To accent or not to accent

[selenak]

Some weeks back, when reviewing Einstein & Eddington, I mentioned that I couldn't tell whether Andy Serkis as Einstein was trying for a German accent or not, and that at any rate I always am somewhere between amused and irritated when in movies set in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, but shot in English, the characters affect a German accent. Since then, several films have been released, one of them Valkyrie (which hasn't started over here yet), and I've read a reviewer complaining that the characters there do not use German accents but rather their original ones (i.e. Scottish, English, American, as the case may be). Now, to me, this sounds like the better option. When I watch a film set in ancient Rome, I do not expect the characters to speak Latin (or Greek), or fake Italian accents. When the 1485486th version of The Three Musketeers hits the screen (in English), I don't expect a fake French accent. I know that in the former case the characters converse in Latin, and in the second in French, within the story the film is telling, not in English, but English is the actors' language, so naturally English is what we hear. Same with films and movies set in Germany but shot in English. Not that many exist which don't make their actors fake what they think of as German accents. (Trust me, in most cases the effort is really painful to hear when you're actually German.) Also? We have a lot of regional accents in Germany. You usually can tell where someone is from, just as you can tell whether someone is from the American South or the English North, etc. So when I watch a film sporting a variety of American/Scottish/British accents, I would assume that they're the equivalent of said plentitude of regional accents.

However, it has occured to me that maybe to an audience that is conditioned to hear characters supposed to be German talk in fake German accents, even when they're actually supposed to be conversing in their own language, natural accents would be breaking the suspension of disbelief, i.e. just the reverse of my own problem. (My suspension of disbelief being broken when I hear fake German accents in English.) So I'm curious:

[Poll #1326239]

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I think that it's good, if the majority of the characters are English-speaking, to have actual other languages with subtitles if there are non-English-speaking characters speaking to each other for a brief exchange.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

This works on Lost for me - i.e. when Sun and Jin talk to each other, we get the conversation subtitled, whereas when we're in the pov of one of the American characters, there are no subtitles. But if the entire film is set in a non-English speaking country, be it Germany or Russia or, well, the ancient Graeco-Roman world? With no English or American character present? Why should there be subtitles? Assuming that the actors aren't native German/Russian/whatever speakers, of course. Wasn't there a British tv movie about the Wannsee conference a couple of years ago? I don't think anyone spoke German or German-accented English in that one, which made sense since none of the actors was German and it was clear where the action took place anyway.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

It was an HBO TVM called Conspiracy, and I'm shocked you haven't seen it. It is really, really good, and yes, there are no cod accents. Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci were truly terrifying as Heydrich and Eichmann respectively, because of the absolute conviction they had in playing both men as heroes of their own narratives with no villainous cues.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Alas I caught only the last fifteen minutes of it. (It was scheduled late at night, and my recording device didn't work properly.) Also, it was dubbed, so I couldn't tell whether or not they used accents. But I heard it was terrific, and those last 15 minutes definitely gave the impression. The same year, there was also a German tv film based on the Wannsee conference protocols (also good), which is I guess why the British production was shown later. (Never let it be said the tv folks here aren't jealous of the competition.)

[artaxastra.livejournal.com]

Rewatching Patton the other night, I was struck that all the Germans speak German and all the Russians speak Russian, even in scenes where members of the German command are talking to each other. With subtitles. I found this very pointless. We know Rommel speaks German. We don't need to hear him talking to his aides in German to prove it! This leads to long scenes that are entirely subtitled for no reason at all. Ditto the Russians. Can't we assume the Russian army speaks Russian? I kind of get the scene where Patton and an aide are speaking French to one another in a room full of Americans, as it gets across the point that this is unusual. But what's up when the entire scene is subtitled?

[greenpear.livejournal.com]

I forget the movie it was I saw but the best way was done having them speak in German (Russian, whatever) for a couple of sentences with subtitles to let you know what language they were using. Then switch to English for ease of the audience. That seemed to work the best for me.

[lone-gunfreak.livejournal.com]

was it "Hunt for Red October"? I've never seen it, but I remember someone saying that something like that is done with the Russian characters.

[greenpear.livejournal.com]

That's a possibility. Been a while since I saw that movie.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends. In the tv shows Lost and Heroes, both of which are ensemble shows where some of the characters aren't English native speakers, you get subtitled conversations, and that very much works for me. But those are present day stories, and the command of English (or lack of same) quite often is a plot point, as is the American characters not understanding the Korean ones to the same degree the audience does in Lost. In historical movies, I'd say that as you point out, it's a given that in a scene where Rommel talks to his aide he talks in German, etc.

