Robert Rietti is one of those actors who deserves recognition for his work in pages such as these. He is a remarkable individual who has provided the voices for some very famous screen characters, yet remains virtually unknown. This is due in part to the overblown ego's of actors, encouraged by producers,which won't allow Rietti an on-screen credit for providing a better voice,or dialogue performance,than the actor did on location. The inclusion of this article in my, The Persuaders web-page hopes to give further recognition to this amazing man,whose credits are quite impressive. I will endeavour to produce a detailed list of credits as time goes by. For now you'll have to make-do with the following article,which appeared in an issue of, Empire magazine.

"It remains very anonymous," whispers Robert Rietti,as if imparting information of treasonable importance. "I don't really understand why,because if they want singing in a film,and they have an actress or an actor who doesn't sing well,they'll re-voice them with a famous voice and there'll be a credit afterwards. But if they re-voice with a voice for speaking,nobody must know."

Tucked away in a back-room of London's Warwick sound studios 'twixt a large mixing console and a stack of cassettes bearing such legends as "very good clean heartbeat","air-conditioning hum",and,er,"ducks",Rietti - dubbing editor par excellence - sits amid the detritus of "post-synching",that mysterious part of filmmaking which requires the re-creation,in a sound studio,of dialogue that may not have been captured "live" during the actual shoot. At the least it may be replacing a few lines lost when a 'plane passes inconveniently overhead,at its most extensive it requires the re-dubbing of all the film's dialogue.

Contractual obligations,of course,dictate that the original artistes are brought back in to do the patching-up but on occasion,either through unavailability or,quite frankly,crapness on the part of the performer,the producers are faced with no alternatives but to ring-up Robert Rietti.

"Basically I've either been asked personally to re-voice other people or to develop it into my packaging of an entire film," says the oral flying doctor who has saved many a film from ending up with the synchronised sophistication of Gerry Adams on the nine o'clock news.

"These days capital is so scarce that people make films internationally," explains the chipper Rietti. "They get capital from different countries and more often than not the people supplying the money demand the use of an actor from their country who is famous and is a peg to hang the hat on. The subject matter may be in English but you'll find German,French,Italian,English and American actors all working in the same picture. Now the foreign actors may all speak their best English which can be appallingly bad,or they may speak their native tongue,but either way it becomes necessary to re-voice them afterwards and that's where I come into the picture.

"Take the Bond films for example," he continues,chucking in the odd blasphemy-friendly,"Oh,Christopher!" by way of exasperation. "In nearly every Bond picture there's been a foreign villain and in almost every case they've used my voice to re-do the villain - Adolfo Celi,the huge Italian with the patch on his eye in, Thunderball, the Japanese police chief, Tanaka in, You Only Live Twice, umpteen Germans..." (I suspect he may have voiced Auric Goldfinger  - DG).

In fact,according to Rietti,whose fluency in Italian and excellent French,German and Russian has been brought into play on many occasions,Johnny Foreign Trouser isn't really much cop when it comes to capturing sound at all.

"Fellini was one of the worst culprits," he grieves. "He'd pick somebody up who's sweeping the streets and say,'I want you to play Claudius.' Very often Fellini would start a film with just a skeleton script,make the actors improvise,and would write his dialogue in the dubbing theatre. He'd spend days dubbing it afterwards and hardly ever with the original artists...that's why the average Italian film is way out of synch."

Despite Rietti's most expansive treatment - personally providing 98 separate voices for the international smorgasbord that was Waterloo (1970) - it's the English language fare that's of far greater interest,with Rietti sparing the blushes of - or "curing" as he puts it - Peter Sellers in Casino Royale, Henry Fonda (voice-coaching only) in My Name is Nobody ("They said he's dull,he's dull...brighten him up"), Patrick McGoohan and Klaus Kinski in Genius ,Jack Hawkins, Christopher Plummer and Rod Steiger in Waterloo, Fernando Rey in Light at the Edge of the World, Gregory Peck in The Guns of Navarone (German version), Sean Connery (The Red Tent),John Gielgud (The Charge of the Light Brigade) as well as those dissected here.

"It's a little like vocal cartooning when you're asked to match somebody's voice," he elaborates. "If they only want certain sections redone and they're keeping the main part with the original voice,you've got to be so close to it that nobody's going to notice the difference - though there's a certain leeway because nobody sounds the same at nine o'clock in the morning as they do at two o'clock in the afternoon,especially after a meal."

Excuse me?

"Oh yes. You know sometimes you've spoken to an old chum on the 'phone and afterwards you've thought it didn't sound like his voice at all,it's the same thing. When the stomach is full people get a little sleepy,they get a little slow in reactions and the voice quality does change."

In fact,having played voices of most nationalities and all ages - "I never say my age. I'm as old as the part I'm playing. Vocally there's no such thing as a voice of 20,a voice of 16,a voice of 45" - when it comes down to it,the Lord of Looping is a downright linguistic expert of Henry Higgins proportions.

"Sometimes I can hit the jackpot," he chuckles. "I was with my wife buying something in a shop once and I said to the fellow,'You're from Bulgaria,aren't you?' He looked frightened as if the KGB were after him,and I mentioned a town that I knew in that country and he said,'My God,you've got me,you've got me!'"

...Pleasant and totally unflappable,there is,in fact,only one thing that gets Robert Rietti irked.

"I get a bit upset when people don't know I've got a face," grumbles the man whose life has largely been spent as an actor - on radio,TV and,yes,film (he was last seen as Shirley MacLaine's rival piano teacher in Madame Sousatzka). "You get used to being categorised as a voice. It's typecasting in the worst possible way."

And he doesn't get any credit for that...

"I understand the need for anonymity,but on the other hand in that world of make-believe what the hell does it matter?" he sighs. "Sometimes they've gone as far as to put,'with the vocal talents of Robert Rietti' without specifying what,because people don't like to think they've been fooled. But I can understand that - I would hate to hear somebody else's voice coming out of my face..."