The perfect solution to that problem? Hire actors from third world nations who you can pay next to nothing!
Seriously though, depending on what you are trying to accomplish all of the approaches mentioned thus far can work. Sometimes it makes sense to have the dialog be in English with the unspoken assumption that the actors are actually speaking whatever language is common where it is set. Sometimes it makes sense to have that English be accented, for example a movie set in Germany where they speak in German-accented English. Or just have it in English in natural accent of the actors. On the other hand, sometimes it makes sense to have the dialog be in whatever language the characters would actually be speaking and subtitle it. This does cause distraction because you have to move back and forth between subtitle and the rest of the screen, but there’s simply no other way to authentically capture a real scene in that language.
It can work. Not films, but look at the Koreans on Lost and the Japanese guys on Heroes. That’s not to say it’s always going to be the best way to do things, but it can be good.
Another thing semi-related to think about, what about aliens? Should movies/shows with aliens always have them speak alien jibber jabber or handwave it with stuff like universal translators (or ignore it completely)? If this is too hijacky, just forget I brought it up.
I think it boils down to a matter of preference and convenience. However, I personally feel that care to spoken language adds so much. A language isn’t just another way of saying “two beers, please”. It’s a whole different sociological context and mind-set. I don’t think most unilingual movie-goers truly realize this.
While not wanting to weigh in on the question posed by the OP, I find that I enjoy more movies with subtitles than those in a language that I can understand because I can’t detect wooden delivery and general bad acting as well if I don’t understand the language. In short, there is one less thing that I can be critical about, so the chances of my enjoying the movie are better.
There are some movies that I expected to be in a foreign language (like Too Tired to Die) and was rather disappointed to hear the actors speaking English once the movie started.
I agree. The only movie I can think of where no one speaking anything but English bothered me is Darkness. It was filmed in Spain, several of the actors were Spanish, and yet the only word of Spanish in the entire movie was someone saying “hola” when answering the phone. Even the pointless radio blather in the background was in English. Shouldn’t some of the extras said something in Spanish to help establish the fact that the American family was in fact in Spain? If not for the girl complaining a couple of times that she wanted to finish high school in the states with her friends, you had the sense they could have been in Iowa or Vermont.
When I went to my first opera, I found out that you were expected to know the story so that you can watch the perfomance only minimally taking your eyes of the action to see the translations. Similarly, we go to watch movie, that is to have the story unfold as we watch and for this reason I’d rather see the movie and not be constantly looking at the subtitle.
I always felt that films set in non-English speaking countries should be filmed in English for an English speaking audience. Just as the actors in Valkrie are pretending to be German, the film is pretending the audience are German as well. Literature in general is supposed to bring you in to the viewpoint of the characters, and let you experience being someone other than who you are. To say that a film should be acted in the language of its setting regardless of the audience takes the position that the audience should experience a story as outside observers, and not feel like they are experiencing the events alongside the characters.
For this reason, there should be no “trans-lingual” accents by the characters speaking the language of the story. Germans in Valkrie should not speak with a German accent, because as a pretend-german speaking audience, they would sound normal to us.
Different English accents could be used to tell us something about a character. A “posh” or british accent might be used by an upperclass German officer to distinguish them from an uneducated soldier. I’m sure that those two characters would speak German differently, so it is acceptable to use English equivalents to convey that difference to an English speaking audience.
I’m gonna take this one step further: No subtitles! If the movie takes place in Germany and is about a bunch of Germans, they should all be speaking fluent German, with no dubbing or subbing or translating! If the audience really wants to know what the German guys are saying, they can just go learn German!
This avoids any problems in awkward translations for things like idiomatic expressions (for example, try to find an accurate translation of the utterly charming Mandarin expression “他媽的” in English without having to reach for a different idiomatic expression that will have a slightly different context, or for that matter, an accurate German equivalent to English’s “Son of a bitch”)
Are you trying to imply that it’s infeasible to have movies performed in the correct language because that would require the Tom Cruises to learn to speak German convincingly? My solution is to cast the movie with a proper (i.e. German-speaking) actor in the first place. Maybe that way we would get some decent talent up on the screen.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a good example-- an American film, but made in French. I dunno what the director or producer had to go through to get that stipulation, but it makes no sense to make a film about a French man experiencing what he did in France etc in English.
I will say that this is an exception, but it’s too bad that it is. I believe it won at least one Oscar, too, no? (too lazy to go check). And if you haven’t seen this movie, please do so–it’s great, even with English subtitles.
