Transnational cinema and cultural adaptation in early 1930s Europe: the four language versions of ‘The Private Secretary’

A comparison of the German film Die Privatsekretärin/The Private Secretary (Wilhelm Thiele, 1931) and its three other-language versions (French, Italian, British) provides a case study for a topic that has been little examined: the relationship between transnational cultural adaptation and the purported national identity and ‘nationalizing’ of films in the early sound period. The level and scope of these adaptations varied from retaining and modifying the original to remaking the film entirely. In some cases the adaptations were undertaken prior to export by the company that produced the original, in others by companies in the country that had imported the film. A brief discussion of the changing relationship between these factors...