Just finished watching this movie and as I expected I enoyed it very much. Orson Welles is definatly my idol...but I was wondering, did aqnyone else think it odd that Franz Kindler had such as amazing American accent?
What's the problem with his having an American accent? He's in hiding. Would he advertise his Nazi ties with a German accent?
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Interesting! Let's play the casting game. Who would you suggest? I'm thinking Helmut Dantine, but he would be terribly obvious. Perhaps Joseph Cotton? He was so good as uncle Charlie in "Shadow of A Doubt" very sinister!
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." "Now Voyager"
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That's a good one! LOL! You are right about an accent, it would have been obvious who he was, especially in a small town and right after the war, as a German he wouldn't have been very welcome.
Helmut Dantine was a very handsome actor and was a contract player during and after WWll. I think he was Dutch. I believe he was under contract with WB. He played a bit part of the German flyer in Mrs Miniver. Just a little trivia that doesn't have anything to do with "The Stranger" I do get carried away sometimes.
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." "Now Voyager"
a German living less than a year (1946)MUST have an accent...it is impossible not,unless he was VERY VERY VERY fluent in English BEFORE going to the US...if he was from the inner circle like Goebbels,Himmler...do you imagine one of them speaking perfect english???..and in a year after being in the US speaking that way??? IMPOSSIBLE !!!
share"a German living less than a year (1946)MUST have an accent...it is impossible not,unless he was VERY VERY VERY fluent in English BEFORE going to the US...if he was from the inner circle like Goebbels,Himmler...do you imagine one of them speaking perfect english???..and in a year after being in the US speaking that way??? IMPOSSIBLE !!!"
What about British actors who affect American accents for movie roles? Or vice versa? Or an American actor who affects a Russian accent? Or Peter Sellers, who in Dr. Strangelove and Lolita both uses a staggering number of vastly different accents and voices? Unlikely that a Nazi operative would be so adept at an American accent, perhaps, but not impossible. And besides, it's a spy flick, not a true-to-the-last-letter history lesson.
Affecting an accent is one thing, but speaking a foreign language fluently is quite another, not to mention using perfect grammar. There should have been some explanation, such as Kindler living in Canada or the USA between, say, the ages of 11 and 18.
shareMaybe he was an American who joined the NAZI party before WWII and went to Germany. There were lots of German Americans who were still loyal and sympathetic to the fatherland before the war who joined the NAZI party and went to Germany. He could have been one of them.
share>>> There were lots of German Americans who were still loyal and sympathetic to the fatherland before the war who joined the NAZI party and went to Germany.
I'm skeptical. Source?
It should be against the law to use 'LOL'; unless you really did LOL!
Absolutely agree with you Walton. Besides, Orson Welles' normal speaking voice was not your average US accent, certainly not New England style where the movie was set. He had been a theatrical director and actor of Shakespeare and lived for a while in Ireland and England before making "Citizen Kane". He did adapt his usual stentorian tones somewhat for the role, and spoke somewhat haltingly, but he would have been ludicrous with a full-on German accent. Commenters on this board have been watching far too much "Hogan's Heroes" and expect him to come out with "Ach zo... Zo, you sink I am ze german, Ja?"
shareyeah thats what i was thinking..of course then the movie wouldnt work at all...It still works, we can assume that Kindler was fluent in english before fleeing germany
shareI think he's supposed to be like Baldur von Schirach who was 75% American. For whatever reason, he had the skills and experience to pull it off (in the end, it's an academic discussion--if he couldn't pull it off, the story couldn't be told).
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cgreene-3 wrote:"a German living less than a year (1946)MUST have an accent."
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Meryl Streep?
Well, don't forget that Adolf Hitler himself had also not at all THE Aryan look, to say the least.
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Welles was way too American in all of his manners of speech. He was just much too familiar with the subtleties of the English language to be believable as a former Nazi in hiding. Orson Welles is the weak link in this film, I don't think that he was the appropriate choice to play Rankin/Kindler.
For me, in spite of always hearing that Welles is great, I never seem to come away from watching one of his performances thinking that he's great at all. His performances are too much about Orson Welles and not enough about the character he's trying to portray. I never feel that I'm watching anything but Orson Welles when I watch him play some part in a film. Playing himself is terrific, as he is a strong and interesting personality, but I don't consider him a truly great actor. If he were, I would think that he'd bring characters to life as something other than himself.
For me, in spite of always hearing that Welles is great, I never seem to come away from watching one of his performances thinking that he's great at all. His performances are too much about Orson Welles and not enough about the character he's trying to portray. I never feel that I'm watching anything but Orson Welles when I watch him play some part in a film. Playing himself is terrific, as he is a strong and interesting personality, but I don't consider him a truly great actor. If he were, I would think that he'd bring characters to life as something other than himself.
Part of the problem with the Times article, of course, is that the image they give of the "depraved and heartless creatures" is terribly simplistic. We now know that, Hitler aside, many of the leaders of the Nazi regime were cold, calculating and entirely purposeful. Exactly the sort Welles is portraying. It's comforting to think of one's enemies as less than human, but it's also unrealistic.
The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.-Oscar Wilde
Rat-faced Himmler and gimpy midget Goebbels were certainly no poster boys for Aryan superiority.
shareI just saw it a couple of nights ago, and I wondered about this as well. Of course, having a German accent would have been a giveaway, but it's unrealistic for him to not have an accent. Given the timeline in the story, he couldn't have been in the US for more than a year or two. What's interesting is that they didn't "fix it" with a couple of lines of dialogue, either at the end or in his conversation with Meineke:
Meineke: "Why you've lost your accent completely Mein Herr!"
