A quick survey of French movie posters

As we've been walking through Paris the last few days, I've taken pictures of -- well, everything. I think it might be starting to annoy the rest of my family, all except my youngest, who likes to scroll through the camera roll whenever I will let him. Anyway, I love this city, and if it involves falling a few steps behind the others and then having to scurry to catch up, so be it.

So I thought I'd post today with a couple of the French versions of posters of new movies coming out, which are each notable in some way for some slightly different reason.

First of course there is the poster above for The Conjuring: Last Rites. Here this is called The Conjuring: L'Heure du Jugement, which even those of you who don't speak French can probably figure out translates to The Conjuring: Hour of Judgment. 

There are a couple notable things about this:

1) The franchise name is not translated. If it were, it would be Prestidigitation, which is also an English word that I love. Except it would be pronounced "Press-tay-dee-jee-tah-syon," with the n sound at the end mostly dropped. I suspect there's too much value in the internationally known franchise name to translate it. Or, they should have translated it years ago when the first movie came out, but I guess never did -- though the literal translation is not quite the same as what the movie is going for, as I believe the French word "prestidigitation" has more to do with magic, as it does in English. 

2) The subtitle is needlessly changed. Don't they have last rites in France? It would be Derniers Rites, which seems fine to me.

Here's the second poster accompanying this in the Metro, which I love for its breathlessness:

I especially love the word "Palpitant." "Le meilleur de la saga" means "the best in the series." It's funny that we only use the English word "saga" when talking about Star Wars. I have no idea why.

This was the first one I noted and it might have led the post, except I already used this poster in my most recent post, only the English version.

The notable things about this poster for The Roses:

1) They've gone for the full title of the book on which this movie was based, as well as the title of the original movie version from 1989 starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, which the young version of me was confused was not a sequel to Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile. I prefer this for the movie, actually. "The War of the Roses" is actually a reference to a series of civil wars in England in the mid 15th century, though I hardly think that should have made Hollywood squeamish in terms of naming the movie, especially since there was already a movie named this 36 years ago. A disinclination to evoke the idea of war at all in these troubled times? More likely, a desire not to confuse stupid Americans about the type of movie this is. 

2) I didn't consciously realize that in French you don't pluralize last names when talking about more than one person in the family. "Des Rose" means, of course, "of the Roses," but I suspect if you were just talking about them you'd say "Les Rose." Important to know if you were talking about Schitt's Creek in France. (I noticed belatedly that you can see the same thing in the Conjuring poster, where it refers to "Des Warren.")

And finally:

The notable thing about this is the extreme fealty to a Hollywood logic that does not work at all for a movie in the Downton Abbey series, at any point in history that the film would have been released, but particularly at this moment in history, when Roman numerals in film titles have become very passe. Roman numerals are more suited for a Rocky movie or a Star Trek movie. and 40 years ago rather than today. Besides which, I am pretty sure that in the English-speaking world it is just Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.

Or was sure of this, anyway. When I went to IMDB just now, I see the movie listed as Downton Abbey 3, with the original title Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Somehow this is even worse than Downton Abbey III, as the Roman numerals are at least a classy way to number sequel titles, making you think of a monarchy or something. 

I've loved spending time in Paris, but now it's on to the South of France for the next five nights, during which we will recharge our batteries after walking an average of about 18,000 steps a day in the two biggest and oldest cities in Europe over the past week. And that means another five days of using my broken French from 12th grade with French shopkeepers.