[artaxastra.livejournal.com]

It makes sense to me when you have people in a scene speaking various languages, or you want to convey that not everyone is understanding what's being said. That totally follows. For example, in the same movie, when the point of view character is confused and left out of a conversation that Patton is carrying on in French with French speakers in front of him. But when everybody in the scene presumably understands one another, I think it makes more sense to just put it all in English. Normally I'm all for authenticity, but not for filming a movie in Aramaic! *G*

[greenpear.livejournal.com]

The only show which did the accent thing well was 'allo 'allo. Especially when the British spy was pretending to be the French policeman and kept pronouncing words incorrectly to show how badly he spoke French.

Otherwise, they should just speak normally. I know they aren't speaking English in WWII Germany...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

When I hear the German characters speaking in fake German accents to each other, I assume that they're talking in German, but that what they're saying has been translated for the English-speaking audience.

And frankly, I think it makes sense to do it that way. Subtitles are hard on the eyes--everyone can't read them at the same rate. Even the size of subtitles is a problem. I'm probably prejudiced against subtitles because when I try to read them, the white lettering invariably blurs to the point where I have to be right on top of the screen to read what's being said. I can do that at home, but it's hard to do in a theatre. (I remember having this problem with Dances With Wolves, which had scads of Amerind conversation in the original Lakota and nothing but subtitles to explain what was being said. I firmly believe that I missed half the conversations because I couldn't read the subtitles with anything approaching swiftness OR watch what was happening on screen when I was trying to read.)

No, sir. Give me the auditory shortcut of fake accents any day. I realize that the accents are bad. The accents that Hollywood bestows on people from New England are invariably appalling. But this way I know what's being said is being said in a foreign language AND I understand it immediately. To me, that's an advantage.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

But if the entire action takes place in a foreign country, and none of the characters are actually Americans/Brits/Australians? (Whatever the actors may be.) Are the accents still necessary then? If so, would you make a difference between films set in Germany, France or Russia or any country still around and a film set in ancient Rome/Greece/Persia?

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

If it's in something where everyone is the same nationality, then of course you don't need the accent code to clue people in to when people are speaking a foreign language. The accent business usually crops up in movies where there are at least two sides--war movies, cultural Westerns, spy movies. If everyone is from the same place--like, for example, in the TV series Rome--then the audience can take it as given that everyone is speaking Latin. Or French. Or Chinese. Or whatever.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I remember legionseagle being pleased by the solution adopted in Gorky Park, in which she said William Hurt's character spoke English fluently/naturally when he was supposed to be speaking his native Russian, and carefully/formally when he was supposed to be speaking English. So you could tell what he was supposed to be speaking even though he was actually monolingual.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, now I wish I'd seen Gorky Park in English. (I saw it dubbed.)

[(Anonymous)]

It depends on whether some or all of the characters are German. IF they're all German, then I'd prefer no accent. If only one or two are German, then I'd prefer a German accent.

I'd find it really odd if a character who was supposed to be Scottish did not have a Scots accent.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

If only one or two are Germans, I'd assume the language most of the conversations throughout the film in question take place is English, and in this case accents do make sense. But what I'm talking about situations where most or all of the characters are Germans.

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

People had the same issues with Amadeus, didn't they?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't know, I was still in school when Amadeus hit the screen. Did they?

[wychwood]

I think this is a really tricky one. For me, as a viewer, I am thrown *worst* by accents which are neither those of the character nor mine. By which I mean: if I'm watching a film set in, say, Spain, where all the characters are Spanish but the film is in English, I expect them either to have English (or at least British) accents, or to have Spanish accents. (I'm happy to hear a range of British accents (which can often be a powerful tool for explicating class relationships and assumptions about backgrounds without ever making anything explicit))). But if they all have, say, American accents (because it's a US film) then I get really thrown and have to spend a while adjusting to that. I'm not sure I have that much of a preference as to my two options, purely as a viewer, though; as long as the accents are sufficiently plausible not to actively register with me (so I'm more critical of bad German accents than I am of bad Spanish accents, because I have a much better idea of how they ought to sound), I'll go along with it.

