Henri Béhar

Henri Béhar is a subtitler, film critic and journalist who is best known for his regular participation in the Cannes Film Festival and for his subtitling of many well-known films.

Life and career Béhar was born to Jewish parents in Cairo and educated in Paris. He has been North American correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde. He has frequently chaired events at the Cannes Film Festival. As a professional subtitler he sees subtitling as "a form of cultural ventriloquism, [...] the focus must remain on the puppet, not the puppeteer. Our task as subtitlers is to create subliminal subtitles so in sync with the mood and rhythm of the movie that the audience isn’t even aware it is reading. We want not to be noticed. If a subtitle is inadequate, clumsy, or distracting, it makes everyone look bad, but first and foremost the actors and the filmmakers. It can impact the film’s potential career."

Films subtitled Béhar has subtitled more than a hundred French- and English-language films.

Zelig (Woody Allen, 1983) Plenty (Fred Schepisi, 1985) Thérèse (Alain Cavalier, 1986) (from French into English) Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988) Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) Drugstore Cowboy (Gus van Sant, 1989) Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991) Menace II Society (The Hughes Brothers, 1993) Strapped (Forest Whitaker, 1993) Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994) American Buffalo (Michael Corrente, 1996) Marvin's Room (Jerry Zaks, 1996) The Apostle (Robert Duvall, 1997) Good Will Hunting (Gus van Sant, 1997) Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997) The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997) Rounders (John Dahl, 1998) Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998) In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2001) Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002) Little Children (Todd Field, 2006) Chloe (Atom Egoyan, 2009) Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012) (from Quebecois French to European French as well as English)