when they are supposed to be playing someone foreign.
Last night my husband forced me to watch Passage to Marseille (by the cruel method of watching it himself while I was in the same room with him-- BASTARD!) with Humphrey Bogart as a French patriot. The movie was half way over before I realized that Bogart was supposed to be French.
This movie may have been the most touching and moving story of French Freedom Fighters ever made but I could not get past Bogart’s Brooklyn accent. Well, the accent and the flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks that sort of reminded me of Family Guy.
Any other “Yanda lies the cassel of my fadda” moments that totally unsuspended your disbelief? And are the actors who mutilate this rule always from Brooklyn?
I remember people laughing about some of the accents in The 10 Commandments, mostly Edward G. Robinson. It didn’t bother me, I knew they were supposed to be Jews and Egyptians.
But did Bogart actually put on a *Brooklyn * accent in this movie? Why would he do that?
Anyway, you want an idea why he didn’t attempt a foregin accent, watch Dark Victory (“Irish”) or Virginia City (“Mexican”). Much better he should stick to general American.
He sounds very Brooklyn to me but I guess it’s a general NYC accent.
He has also made me watch that movie about trying to kill Nazis in the mountains (Where Eagles Dare or something like that?) about a gazillion times. That John Wayne movie with the kiddie cowboys herding cattle? I seen it a brazillian times. Cruel and unusual, I tells ya!
Dunno if that counts because, if I remember correctly, he tried an accent sometime and seemed to give up in others. Kind of like Princess Leia’s on again off again Alderan/English accent.
To be fair, in the middle ages people weren’t speaking with modern English accents either. Supposedly American accents are more similar to how people spoke in the 1700s. Let alone the 1200s.
So they should have stuck with Hollywood convention–anyone with an English accent is a villain, anyone with an American accent is a hero.
No cite here, as I’m just going on memory, but I recall at the time the movie was released reading that he was planning on redubbing his dialogue after working with a coach on his English accent, but that they ran short on time and never did it.
That’s how I remember it too. If Costner had stuck to his own accent. I don’t think he would have been knocked nearly as much.
It never occurred to me that Carrie Fisher was attempting any sort of accent, but I may have been distracted by the awesomeness of the surrounding movies (another thing Costner had going against him).
If it helps I’ve met at least one real life Frenchman who speaks with a posh British accent in English; he was educated at some of the better schools in England. Sadly, I have yet to meet a French who truly speaks as if he was guarding the castle of his master, Guy de Lombardo.
Bogart lived at 245 W. 103rd Street which I’ve read is now public housing. He grew up in a well-educated Episcopal family. Does that help narrow down the dialect?