The Media : Zut Alors! French ‘Voices’ Fall Silent in Dubbers Strike : The actors who put translated words into U.S. stars’ mouths demand pay for rebroadcast of programs in France.

In real life, Daniel Beretta is a stocky, blue-eyed guy with long, thick blond hair and the beginnings of a paunch. He plays the piano, sings French ballads and does some acting, though he labors mostly in obscurity.

But millions of French moviegoers would recognize Beretta instantly, without laying eyes on him, as the muscled voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger in half a dozen films over the past decade.

And for Beretta and 800 other French actors, the process of putting their words in the mouths of America’s top movie stars is the most challenging acting assignment of all.

“It’s the toughest of jobs to be someone else’s voice, but I just love to play Schwarzenegger,” Beretta said, smiling as he held his 2-year-old daughter in his Paris apartment. “There’s, like, a spark. I feel I know him. We have a parallel life. I’m sure he’s a good guy, with a lot of heart.”

But these days, the voices of France’s skillful dubbers, or doubleurs as they are called here, have fallen silent in the studios and are instead being raised in the streets.

They have launched a massive strike, now in its ninth week, to press their demand to be paid for the rebroadcast of films, TV programs and series in which they performed. The strike centers on a 1985 French law guaranteeing actors and other performing artists the right to be paid for all residual sales of their work. The distribution companies argue that dubbers are “extras,” not performing artists, and therefore are not covered by the law.

The distributors of films and TV programs “have insulted us,” said Alain Dorval, a rugged, dark-haired 48-year-old who has been Sylvester Stallone’s gravelly French voice since the first “Rocky” in 1976. “This is about our dignity, and dignity can’t be shared.”

Now the dubbers have begun using their special skills in an ingenious radio appeal for public sympathy. In one advertising spot, the well-known French voice of Peter Falk’s Columbo asks the voice of “Monsieur Eliot Ness” how he can tell his wife what the strike is all about.

After being told that everyone involved in the film receives residuals except the dubbers, Columbo responds with all the sincerity of the beloved, rumpled detective. “That’s not right,” he says.

The man behind Columbo’s French voice, Serge Sauvion, is an institution in France, where episodes of the TV series still play regularly. In his career, the 66-year-old French actor has done the voices of TV tough guys Mike Hammer and Baretta as well as roles played by Richard Burton, Sidney Poitier and Montgomery Clift.

“I’ve dubbed the Columbo series for 25 years, but each time I was only paid once,” complained Sauvion. “This fight of ours is going to last as long as it takes to win.”

The strike already has disrupted the television dubbing of dozens of American soap operas and series, and delays now are expected in getting them onto the screen.

So far, film distributors say the strike has not greatly affected them. BAC Films, which is distributing the new Woody Allen film, “Bullets Over Broadway,” had the French-language script written before the strike and has managed to finish the dubbing with strike-breakers and foreign actors.

“I can’t tell you how we’ve done it,” a spokesman for BAC said. “But it was legal.”

The French government, fearing that the strike will severely disrupt television programming and hurt striking actors, has called in a mediator. But the television and film distributors have thus far refused to negotiate.

In a letter to the two sides, Culture Minister Jacques Toubon said he believes that the law clearly was intended to include dubbers as “performing artists.” But he added that a final decision would rest with the nation’s judiciary.

Dubbing is big business in France, where American films and TV programs make up well over half the entertainment fare. For the French viewer, everyone from Tom Hanks to Julia Roberts speaks French. And the unions representing the dubbers say 85% of American entertainment revenue here comes from dubbed TV programs and films.

In French cinemas, foreign films usually are released in both their “original version,” with French subtitles, and a “French version,” in which dialogue is dubbed.

For mainstream pictures, such as “Sister Act,” and animated films, such as “The Lion King,” about 90% of box-office revenue comes from the French version. But for other pictures, such as Woody Allen films, which many French moviegoers prefer to see in their original version, only about half the receipts come from the French version.

It costs between $70,000 and $150,000 to dub an American movie in France, not including the cost of translating the script. The standard union scale for dubbing actors is $6.50 a line, or about $2,000 for a leading role, and it usually involves a week or 10 days of work.

Dubbers with voices that are well-known, or associated with the actors on screen, can command higher salaries.

