation when combined with
the seconds-long shot of his leering look. In translation, the gaze is removed,
and the comment is made off-screen. While the referential ambiguity of
the deictic "it" originally meant 'breeze' for Monroe, and 'pair oflegs' for
Sherman, and both things for the audience, the vulgarity is deleted in the
censorship cut, even on the commercialized tape. 15
A third cut concerns nothing less than the end of the narrative, notoriously important for censors. It is well known that even Hollywood catholic
censorship strongly insisted on the happy - moral - ending of a film narrative, and that Billy Wilder made a sport of twisting his often largely
subversive stories toward a moral (but implausible) end (if possible, he
would even twist the final twist.) While the director had to build in a scene
from which it was clear that Monroe and Sherman had not spent the night
together, he makes Monroe kiss Sherman on the lips, just before he runs
off to his wife. In a reflex, Sherman wants to wipe of the lipstick, just as he
said he had done when some secretary had kissed him.
- MONROE: Don't wipe it off. If she - (Cut) Nose lo limpie. Si ella cree
thinks that's cranberry sauce, tell her que es salsa de tomate, digale que
tiene chorlitos en la cabeza.
she's got cherry pits in her head.
- Don't [polite] wipe it off. If she
thinks it's tomato sauce, tell [polite]
her that she's a scatterbrain.
From the change of sound and image quality, and from the unneccesary cut
just before "No se lo limpie" ("Don't wipe it off'') we can deduce with great
certainty that this scene, Monroe's declaration oflove, was cut in Francoist
times. Hence, the Francoist narrative ended with Sherman waking up on the
couch, Monroe waking up in bed, Sherman realizing how much he loved his
wife, Monroe wishing him all the best, and Sherman departing to his wife's
holiday resort -no sex, and no declaration of love from Monroe.
15 It is thus strongly recommended that researchers ofFrancoist dubbing look for VHStapes, even commercial ones, instead ofDVDs.
306
Take Three
5. Apertura, apres tout
The manipulations mentioned - and those we have not had the space to
mention- should not lead us to believe that no change had occurred between
1962 and 1963. Unlike completely banned films, censored versions had a
considerable impact on the liberalization of film fiction. Indeed, even censored dubbings exposed Spanish audiences to the metropolitan atmosphere
and lifestyle that suffuses Billy Wilder's films. Previously taboo elements
were now translatable, especially in La tentaci6n vive arriba. In one of his
monologues, Sherman mentions that his third-floor neighbours are both
male decorators, and they remain so in Spanish. A film that was found immoral only years before was now suddenly available, with many passages
scrupulously translated. The dubbed version translates, for instance, that
Sherman could have had sex with other "beautiful" women - "Plenty. But
plenty." Women had been "throwing themselves" at him for years. "Acres
and acres of them." It would have been hard to count them "just offhand."
Of course, Monroe plays her part in this too: "When it's hot like this, you
know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox." Given the hot weather,
she tries to sleep in the bathtub, "Just lying there up to my neck in cold
water .... But there was something wrong with the faucet. It kept dripping
... I pushed my big toe up the faucet. ... The only thing was: that my toe
got stuck and I couldn't get it back out again .... No, but thank goodness
there was a phone in the bathroom so I was able to call the plumber.... Oh
sure! He was very nice- even though it was Sunday." Right from the start,
Sherman lies to Monroe, and so he does in Spanish- "Yes, I-I live here
alone. All alone." Later on, he ventures into Freudian speculation about
humans: "Forty-eight hours ago we were strangers, and now you're here
alone with me in my apartment. ... Why? The answer of course lies in the
unconscious.... There's nothing to be ashamed of. Under this thin veneer
of civilization we're all savages." Sherman's boss unabashedly expresses
his distaste for family life- "Well, wait till you've been married as long as
/have and you'll be delighted to get rid of them for the summer.... Never
felt better in my life." And jokes can be built around suicide, as when the
psychoanalyst explains that he has been running fifteen minutes ahead of
schedule ever since "his three o'clock patient jumped out of the window
in the middle of the session". To be sure, in the Broadway theatre version
Sherman actually had sex, and in the Wilder film Monroe wanted sex, but
even so, the Francoist dubbing was an astonishingly immoral stretch of
discourse for Spain in 1964. Lack of space prevents me from spelling it
Jeroen Vandaele
307
out, but I should insist again that all the above-mentioned sequences were
faithfully dubbed.
