Culture for the Conquered

Plans were long ago made for U.S. films to follow the Allied armies into Italy. In Sicily, OWI's Overseas Film Bureau, headed by Robert Riskin, is already using 40 Hollywood films, tricked out with Italian titles, to make friends and influence the conquered. The Sicilians have been brought such fruits of culture as The More the Merrier, Seven Sweethearts, I Married A Witch, Across the Pacific. It is expected that Italian audiences will take this fare with good appetite: for five years they have hungered almost in vain for U.S. films.

OWI's attractions have been chosen for their entertainment value. Programs will be interspersed with such shorts as the MARCH OF TIME, This Is America. Propaganda shorts will come later. For the time being, OWI is kept busy tossing out films containing embarrassing subjects: scenes of food being wasted, "frivolous" treatments of other touchy themes. Recently thumbed down by OWI was a film featuring a Four Freedoms song & dance act.

Most U.S. studios are now titling a few of their feature films in most European languages. This involves more than just synchronizing printed translations of dialogue. Marx Brothers jokes are so surrealist that translators are forced to become gagmen as well. Often studios can scarcely recognize their own titles in translation. Sun Valley Serenade (20th Century-Fox) became in Italian Sun in Bright Valley; in Portuguese, I Want to Marry You; in Danish, You Are the One for Me; in Norwegian, Song of the High Mountains; in French, You're Going to Be My Husband.

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