RISING SUN... CANADIAN STYLE

La Gazette du doublage, the most important website about French-speaking dubbing, has an interesting and most intriguing story this sunday about the recent rerun of Rising Sun (1993) on French cable channel Paris Premiere (a subsidiary of national private channel M6).

On november 30th, Paris Premiere aired the movie adaptation of the excellent Michael Crichton best-seller, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. What is intriguing with what is after all another rerun of this enjoyable film is that Paris Premiere aired a French-speaking dubbing done in Quebec and not the usual French dubbing made in Paris.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this dubbing from Quebec. Sean Connery is dubbed by Ronald France and Wesley Snipes by Jean-Luc Montminy - the voice of Bruce Willis in Quebec (http://www.doublage.qc.ca/showMovie.php?id=1551). Most important, the dubbing artistic director and author of the French dialogues for this version is Vincent Davy, one of the most respected dubbing director, dubbing author and artist of the Province. He's the voice of Jack Nicholson, Anthony Hopkins or Martin Landau and his impressive resume has the length of the Great Wall of China.

In fact, French-speaking dubbing from Quebec is quite familiar for French viewers since the 70s-80s. Mainly because such shows like the original Star Trek, Space: 1999 or The Six million dollar man (except for some episodes dubbed in France) have been dubbed there. But for legal reasons movies shown in French theaters are dubbed in France or sometimes in Belgium and Montreal is excluded, so of course 99% of the movies later seen on TV are dubbed in Paris.

There is a "Parisian" dubbing for Rising Sun, with the voice of Jean-Claude Michel for Sean Connery. Jean-Claude Michel is a legend for dubbing aficionados, he was the voice of Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery or Peter Graves. François Justamand, chief editor of La Gazette du doublage, points out that some years ago private channel TF1 aired this dubbing from Quebec just once and asks the following questions: why does the TV distributor of Rising Sun proposes this version to French channels? Is it an issue about rights or only a mistake of this distributor?

Oddly enough, the last time TF1 aired the movie it was with the dubbing from France but the promos were with the dubbing from Quebec.

http://www.objectif-cinema.com/blog-doublage/index.php/2009/12/06/214-nouvelles-en-vrac (In French)