A similar relaxation was noticeable in political matters. Stalag 17
(1953, Paramount) was approved for dubbing without cuts (Traidor en el
infierno; premiere 16 November 1964). As has already been mentioned,
it was distributed by the eminently Francoist production and distribution
company CIFESA, which specialized in war films of a less critical kind.
Only one censor (Pedro Cobelas) completely opposed the prisoner camp film
as it stimulated, in his opinion, "hatred between people/nations". The one
thing the translator(s) tried to re-establish- apart from a generally higher
register- was some kind of political respect, suppressing expressions like
"kraut money", and changing "the Jerries" (the Germans) into the neutral
third person plural ("they"). At most, "those filthy Krauts" were translated
with "estos malditos teutones" ("those damned Teutonics"). "Those Nazis
ain't kosher" became "Estos Nazis no son tontos" ("Those Nazis aren't
stupid"). A sarcastic description about life at the barracks - "Crowded
but gemiltlich, shall we say?" - was rendered as "Con mucha gente pero
ordenado, 1., verdad?" ("Crowded but tidy, right?"). On some occasions, the
story seemed to bear too close a resemblance to Spain's internal tensions
and past. When the prisoners suspect Sefton to be the German spy, he is
warned in two different ways:
This war is gonna be over some day.
And what do you think we '11 do to
Kraut-kissers like you?
Algun dia terminara esta guerra y
tendras gue exRlicar las cosas ante
un tribunal militar.
Some day this war will be over and
you'll have to exRlain things in
militruy court.
At the end of the film, Sefton's reply to them is hard. If we ~hould ever
run into each other, he says, then
let's pretend we've never met before.
les retare a un combate de boxeo.
I'll challenge you to a boxing
match.
Or when the Red Cross inspector comes into the barracks, a German
officer warns:
308
I have orders to report everyone who
complains.
Take Three
El Comandante lo ha prohibido
terminantemente
It has been forbidden by the Commander [to talk to the _inspector].
Moral matters have also been altered in this film. "The Russian broads"
in the other part of the camp are "women" in Spanish ("las mujeres rusas"). On
one occasion, the soldiers are queueing up in front of Sefton's telescope, to
peep at the Russian girls. Some complain when the queue gets too long:
By the time we get to look they'll be
old hags.
Cuando lleguemos nosotros senin
unas ancianas.
By the time we get to look they'll
be old/elderly women.
Authority-defying jokes about suicide are also difficult. A prisoner snaps
at a German officer:
Did you ever try 40 sleeping pills?
L,No ha probado tomar un
somnifero?
Did you ever try taking a sleeping
pill?
And marriage is to be respected: "I never liked you", someone says to
Sefton. Sefton replies:
Many people say that and then they
get married and live happily ever
after
Mucha gente dice esto y acaban
siendo tan buenos amigos gue parecen hermanos.
Many people say that and then they
become such good friends that they
seem brothers.
Finally, some gay innuendo is deleted, such as when Sefton denounces
the communication ("little lovenotes") between the stoolie and the German officer von Scherbach - they are dubbed as "unas cartas" ("some
letters"). Perhaps, then, this translation is morally more conservative than
Jeroen Vandaele
309
La tentaci6n vive arriba, although it should be said, again, that most elements- often visual- are left in. Think of the cross-dressing and courtship
among male prisoners; think of the two most prominent German officers,
with cross-gendered traits (the Commander has a well-built wife). In 1963
and 1964, then, Billy Wilder broadened le dicible et le visible of fiction, to
borrow Marc Angenot's famous expression.
References
Avila, Alejandro (2000) Asi se crean doblajes para cine y television, Barcelona: CIMS.
Carnicero, Marisol and Daniel Sanchez Salas (2000) Entorno a Bunuel, Madrid:
Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematograticas de Espafia.
Diez Puertas, Emeterio (2003) Historia social del cine en Espana, Madrid:
Fundamentos.
Garcia Delgado, Jose Luis (2000) 'La economia', in Jose Luis Garcia Delgado,
Juan Paplo Fusi, Julia Santos, Edward Malefakis and Stanley G. Payne (eds)
Franquismo. Eljuicio de Ia historia, Madrid: Temas de hoy, 115-70.