You shouldn't need to fake-accent people if they're supposed to be talking their native language, but it can be a useful shorthand. Use of other languages should be *consistent*, though, if they choose that approach.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That's a fascinating point I hadn't considered. So, for example, if you were seeing a British and an American film version of Don Quixote and the British one used, say, a Yorkshire accent for Sancho Pansa and a posh accent for Don Quixote to make the class difference clear, and the American one had Sancho talk like a Texan and DQ like someone from New England, the later version would take longer for you to adjust to? (And presumably if you were American the reverse would be true?)

[janewt.livejournal.com]

Not to cut in on a conversation--but to some extent American audiences are used to translating British accents as "generic foreign," or occasionally "the bad guys." How do we know Captain Picard is French? Because he has an English accent. To me, irrational though it may be, I'd find an all-American-accented Don Quixote slightly more disconcerting than an all-British-accented production: though I'd prefer either to an all-fake-Spanish-accents movie.

[wychwood]

I think so, yeah. I mean, hearing the varied UK accents would make me go "huh!", but then I'd slot right into it, whereas the US version I'd find myself going "...but Quixote isn't from Boston! What? Argh!" a lot *g*. It's because it's what I'm used to; UK accents are my *default*, I simply don't notice them or hear them in the same way that I would with accents from anywhere else. I get this even with TV shows where I read a lot of fanfic; when I'm reading fic, the characters "sound" in my head like they do onscreen, but without the US accents; I go and watch an episode, and have to adjust all over again to the fact that, hey, they sound American! Because, you know, they *are*. So I'm not claiming this is in any way a logical or reasoned reaction *g*, but as a viewer, yes, it's something that does affect me.

Also, I do occasionally get bursts of annoyance that all aliens everywhere apparently speak American. Endless Stargate civilisations with modern US accents, Star Trek alien races who flatten their vowels like they're from the Midwest, all the rest of it. Oddly, *cough*, I don't have this problem with Doctor Who...

[spikewriter]

One of the reviews of Valkyrie addressed the accent issue and their complaint wasn't that they weren't speaking with a German accent, but that the wide variety -- English, Scottish, American, Tom Cruise -- was disconcerting. They were also grateful that Tom Cruise didn't sport a German accent because they figured that would be too painful, so go figure.

[12-12-12.livejournal.com]

I almost always prefer actors to use their original accents, primarily because I find that this often brings out the best performances. When actors put on foreign accents (especially ones they're not familiar with), they often seem affected and everything about their acting feels more stilted, less natural--probably because they're worrying about the accent at the same time as their character. It works much better when the actor is actually bilingual, like Masi Oka speaking English with a Japanese accent. And while Yun Jin Kim does a fantastic job when speaking either English or Korean, her scenes in Korean pack even more of a punch for me.

Of course, there are exceptions: like the slew of British actors who are doing a fantastic job of portraying Americans right now on US network TV. And I actually didn't mind (or even notice) the accents in Amadeus.

[leviathan0999.livejournal.com]

I'm really more just mildly leaning toward "use the accent" than the emphatic version your poll offers.

You might want to check out a horror movie called "The Keep" where the director played a sort of "Mix-n-Match" game with the accents: German characters had British accents, Russians had German accents, Czechs had Russian accents -- something odd like that. The idea was that people with the same accent were from teh same place.

I have not actually seen this movie, just remember reading an interview with the director. So it could be utter scheisse for all I know.

[butterflykiki.livejournal.com]

The best compromise I ever saw for this was "Hunt for Red October", where the English actors spoke Russian with subtitles for the first scene or two-- and then one of the characters picked up a Bible to quote something menacing from Revelations. The camera zoomed in on his lips, speaking it in Russian-- then zoomed out, and he was speaking English, no accent, and the subtitles were gone, and the Russian characters were then understood to be speaking Russian to each other from then on, with the audience 'overhearing' it in English, so to speak. They kept up the subtitles when Russian was spoken in front of American characters who didn't speak Russian, since like LOST, it was a plot point, but sometimes they weren't used for comic effect too. Anyway, I liked the zoom in/out device, because it cut out all the accents, subtitles, and so on, but clued in even the slowest audience member that hi, still speaking Russian amongst themselves.

[redfiona10.livejournal.com]

I was going to use that as an example of where they play with accents wonderfully well.

