French Detection

It's pronounced, "Kay-Dee O-Fay-vor-a," I told Mr. Ginley.

Quai des Orfèvres is the location of the Police Judiciaire de Paris. It's where our fictional hero, Chief Superintendent Jules Maigret, has his office.

We'd been watching Maigret (pronounced "May-Gray"), a French mystery series starring Bruno Cremer. Since this version was performed with French actors, we were using subtitles, but frankly, they speak so darned fast, you don't always hear the French pronunciation.

Thus, I turned to You Tube so I could properly pronounce Quai des Orfèvres.

Isn't French just the ginchiest language? Although, I've gotta say, I doubt they get anywhere near as much satisfaction from spitting out "merde" as my grandma did saying "shit." (It was her favorite swear word. She said no other expletive felt as good to say when she was really worked up.)

We also noticed the subtitles didn't translate exactly. French is by no means our native tongue, but even we figured out that the actors were saying a lot more than what was showing up in the subtitles. I suppose they captured the gist of it, but we did feel just a little cheated. Who knows what the subtitlist decided wasn't germane to the story? 

It made me think of all those Japanese imports we were exposed to as children. "There goes Tokyo, Go Go Godzilla." The monster would be tearing it up, while the actors stood there reciting what appeared to be the New York City phone directory. But the English words coming out of the dubbed-in actors' mouths were, essentially, "We're screwed, this giant lizard means business."

But I digress.

Once we'd made it through the entire French production of Maigret, we decided to start on the British version. It was fairly well done, but I must admit, it's a little off-putting hearing Parisian arrondissements spoken with a Brit accent. I suppose Michael Gambon did a serviceable job, but we still preferred Bruno Cremer. The French version just captured the whole noir thing beautifully.

Naturally, being the bibliomaniacs we are, the next step was to begin reading the books the two series were based on. There are 75 of them. Thanks to the Downtown Cleveland Library, I believe we will be able to accomplish this task, given the time.

Meanwhile, we will cast about for a new/old series to latch onto. We've watched a couple of Italian mystery series, so it doesn't have to be a PBS production or anything.

We're open to suggestions.

Merci beaucoup!