Garcia Escudero, Jose Maria (1978) La primera apertura. Diario de un director
general. La larga batalla de Ia censura en el cine, Madrid: Planeta.
Gubem, Roman ( 1981) La censura. Funci6n politica y ordenamiento juridico
bajo elfranquismo (1936-1975), Barcelona: Peninsula.
Kinder, Marsha (1987) 'Pleasure and the New Spanish Mentality. A Conversation with Pedro Almodovar', Film Quarterly 41 ( 1): 33-44.
Moradiellos, Enrique (2000) La Espana de Franco (1939-1975). Politica y
sociedad, Madrid: Sintesis.
Robyns, Clem (1994) 'Translation and Discursive Identity', in Clem Robyns
(ed) Translation and the (Re)production ofCulture, Leuven: CETRA, 57-81
(also published in Poetics Today 15(3): 405-28).
Seidl, Claudius (2000) Billy Wilder, Madrid: Catedra.
Sikov, Ed (1998) On Sunset Boulevard. The Life and Times of B~lly Wilder,
New York: Hyperion.
Tusell, Javier (1988) La Espana de Franco, Madrid: Espasa.
Vandaele, Jeroen (2002) 'Funny Fictions. Francoist Translation Censorship of
Two Billy Wilder Films', The Translator 8(2): 267-302.
------- (2006) Estados de Gracia. Trasvases entre Ia semimtica franquista y Ia
poetica de Billy Wilder (1 946-1975). PhD Thesis, Leuven: Faculty of Arts,
Leuven University.
-------,Jorge Montalvo and Jose Luis Ortiz (in preparation) 'Guided by Voices.
On Dubious Spanish Dubbing Discourse'.
Van Peer, Willie (1988) 'Introduction', in Willie van Peer (ed.) The Taming of
310
Take Three
the Text, London & New York: Routledge, 1-12.
Venuti, Lawrence (1998) 'Strategies of Translation', in Mona Baker (ed.)
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London & New York:
Routledge, 240-44.
Censorship Files at the Archivo General de Ia Administraci6n (Alcala de
Henares, Spain)
Stalag 17 Record: AGA 36/3453
Sabrina Record: AGA 36/3518
The Seven Year Itch Record: AGA 36/3680
Notes on Contributors
Siobhan Brownlie is a Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University
of Manchester where she is in charge of the literary stream in the Masters
in Translation Studies. Her research interests are in descriptive translation
studies, comparative methodology in translation research, the theory of
literary translation, contemporary French philosophy, and the translation
of 19th and 20th century French literature into English.
Giorgio Fabre works as a journalist in the Italian newsmagazine Panorama. As a historian, he has published articles on D 'Annunzio esteta per
l'informazione (1981) and on Fascist spying in the Soviet Union in the
1930s and 1940s: Roma a Mosca ( 1990). He is author of L 'elenco ( 1998)
on Fascist censorship, and particularly that against Jewish authors (in November 2005 partially translated in the German review Sinn und Form), II
contratto (2004) on Hitler and Mussolini relations (translated in the USA
as Hitler s contract, 2006) and Mussolini razzista (2005), about the racism
of the young Fascist leader.
Jacqueline A. Hurtley is a Professor of Literature in English at the University of Barcelona. She is a graduate in Spanish with Italian as well as in
English Language and Literature and a number of her publications are of a
comparative nature. She was awarded the Enrique Garcia y Diaz Research
Prize by the Asociaci6n Espafiola de Estudios Anglonorteamericanos
(AEDEAN) for her Jose Janes: editor de literatura inglesa (1992). More
recently, she has produced chapters on Woolf, Pater, Yeats and Lawrence
in Spain in The Athlone Critical Traditions Series: The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe. With two colleagues at the University of
Barcelona, she has published editions of Austen's Pride and Prejudice and
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. She has taught literature in English
from the Renaissance up until the present as well as literary theory. She
is currently working to finish a biography on Walter Starkie, first British
Council Representative in Spain.
Katja Krebs completed her PhD at the Performance Translation Centre,
University of Hull, and is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of
Music and Drama at the Cardiff School for Creative and Cultural Industries,
University ofGlamorgan, where she teaches European theatre history. Her
research interests concern the relationship between translation history and