[misachan.livejournal.com]

I'm personally fond of fake accents --- it helps me establish a sense of place, if that makes sense --- but really I just want everyone to have the same accent. What threw me about Valkyrie was that Tom Cruise sounded like he was from an entirely different country from all the other Germans. Everyone else had English or Scottish or what-have-you accents and suddenly there's Cruise with his flat American accent. It destroys the illusion.

I suspect this is an American thing, but like the poster above I have a harder time suspending disbelief when something set in another country has everyone sounding like Americans. I've been trained to expect a British accent as the default everyone's-speaking-another-language shorthand (assuming fake-accents aren't used). This applies more for TV/film than the stage, though; if I'm watching Les Mis live it doesn't bother me if Javert sounds American, but it would if I was watching a movie adaptation. I don't know. It's weird.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I think everyone speaking with no accent is definitely best when they're all speaking whatever foreign language it is all the time. The problem comes in -- as in the case of Einstein and Eddington, which I only just watched a week or so ago -- when you have a character who's switching between his native language and English. If he speaks English with an accent, having him suddenly lose that accent when he's supposed to be speaking, say, German, is going to seem pretty jarring to me, I think. Having him keep the accent is, logically, a bit silly, but it may still be the better choice.

[trobadora]

I hate fake accents, mostly because they generally sound fake.

[lizvogel.livejournal.com]

I answered "yes" to the poll, but my real answer is a bit more complex. If all the characters are the same nationality, then just do it in whatever the native accent of the film's country of origin is. It's only when you have multiple different nationalities represented that I actually prefer they do the accents -- doubly so if the variety of nationalities is relevant to the plot.

Of course, in my perfect world, they'd be doing the *correct* accents, not just by country but by region, and they'd get in some dialog coaches so they'd get the accents *right*. It's a nice world, that; I wonder what its immigration requirements are?

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I think it can be distracting if an actor has a very specific natural accent - if an Australian played a German in his/her natural accent, that would probably feel weird. But yes, fake accents to show a different language comes off as a bit parodic. But then, I find it kind of amusing in general when actors play nationalities we know they're not. (The BBC "we're still in Sweden, but all the actors are now British with Swedish character names" Wallander miniseries makes me LOL by its mere existance - I haven't even dared to watch it yet for fear of laughing too much!) I'm not against it or anything, I just have a hard time taking it seriously, at least when it's modern languages rather than Latin/classical Greek/etc.

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

(The BBC "we're still in Sweden, but all the actors are now British with Swedish character names" Wallander miniseries makes me LOL by its mere existance - I haven't even dared to watch it yet for fear of laughing too much!)

I have similar problems with another show which is bizarrely international in the most convoluted proportions - the novels the series is based on take place in modern Venice, but are written by an American, and the characters - all, or at least in the majority Italian - are played by German actors, which is hysterically funny to me, since I have of course seen them in dozens of other national film and TV productions.

Sometimes "international" casting is similarly hilarious, though - I don't know if you ever had the "pleasure" of watching King Arthur, but one of its highlights was certainly seeing Germany's very own Til Schweiger as the son (!) of esteemed Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard. I believe they were both playing Saxons...

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

I usually find the attempts of most productions at foreign accents rather painful, be that American accents in British productions (DW and Jekyll, I'm looking at both of you) or the various accents German productions tend to attempt, very often to somehow dub characters that were supposed to be German in the original, or the humorous "Irish" accents in US productions of the last few years (and if you think David Boreanaz is atrocious, you should watch the Pilot episode of Burn Notice. I swear it took me a while to guess if the language Gabrielle Anwar was supposed to be speaking was even English.). But here I can see at least a certain logic - however, it seems completely pointless to me to film a movie about foreign people in something that is not their language and then give them fake accents.

That said, I needed a while to get used to Rome's accents, and I think I read some texts from people who weren't all that happy with their distinction between upper, middle and lower classes. No idea if they thought it was a bit too flat - I only remember the nobility being very RP and the rest somehow universally not, which seems rather simple.

(And now I'm wondering if the diverse Anna Kareninas are always filmed with fake Russian accents. *shudder*)

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I selected the first option, because it really throws me out of the story when an actor is speaking in his/her native accent instead of the accent I associate with the character s/he is playing.

[redfiona10.livejournal.com]

The thing that got me about Valkeyrie is that you have everyone else speaking with posh English accents, except the lead who has a US accent. Which makes no sense. About the only thing that is ever going to get me to watch that film is that I want to see how they're going to shoehorn Thomas Kretschmann in.