The Order of Things in the World

Some day I will write some more-specific words about the classic films Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and Abel Gance’s “La Roue”. Both are available in fine DVD editions and everyone who loves movies should watch them, enjoy them.

I hope that my thoughts about them then will be greater than the piece of fluff that just popped into my head:

Though they appear in the “L” section of my personal movie library, in Italy, “La Dolce Vita” would appear in the D section. “La Roue”, in France, would appear with the other R titles.

For that matter, why does Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” come to us from Criterion as “Beauty and the Beast” instead of its original French title “La Belle et la Bete”? Why didn’t the company then release “La Dolce Vita” with its translated title “The Sweet Life”? (Yes, I realize commercial reasons lurk as answers here…)

Additions to this posting will come when I can figure why these facts feel important enough for me to post them in the first place…