Intro Post

< 1990 Review | 1991 Review | 1992 Review >

Introduction

Here’s something that I think is important when picking Eurovision hosts: they should be properly fluent in multiple languages. There’s a difference between being able to speak a language and being fluent in it. For instance, I would say that I am fluent in English and German, whereas I can speak French but am not fluent in it. Lill Lindfors (1985) and Åse Kleveland (1986) both did a fantastic job presenting in multiple languages—Lill in six to my memory, Åse only in two.

Unfortunately, RAI (the Italian broadcaster) seemed more interested in showing off their winners than picking qualified presenters. They chose both of Italy’s previous winners: Gigliola Cinquetti and Toto Cutugno. They presented the contest almost entirely in Italian and when they had to speak other languages, they were very clumsy and stilted. They even put as much Italian as they could into the voting, even though the votes could only be given in English or French.

This isn’t the only way the contest reeked of self-indulgence. Both presenters sang their winning songs at the start* and the postcards featured each contestant singing an Italian song. I actually like that the postcards focus on the country’s music rather than scenery, but they were still overly eager to showcase Italy.

I’ll keep the rest brief, or else this introduction would go on way too long. Host city: Rome, Italy (was originally going to be Sanremo). Country count: 22. Returning country: Malta, because the Netherlands skipped. Winner: Sweden, although France tied numerically. Commentary: British.** Voting mishaps: Tons. Presenting mishaps: Plenty. Controversies caused by the winner: You bet.

* The duet rendition of “Non ho l’età” is actually rather nice.

** The only upload of British commentary I could find was on archive.org and stretched to a 16:9 aspect ratio, which drives me crazy. So crazy, in fact, that I made my own video file putting the British audio over unstretched footage of the Belgian Dutch commentary. It took hours to export.