MovieChat Forums > Khartoum (1966) Discussion > Did anyone else laugh at Laurence Olivie...

Did anyone else laugh at Laurence Olivier's accent?


I saw on YouTUbe that someone said Peter Sellers must have given Laurence Olivier dialogue coaching for this film and I can see where they're coming from. His voice is very comical and strongly reminiscent of Peter Sellers. What does everyone else think?

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Nope. It's just too theatrical. Olivier was always quietly frustrated that he could not fully make the transition from the stage to the screen, and although there are a few film performances where he was adequately subtle, he too often fell for "character" performances like the Mahdi where his theatricality took sway, and he ended up doing work that was too big for the camera. When a ham like Heston could underplay him and steal the picture from him, you KNOW he was playing too much to the balcony.

Of course, lower-class British actors like Sellers were often parodying the hammy theatricality of the upper class stage stars, so your impression might come from that.

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Olivier's acting always veered dramatically from the the fantastic to the risible which is why he is probably the most over-rated actor of the 20th Century. In Khartoum his accent - and his performance generally - are awful, but the accent is the funniest thing. The quality of his screen acting is often poor though, particularly in his hugely over-rated Henry V where he comes across more like a headmaster than a king. DD's theory rings true. In his under-stated performances (Battle Of Britain, even Marathon Man) he's ok but stick him in makeup and a costume and he turns straight to ham.

Having said that, there's nothing wrong with ham - in its place. And its place is Robert Newton as Long John Silver, not Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi.

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Olivier's accent was not risible, and only his very early performances ("Fire Over England", for instance) were over-the-top. William Wyler was the director who taught Olivier how to tone down his acting, in 1939. If by "over-the-top" you mean larger than life, yes Olivier was larger than life. But he is in no way overrated or awful. He was one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) actors of the twentieth century. His accent was part of the character, much as Meryl Streep's foreign accents are part of the foreign-born characters she often plays.

And if there is anyone who habitually engaged in over-the-top acting it was Charlton Heston, whose performance in "Ben-Hur" is overrated, while his performances in "Khartoum" ,and especially in Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet", are underrated.

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DD-931 - An excellent synopsis Sir - Excellent !

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Not only did i find myself laughing, ive been re-enacting it in front of my colleagues now for the past week, its catching (and very funny)

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I believe Olivier actually did make the transition from stage to screen, at times, rather brilliantly. Yes, some performances are large, but that does not make them bad. In this film, the size of Olivier's performance seems perfectly in accord with the size of his character's ego.

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Did win an Oscar - not a bad transition.

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He sounds just like Leo McKern in "Help!" (The Beatles movie.)

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Not only at his accent, but at his whole performance. One of the (unintentionally) funniest ever.

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I agree. In the part of The Mahdi he was not natural at all, he looked as if he was acting. It would have been terrific on stage, but on film it just does not work.

For his performance in 'The Boys from Brazil' he should have been prosecuted for over-acting!!!!!

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I not only didn't laugh at it, I regard his work here as one of his best performances ever, and here's why - the Mahdi himself was a ham. Ham of the first order, more than half crazy, over-the-top theatrical in the way that only a man convinced he is the son of heaven can be. Olivier captures it perfectly.

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Bobfrostmail makes a good point. Of course, if the Mahdi was a ham then portraying him as a ham is accurate and obviously justifiable. But for casual viewers of the film, who are unfamiliar with the historical figure or know of him only in a peripheral way, Olivier's performance has the appearance of simply being an unnecessary hammy performance. So Bob prompts the question...did Olivier portray the Mahdi in the way he did because he had studied his character closely and knew that this was the historically accurate way to play him..OR - was he just being a ham? I guess we'll never know.

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I have always thought Olivier was overated. I think he was the sort of person who would have atended the opening of an envelope and certainly made his fair share of "turkeys" - The Betsy, The Boys From Brazil to name just two. I don't know if Khartoum was a hit or not, but he certainly faced an uphill battle with the terrible accent, script and the tripe he was forced to spout!.

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Sorry, but if Olivier was playing a character who himself (the Mahdi) was an outrageous ham, it would have to be made clear by an outside observer that this was the case. In other words, the context of the performance would have to be set up by the film itself. It was not. Calling the hamminess of Olivier's performance an intentional choice does not hold up.

It would have been a mistake anyway for the film to emphasize that the Mahdi was a ham. That choice simply undercuts the more important aspects of his character, that he was both powerful and dangerous.

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Nothing for you to be sorry about. You're simply wrong. Olivier in this film is working with a lot of pedestrian talent - i.e., a not-terribly-adept director and screenwriter, not skilled at setting up interesting side journeys or subtleties - and so, like Brando on occasion, and a few other supremely talented actors working with stiffs, he found it necessary to set his own terms, do an end run so to speak.

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So is this something Olivier himself told you about, henry?

Listen, I actually have liked a lot of Olivier's performances (DEVIL'S DISCIPLE, SLEUTH, MARATHON MAN, THE ENTERTAINER, even BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING). But if you're going to say he never gave hammy performances, or never had problems with the transition to film from stage, well, I guess I'm just going to have to say it.

You're simply wrong.

You can call the performance as the Mahdi an "end run" if you want, but clearly the way it was received indicates it was more of a fumble. I've always noticed that leading actors who dismiss the abilities of their directors and screenwriters (justifiably or not) and "set their own terms" end up shooting themselves in the foot. As happened in this case. Going off on your own and giving a performance that fits in a different movie from everyone else is the very definition of sticking out like a sore thumb.

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I am not, in fact, going to say he "never gave hammy performances, or never had problems with the transition to film from stage." Nor do I here. So I guess (1) I'm not wrong; and (2) you either can't read or can't write.

As to your phrase "clearly the way it was received" - are you referring with this vague, generalizing, passive-voice phrase to the critical reception of "Khartoum"? Please cite someone. An honest search will reveal that for every major critic who disliked Olivier's work here, another liked it. Time magazine called Olivier's performance "a small masterpiece of single-minded religious insanity." The NY Times described the portrayal of the Mahdi as "impressively and eloquently played." I look forward to two citations from you with equal numbers in terms of U.S. readership.








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Yep. Overstated my case here. Point goes to henryonhillside.

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Yes, infact I laughed out loud =P

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Olivier is almost always hilarious in any movie where he attempts any foreign accent.

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Not once did I get close to laughing. I think he was great as the Mahdi.

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After seing Olivier's "Othello" and now, rewatching "Khartoum", I think in this film he kept on a very similar performance.
And of course a man who believed he was 'the choosen one' had to be hammy!
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I enjoyed his performance. It was theatrical. It was grandiose. It had a taste of ham but it was still great. It was no more preposterous than Alec Guinness' Prince Feisal. They are Anglo American interpretations of great Arab men. If historical accuracy is the goal, I suspect the performance would be much less interesting.

Here is a thought. How about Rex Ingram portraying The Mahdi? Clearly, he was not available in 1966 but can you imagine his performance?

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His accent wasn't as bad as Heston's English accent.

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There are some other English actors with a theater tradition that went 'over the top' with accents and makeup,when doing black/brown/yellow face. Alec Guiness is another notable in this regard. As one poster said, you can get away with this on the stage but NOT on the big screen. Another real stinker was Richard Burton playing an Anglo-Indian in 'The Rains of Ranchipur'. Peter Sellers did his own stupid "yellow face" in 'Murder by Death'. Although, I suppose that Mel Brooks thought that was funny.

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