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February 11

Parasite

Is Parasite considered the first foreign language film to win Best Picture, or should that honour instead go to The Artist? I haven't seen either film, so I don't know. 68.129.97.180 (talk) 20:13, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I had the same thought. The tricky bit is that The Artist only has one spoken line and it is in English. MarnetteD|Talk 20:30, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Silent Movie had only one word spoken out loud, and it was in French. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:23, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nice connection Bugs. Another bit of fun is that the speaker was the mime Marcel Marceau :-) MarnetteD|Talk 22:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Much (~~or perhaps even most~~) of the dialogue in Dances with Wolves is spoken in Lakota, with other sections in Pawnee. Blakk and ekka 11:10, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly long sections of The Godfather Part II are in Sicilian. Blakk and ekka 11:30, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While it is broadly true that there have been other movies that have both a) won Best Picture and b) had lines of dialog that were in languages other than English (two were named above, I have no doubt that there are others), Parasite is in fact the only Best Picture winner whose dialogue is primarily (IIRC, basically entirely) in a language other than English.[1]. --Jayron 32 13:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reminded of when some people were complaining about The Passion of the Christ not receiving a nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as it was called at the time. There are reasons why the new name Academy Award for Best International Feature Film makes more sense. The requirement is not simply that it's in had predominantly non-English dialogue track" a foreign language but also that it's "produced outside the United States", and indeed the award is considered to the country. Countries are the ones who make a submissions, one each. And films may be rejected "A film may also be refused if its submitting country has exercised insufficient artistic control over it." Lust, Caution is an interesting example of this. A film produced in the US was never eligible for the award even under the old name. (And note also a film's production country is complicated, and can involve more than where most filming took place.)

That said, as our article says, language is important. In the past, they even required it be in an official language of the submitting country. This is no longer the case, but they will still invalidate a film for having too much English. Interesting Le Bal (1983 film) was accepted, so maybe The Artist (film) would have been eligible were it not for that bit at the end. Although I also suspect that being shot in LA probably killed any chances, if not from the Academy, from the French government.

Anyway, so while logically "first foreign-language film" would apply to any film in a foreign language, IMO there's a strong tie to the category formerly known as "Best Foreign Language Film". It would be even stronger if they hadn't renamed it the year one finally won :-P So even if Letters from Iwo Jima or Apocalypto, or yes The Passion of the Christ had won Best Picture, you'd probably still get people thinking Parasite was the first. And definitely, any film which would have been ineligible for the foreign-language film category for too much English putting aside country issues, is likely to be rejected by many as a "first" candidate. See also List of Academy Award–winning foreign-language films.

An interesting aside is that it is always possible, especially with the single submission and politics involved, for a film which would be eligible for the Best International Feature Film/Foreign Language Film category, but wasn't nominated, to win Best Picture. While I'm fairly sure this never happened, a somewhat related example may be A Place in the World (film). It was I assume eligible for the Foreign Language Film category despite its disqualification, it just needed to be submitted by Argentina instead. (It didn't win or even get nominated for any other Oscars.)

Nil Einne (talk) 17:36, 13 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Something else which occurs to me. Even of we concentrate on the term "foreign-language film", while a film entirely in Lakota and Pawnee may not be in English, saying it's in a foreign-language from the US POV is interesting since both languages likely arose in, and are primarily spoken in, what is now the US. While the US has no official language in a number of contexts, and many would dispute other languages, especially Spanish being a 'foreign language', I would suggest it's especially questionable with languages of Native American tribes who mostly lived and live in what is now the US.

You could claim anything but English is a foreign language to either Hollywood or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but it does IMO highlight the point that ultimately if you say "foreign-language film" instead of "non-English film", you're going to get into debates about what you mean by that. And the latter runs into problems with silent films with no dialogue or text. Jayron32's description might be most accurate but doesn't tend to be what people say.

P.S. Reading the talk page highlights an interesting point. Because of the different rules, it's possible for a film to win Best Picture a different year from the International Feature Film/Foreign Language Film award. City of God (2002 film) was up for awards in different years.

,p>Also it occurs to me that beside not being submitted by the country, a film could fail to get nominated for the International Feature Film because of the different rules, despite receiving a Best Picture nomination. I suspect it's even more likely than it would seem that a film could be one of the nominees and not win the International Feature Film category but win Best Picture. (And the winner of International Feature Film wouldn't have won even if a nominee, the Best Picture Oscar.)

Nil Einne (talk) 10:50, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]