This is an important issue, a tricky one, and I think, an embarrassing one for many people. Unless we are amazing polymaths, few of us are multilingual enough to know the languages of all cultures from which important films have come. In general film courses, I think most of us have few qualms about, say, representing Italian Neo-Realism by showing BICYCLE THIEVES or OPEN CITY, without a knowledge of Italian. Where it gets dicier is when it comes to entire courses. I myself teach a survey of French cinema even though my facility with the language is patchy at best. Even my shaky French, however, often allows me to point out dialogue that is mistranslated (or not translated at all) in the subtitles. For example, in Ophuls's LA RONDE, when the emcee in his opening song sings "Tourne, tourne, mes personnages," and the subtitle stupidly reads "turn, turn, o my dear friends," I'm able to point out that he's actually saying "turn, turn, my characters," a crucial difference. And my knowledge of the language has improved since I've been teaching the course. I laughingly explain my persistence in teaching French film, which I love with a passion, despite a lack of fluency in the language, by saying "If Francois Truffaut could conduct a book-length interview with Alfred Hitchcock without knowing English, I can teach films by Truffaut and others without knowing French." That's glib, but it does get at a key issue, when one considers not just the influence of American cinema on many filmmakers who responded to the language of cinema without needing to know the verbal language, but the fact that film as a discipline and as an art form was furthered by a recognition on the part of many, the French in particular, but also Germans, Japanese, Russians, and others, of the power of the American cinema, again often without a knowledge of our language. Why should we Americans not reciprocate, especially given the lack of exposure of many of our students to national cinemas other than our own? The other issue involves a trade-off. Many of us are at universities where either we film professors teach films of other cultures or they go untaught. However, even if we are at institutions where, say, a course on French film might be taught in a French Department, would those students be taught film, or an illustration of French history or literature? If we approach courses on national cinemas with the attitude that these are FILM courses, albeit seen in the light of national culture, history, and the other arts and humanities, then the importance of offering such courses becomes clear. Besides, I am not sure that language issues are foremost on the minds of film studies scholars who teach films made in their own languages; Mike Leigh's TOPSY TURVY, with its attempt to represent English as it would have been spoken in a community of artists in late-Victorian England, reminds me of how often native speakers take no notice of the historical evolution of their own languages. Most films set in historical periods are spoken in the standard language usage of the time the film is made. When a film comes out that breaks that pattern, we realize how often historical and cultural differences in our own languages fall, as it were, upon deaf ears. However, a French film made in the same spirit, obviously would be lost on me and anyone else not attuned to the language. So the conclusion is that in a perfect world all film courses would be taught by people with a thorough sensitivity to film and to the languages in which the films are made. But film itself is a world "language" in an imperfect world. And there you have it. Dennis Bingham Associate Professor Dept. of English Indiana University Indianapolis ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html