Kindler: "You seem to forget I studied at Harvard"
Maybe I should move to Hollywood?
Mark
PS - The other flaw was that, for a guy who had erased his trail so thoroughly, it was impressive Meineke was able to find Kindler so effortlessly. Maybe Meineke was the real brains of that outfit.
"PS - The other flaw was that, for a guy who had erased his trail so thoroughly, it was impressive Meineke was able to find Kindler so effortlessly. Maybe Meineke was the real brains of that outfit."
I believe this part was shortened considerably, and originally there was a longer search for Kindler.
People keep talking about realism, and no one mentions the fact the last 30 minutes of the movie, this tell-tale heart thing where Mr. & Mrs. Rankin slowly start to crumble, would not really happen. If this "detective" (Robinson) was seeking out a Nazi war criminal, couldn't he simply bring Mr. Rankin in for questioning, and wouldn't a Supreme Court Judge take some exception to his daughter's life being put at risk. I mean, even a U.S. Supreme Court judge in a one-horse town (which is funny in itself) must know someone he can call to help them.
Shooting holes in this film is like hitting the broadside of a barn. And yes, Well's lack of accent is debatable, but it is still a thoroughly enjoyable piece of filmmaking. Can you believe it was nominated for a writing Oscar? The studios must have already fired Barton Fink.
"I mean, even a U.S. Supreme Court judge in a one-horse town (which is funny in itself)..."
Do you mean like current Associate Justice David Souter, who lives in the "one-horse" town of Weare, NH, population 7776 acording to the 2000 census?
I thought it wasn't just his accent that didn't work for Wells, but that Wells, though a good actor, wasn't right for the part. He didn't have the strongly suggestive Aryan looks that one would have expected of a high ranking nazi. I don't believe it was a flaw in his acting, but that the part wasn't carefully cast.I agree.
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It is obvious to me that I am responding to a foolish thread and to foolish little minded people. It's an excellent film. For those of you who don't know; English is a derivative of the German language. The character of Mary asks: "don't all foreign strangers have foreign accents?"
shareHis life depends on his not sounding like a foreigner. 'Nuff said.
Of course, you can read it symbolically: can we sheep really count on ourselves to spot the wolf in our midst?
"We must not remind them that giants walk the earth."
English is NOT a derivative of German. Both languages DO have similar roots, although approximately 40 percent of English words were taken from latin origins.
Your statement implies German came first, then English was 'derived' from it. This is very different from saying both languages 'evolved' from similar origins.
Finally, even with similar origins, a native German speaker is not going to remove all traces of his native tongue in one year (even if his life depends on it) just because the two languages have similar origins.
It is obvious I'm responding to a foolish statement and to a foolish small-minded person. (paraphrased, mine reads better)
Ich habe grosse Hoden.
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I thought he looked like Jean Sibelius... but that's me.
shareTop Nazi Goebbels was an ugly, lame, very small 'runt' of a man. Hitler himself no 'blond aryan'.
shareIronclad? So you think Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels has classic Aryan features? None of them were remotely like it. They had a warped admiration and envy for that so-called ideal.
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Neither did Adolf Eichmann.
shareI wondered about that too. It may be the only flaw in this otherwise excellent film. There is no way a native speaker of German, or any non-native speaker for that matter, can pass for a native speaker of American English. I'm a student of languages, and have lived in several foreign countries, and I can say that I've never heard or read of anyone who was able to mingle in another culture to the extent that he/she was taken for a native, especially that this involves not only perfect command of the language, formal as well as vernacular, but also of the culture and local customs, and many other things you don't know unless you have been raised in this country.
That his life depended on it is not enough explanation. You can't will yourself into fluency in another language, the same way you can't will yourself into intelligence. By the way, I don' think his life depended on it. He could have simply pretended to be another type of foreigner--a Dutch, a Belgian, a Check, a Pole, etc. This would explain his foreign accent, without the incriminating German connection.
Yes British actors can fake an American accent, and vice versa, but they are: 1. professional actors, and are usually coached by specialists, 2. native speakers of English. We're not talking about mastering a foreign accent, but the language itself.
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I believe Welles does tell his wife he was in Switzerland for a time, though I'm not sure if he says he was born there or not. Regardless, he didn't have an accent, and it was still a great movie.
Ever wonder how unrealistic it is in Casablanca that a freedom fighter on the run from the Nazis would use his real name wherever he goes?
Okay, this is a stretch, but ***maybe*** the backstory on Welles' character was that he was a first generation native of America of German ancestry or grew up as a German emigre in America where he acquired his excellent American English language skills and then was "Volksdeutsche" - answered the call for all true Aryans to return to the Fatherland at the start of the war?
shareYeah, but I just assumed he was such an awesomely competent "bad guy" that he was able to master a foreign language that well. And you'd have to if you wanted to hide your German origin.
shareI think some valid points have been made. The basic premise that the Welles character, a notorious Nazi,is able to create a new identity like this is seriously flawed. He is able to almost immediately secure a position as a college professor and insinuate himself into New England society.
It is also very far fetched that he speaks perfect and unaccented English.
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Franz Kindler would've had an accent, no doubt. There are immigrants who come here as teenagers and young adults and still retain their accent after being in the country for decades. (See Eric Braeden.) So how is a guy who was German through and through and only just got to the US fairly recently able to perfect an American accent?
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