Clearly, Cary Grant didn't even bother to attempt a French accent (he uses his trans-atlantic accent in basically every movie he acts in) so I just found it unbelievable that he was a French officer...I suppose back then it was common to show foreigners with Anglo type accents, e.g. the Sound of Music, but in this context I think they should have just made him English.
shareI agree with you on that. It would have been easier for him to be British--I wonder if there was some reason for him to be French.
shareI agree, I thought he was American until they made it clear he was "foreign" and then I thought he must be British, but then I heard references to him being French. I wish they had made it more obvious because his trans-atlantic was confusing.
shareWell, let's just play make believe and assume that Henri grew up in the French sectors of Canada, picked up on a lot of Canadian and American culture, and then enlisted in the French army when war broke out in Europe.
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!
The book the movie was based on was an autobiography by Henri Rochard. He was a Belgium Army Major, but the movie makers probably thought it would be more interesting to movie goers to make him French instead. Henri Rochard was his pen name. His real name was Roger Henri Charlier. The movie story was largely fictional except for the part about the difficulty of getting to come to the US with his wife, who in real life was an American Army nurse who attended to him when he wound up in a US Army hospital after being hit by a car while serving as a liason officer at the war crimes trials. More detailed info can be found at http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=71554.
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