Shall We Dance - Prologue

[Carole Cavanaugh]

Thanks for the translation. I think I now remember something in the U.S.
version about how rare it is for Japanese married couples to embrace or to
express love. Am I remembering correctly?  There is nothing in the
Japanese version that refers to marriage so this would account for Suou's 
alteration.   
 
Carole Cavanaugh
Middlebury College

On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Joseph Murphy wrote:

> >Did Suou say what the alterations were? I saw the film in the U.S. in
> >August and the opening scene in the Japanese video I have seems the same.
> >If there is any contextualization it would seem to be for a Japanese
> >audience. The voice-over explains the European origins of
> >ballroom dancing, shakou dansu. There's a quotation from Shakespeare and
> >one from Adam Smith. As David Desser points out, the scene of apparently
> >British dancers is reprised later in the film. Did Suou give any details?
> 
> I'm translating this from an article Suo ran in Bungei Shunju (1997.8) on
> his 16-city promotion tour in the U. S.
> 
> "To get it under 2 hours (Miramax's non-negotiable condition for release)
> we cut the scene where the dance instructor has a fight with her father
> completely, and pared down the interval between dialogue.  That got us down
> to 1h 58m.  Then we also changed the narration that covers the opening
> scene of the English dance hall, so the American audience would be better
> able to relate to the film (rikai shite moraeru).  I wrote the words
> myself, and had Sugiyama (i.e. Yakusho Koji) read it for me..."
> 
> Carol, I'm wondering if they didn't then turn around and stick that new
> narration back onto the Japanese version.  That would be interesting.
> 
> j.m.
> 
> 
>