Dorval made $1,000 for dubbing Stallone in the first “Rocky” movie. But, for the last in the series, he demanded and received $10,000. His salary dipped again with the recent “Cliffhanger,” for which he received $5,000 to dub Stallone.

Although most dubbers work in anonymity, a few say they are recognized by their voices in restaurants and on the streets.

“Young people really identify with me as Stallone,” Dorval said. “People are always asking me to do the last line of ‘Rocky.’ They say: ‘Do Adrian for me!’ ”

With that, Dorval broke into a warbling “AAAAddddriaaaaan!” As if to apologize, he added: “It’s a very celebrated cry in France.”

Dubbing has been around since the end of the silent film era. While it has never been especially popular in the United States, it is an integral part of the movie business in Europe, primarily because of Hollywood’s huge market share there.

It’s big business, and distributors in France are understandably reluctant to hand over a portion of their proceeds for rebroadcasts and re-screenings.

“Dubbing in France is more expensive than anywhere else in the world,” said Jean Labadie, general manager of BAC, which has distributed “Short Cuts,” “Pulp Fiction” and other recent U.S. films in France. “These people are very well paid. I don’t feel these are poor people living on the streets.

“This is a market,” Labadie added. “And there is no reason that everybody should get a percentage all the time, unless the film is being sold by their name and their voice.”

But the three unions representing the dubbers in France disagree, pointing out that writers of dubbed dialogue are paid each time the show or film appears.

“We want them to recognize us as actors, with the right to authorize the use of our work all the way down the line,” said Jimmy Shulman, a leader of the Syndicate of French Performing Artists, the largest actors union in France.

“These distributors have the money,” Shulman added. “But we haven’t even talked about figures yet. We’re still stuck on questions of principle.”

The actors say the key to successful dubbing is to put themselves into the image on the screen and make the audience forget, as soon as possible, that they aren’t hearing the actor’s real voice.

Of course, that’s not always easy. One problem is regional American accents. In France, when an American actor appears on screen with a Texas twang, the French dubber gives him a non-Parisian accent, to distinguish him from the rest of the cast.

The other problem is French accents in American movies. Beretta, the French Schwarzenegger, solved the problem of playing the voice of Lumiere, the French-accented candelabra in “Beauty and the Beast” by putting on the sophisticated accent of the late Maurice Chevalier.

With some roles, such as Columbo, simple mimicry works nicely, and a casual viewer might easily believe Sauvion is Falk’s long-lost French cousin. Similarly, Bernard Murat does Woody Allen as a very believable, whiny Frenchman.

Beretta got his first Schwarzenegger job when a producer overheard him speaking in a television studio. But Beretta’s Schwarzenegger voice has evolved from the tough, East European accent of the actor in “Red Heat” to a lighter, almost feminine tone in “Junior,” in which the actor plays a man who becomes pregnant.

Some distributors have rotated the voice roles of major actors, weighing the potential for audience reaction against the potential for increased wage demands from dubbers too closely associated with one actor. For instance, there are two French Kevin Costners and two Whoopi Goldbergs, and many actors have done Jack Nicholson’s voice.

“Being an actor means being another person, but to be a dubber you have to play an actor who is playing another person,” said Jacqueline Cohen, a deep-voiced 59-year-old who has played the French voice of Goldberg in “Jumping Jack Flash,” “The Player” and “Sarafina.”

“You can’t make people on the street do this job,” she added. “It’s impossible. You have to be an actor, and you have to have a certain technique.”

Because Cohen is a white woman doing the voice of a black actress, she said she finds the biggest compliment comes “when people say they’ve seen one of my Whoopi Goldberg films and didn’t recognize me.”

For most French dubbers, the job is part-time. As the French film industry has atrophied, jobs for actors have dwindled. And dubbing is a way to supplement their income from writing, stage acting or television commercials.

Cohen, for example, spends most of her time writing dubbed dialogue. She has written the French scripts and subtitles for all of Woody Allen’s films, including “Bullets Over Broadway.” And she fondly remembers an exchange last year with Allen, who is probably America’s most popular filmmaker in France.

“You’ve made a hero of me in France,” he told Cohen.

“No,” she responded, “you’ve made a hero of me.”

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Losing Their Voices

A strike, now in its ninth week, by the French actors who dub the dialogue of U.S. movie stars has disrupted distribution of American films and programs in France.