article
La Classe américaine
Film collage and dubbing
Simon Labate | University of Namur
On 31 December 1993, French pay TV channel Canal+ broadcast a 70-minute film called La Classe américaine, directed by
Michel Hazanavicius and Dominique Mézerette. They took excerpts from about fifty Warner Bros. productions, edited them to build a story and
had the characters (played by A-list actors such as John Wayne and James Stewart) dubbed over by well-known French voice actors, resulting
in what is known technically as a ‘détournement’, combining the techniques of film collage and dubbing. This paper sketches the origins and
the production context of this very unusual audiovisual object, relying on insights from film theory, with particular reference to
adaptation techniques like remixes and collages. The analysis also shows how meaning and humour are created through the montage of
originally completely disconnected scenes and the addition of funny or crude dialogues that one would not expect from cinema legends like
John Wayne. A final part highlights the film’s cult status and its influence on the creation of more détournements.
Keywords: adaptation, détournement, dubbing, film collage, film remix
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Types of film adaptation
- 3.Creating La Classe américaine
- 4.Stylistic features
- 5.Legacy and concluding remarks
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
-
Films cited -
References
This article is currently available as a sample article.
Published online: 15 June 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.10.1.02lab
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.10.1.02lab
References
Films cited
Barnier, Martin
Boillat, Alain
Bovier, François
Cornu, Jean-François
Deprieck, Matthieu
& Clément Sautet 2009
La Classe américaine
. Histoire d’un film pirate devenu culte. L’Express. 〈http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/cinema/la-classe-americaine-histoire-d-un-film-pirate-devenu-culte_752975.html〉 (Last accessed on 19 January 2017).
Détournement
2017 In Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc 10 January 2017 〈https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Détournement〉 (Last accessed on 19 January 2017).
Labate, Simon
Marie, Michel & François Thomas
Morreall, John
2016 Philosophy of humour. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University. 〈https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/humor/〉 (Last accessed on 19 January 2017).