Educational Media Reviews Online

German avant-garde filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger is probably best known for one of her early films, Freak Orlando, and thus her formal preoccupations with the structure of this film echo the careful way in which she continues to work. Under Snow is written, shot and directed by her. The film is extremely picturesque: it is beautifully composed and its narrative emerges at a languorous pace dictated by its intrinsic narrative text. According to the DVD back-cover notes, Ottinger journeyed to Echigo in Japan, where the snowfall amounts are staggering and linger into the month of May. Her travels there were to both record the very distinctive forms of everyday life in that part of the country and to stage, with two Kabuki performers, scenes form a mid-19th century book called Snow Country Tales by Bokushi Suzuki.

The version of the film available to North American audiences, through its Women Make Movies distribution, is an English version that simply changes the voice-over narration from its original German to English, while all other dialogue (in Japanese) is not subtitled and everything else in the film remains as in the original German. The film has no subtitles of any kind and its title and credits are all in German. There is no menu on the disc: the film just starts with German credits. This is rather disconcerting when initially viewing the film. There are no liner notes, no additional information to clarify this particular version, nothing to help the viewer prepare for the film other than the few sentences on the back cover. There are actually a few additional sentences about the film on the WMM website. It is perhaps less expensive to dub a voice-over than to commission subtitles but in the case of this film, hearing the original German voice-over narrating the Snow Country Tales with subtitles would have been much preferable to having to listen to the English-language narrator reading his script. The text is poetic with very descriptive and formal language and would require someone with skill in interpreting the words. Instead we are subjected to a very (unintentionally and un-ironically) flat delivery, which rather than enhancing the exquisite visuals, brings unnecessary attention to the narrator’s extremely limited acting range. I recommend this film but with reservations about the English voice-over track and the complete lack of basic DVD features (like a DVD menu) expected in a $400 educational DVD.