MovieChat Forums > Experiment Perilous (1944) Discussion > Accents?

Accents?

posted 11 years ago by LilyLiveredFarmer
8 replies | jump to latest

I watched it last night and enjoyed it very much. But did I miss an explanation for the peculiar accents in the film? The husband has very pronounce Hungarian accent despite his sister seeming to have a genteel American one. The family seem to spend a lot of time on the continent so that is perhaps explained away, but Hedy Lamarr's character at first sight seems to have a husky Garbo sounding voice, but then were are told that she is apparently an American country girl. The accent seems to recede but I was still very aware of Lamarr's native Austrian inflection throughout.

Did I miss any throwaway comment that explained all this away?

[–] liscarkat-2 10 years ago

You didn't miss anything. Did you ever see "The Parent Trap", in which twins played by Hayley Mills have British accents in spite of the fact that they were both raised in the United States by American parents? That's just the way it is in movies and you're supposed to ignore it.

[–] AntiGravityShoes 10 years ago

i wondered the same thing! There was no explanation for why Allida, a country girl from Connecticut, had a European accent even before she went to Europe. So I decided she was an immigrant in order to make sense of it. :)

Maybe it's addressed in the book.

[i]This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here.[i]

[–] liscarkat-2 10 years ago

In the book, she's American.

[–] gribfritz2 8 years ago

You must be deaf to not hear her trying to "nullify" her accent in the ONE flashback scene that takes place before she visits Europe. They then make it a point to show she went to Europe and learned foreign languages there, presumably where her accent would come from. Not the best explanation, but when you have a story where you need an American but they give you a box office draw like Hedy Lamarr, you gladly accept and do whatever you can to explain it away.

[–] przgzr 9 years ago

If one single Mexican can be Greek, Italian, Arab, English and French, both white and a native American, Mongol, Jude, Eskimo, Chinese, Hawaian, and I wonder haven't I maybe missed him playing Zulu or Masai... and if we agree to believe that a 28 year old actress appears as a girl in early teens, or that a London born Englishman is an Arabian prince, or that Chinese, Indians, Russians, Troyans and aliens speek English, or that any actor or actress can sing any opera tune - then believeing that an American country girl can have Austrian accent (with some yodeling added as a bonus) is only a minor problem.

[–] EliotTempleton 8 years ago

"Oh, Ingrid, it's only a movie!" ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Movie-going requires a suspension of belief; check your reality at the door. Movie characters never seem to go to the bathroom, do laundry, go grocery shopping, or pay bills. All of that is left to mundane folks like us, who enjoy movies in order to escape our own realities.

[–] kelkyl 8 years ago

Just look at all the character types the fantastic Russian-born Vladimir Sokoloff played throughout his career.

[–] przgzr 8 years ago

Yes, this is also a great example. He played almost all European nationalities (including Jews and Gipsies) with some non-european characters like Chinese or Mexican. I am not surprised when it is convincing in USA because every non-American is anyway just a foreigner, but to be praised worldwide for such different characters you have really to be a great actor! (It would be interesting to count all the nationalities that Meryl Streep played, no matter that most of the characters were American residents... it is sometimes even a tougher job to do it then to play a native in some distant country because you can do the latter as a cliché -that nobody would notice or condemn except the real people of that country- but playing a person that has some ethnic relicts merged into new culture is by far a more subtle thing to do.)