Harvey Keitel's French


Keitel as Thomas Paine in this movie is really successful. It's quite a delightful surprise to see and hear him in a role at complete departure from the roles of stereotypical cool but violent guys we're used to. Not that I doubted of his ability to do anything else (he is a superbly talented actor), but simply because I did not remember that he had played in that movie. I saw it for the first time a long time ago and just saw it again on TV last night, in French.

My question is the following: in the (original) French version (French is my first language) Keitel speaks French quite well with almost no hesitation, and with an English accent that is fairly mild and quite charming. Watching the synch, it really looks as though he was actually speaking his part in French, but I'm not 100% sure because his voice sounds a bit different. One thing I know is that people's voice often sounds very different when they speak a diferent language than their mother tongue. Can anyone confirm that Keitel was actually playing his part in French ? I mean: If so, the guy must be quite fluent in French since the delivery looked almost effortless.

reply

I looked carefully at one scene with French audio on the Blu-Ray version of La Nuit de Varennes, and Keitel's lips seem to match the English subtitles, while the audio is French.

---------

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are. -- Karl Kraus

reply

He is dubbed.

And it bothered me the whole time. Hate dubbing.

reply

yeah i feel that Keitel was a huge miscast. I guess they added him so he could connect with american audiences but his inability to speech convincing french and that fact he is dubbed ruins the suspension of disbelief and looks quite amateur.

reply