Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s anarcho-syndicalist peasant scene is one of the funniest parts of the film. In it, two peasants claim that they’re living i...
    • HenchmanNumber3@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      4 months ago

      Hey, it was a highly accurate, academically astute, peer-reviewed depiction of a scripted comedy scene!

  • Brickardo@feddit.nlEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    Part of this scene was cut out in Spain back when it released. Even if it had not been accurate, the main takeaways were “dangerous” enough.

    • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      Huh, I never realized that Holy Grail came out in the last year of the Franco regime! Do you have a source for the censorship, by the way? Seems completely plausible, but I wasn’t able to find anything concrete (at least in English).

      • Brickardo@feddit.nlEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        Not all Spaniards know about this, maybe because English may understandably not be their strongest skill which may cause them to only have watched the Spanish version of the movie.

        Regardless, after googling “comuna anarcosindicalista franquismo monty python” I came across this video which, interestingly, doesn’t have a mention to anarchosyndicalism. Moreover, a comment in the same video asks why this scene of the movie is never fully uploaded in Spanish.

        It’s likely that the relevant bit of the movie was never even dubbed.

        • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          Oh wow, thank you! For those who don’t speak Spanish, here’s exactly what was cut out:

          English Dialogue:

          DENNIS: You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship.
          A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes–
          WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
          DENNIS: That’s what it’s all about if only people would–
          ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
          in that castle?
          —CUT BEGINS HERE—
          WOMAN: No one lives there.
          ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
          WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
          ARTHUR: What?
          DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take
          it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
          ARTHUR: Yes.
          —CUT ENDS HERE—
          DENNIS: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified
          at a special biweekly meeting.
          ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
          DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,–
          ARTHUR: Be quiet!
          DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more–
          ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
          WOMAN: Order, eh – who does he think he is?
          ARTHUR: I am your king!

          So in Spanish, the dialogue goes like this (just including the the lines before and after the cut), which is very abrupt and makes Dennis’ response into a non sequitur:

          ARTHUR: Por favor, por favor! Tengo prisa, buena gente. ¿Quién vive en ese castillo?
          DENNIS: Pero las decisiones de ese funcionario deben ser ratificadas en una asamblea quincenal, por una mayoría sencilla en caso de ser asuntos

          Backing that up, I found another clip which explicitly mentions that it was censored and links to a newly dubbed version without the cut (seems the redubbing was done in 2008 for a DVD release).

          I’m pretty surprised there’s no mention on Spanish Wikipedia. If I were a native Spanish speaker and could track down a solid source I might add it myself. Some quick Google searches in Spanish didn’t turn up anything useful, but I wonder if there are any books or other print sources which detail Francoist censorship of foreign media.

          Also TIL that “fortnight” is quincena in Spanish, which is basically “fiftnight” (although -eno is a more general suffix).