It's not a difficult language and the actors only have to talk their lines in German. I mean, Harvey Keitel is a great actor but this accent made me laugh and it is making the movie less realistic
At some point the Jews were talking English with the Oberfuhrer around them and he said : don't talk Hungarian
Yeah I found it a bit rediculous that all the characters had American accents. Its sloppy.
this is a bit 'out there' but here's a reason why they can't all speak german. They aren't german.
all the workers: Chandler, Aquette, Benzali are Hungarian.
and if you watch the film closely, only the doctor, Hersh, Sclemer (Benzali) and Max (Chandler) speak German. Hoffman doesn't speak it at all (why he's threatened by Kietel with a pistol to watch the girl).
In all the camps communication between the nationalities was a real problem. plus the fact that the Germans gave out all orders in german and woe betid anyone who didn't obey because they couldn't understand it.
if you want a movie example think of schindler's list. When Stern (Kingsly) speaks to Schindler (Neeson) he's speaking German right?
But when Stern is speaking to his fellow Jews in the ghetto and telling them about the factory you can bet $10 he's speaking Polish. see? but the language is english cos the audience is english.
i actually think when Kietel screams "Don't speak Hungarian!" is a rather clever insight put in the film to highlight the Nazis' own lingustical shortcomings. I mean if you had to guard 300+ workers who spoke their own language that you didn't understand you'd be suspicious too.
why Kietel feels the need to adopt a faux nazi accent is a mystery, although if you hear Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List and his isn't much better.
I don't think most of the actors should have been cast because of the fake accents. That ruined the film for me. It would have been a much greater film using European actors.
shareYeah, that scene was interesting. I don't think I've seen another movie that handled it quite the way this one did, having two characters speaking English to the audience, but pretending to be speaking separate languages (in this case, German and Hungarian) which neither character could understand.
I don't have problems with this. For the sake of watch-ability, movies have to take liberties in certain areas, and this is certainly the most forgiving in my book.
Sometimes, though, it works to go super-realistic as in Inglourius Basterds, but that movie was much more about the dialogue and characters, where this was about something entirely else, focusing on thematic elements. In which case, you don't necessarily want the audience to be encumbered by excessive subtitles.
--- MY RATINGS ---
2001,F.Gump,S.Shank,A.Beauty:10 | TDK:6 | Avengers:4
"Sloppy?" Wow, how ironic! If we are determined to ridicule sloppy public offerings, I suggest we start with your attempt at spelling RIDICULOUS! Now, once we master elementary spelling skills, we can then move on to grammar. You seemed to have missed an apostrophe up there, Ace. I won't even bring up the omitted comma. Somehow, it just doesn't seem sporting. So we will overlook YOUR carelessness and you can come back and complain about sloppy work when you manage to clean up your own post.
Vix
Damn, you got me.
shareDamn, you aren't supposed to agree with me! LOL
I understood your original intent (although I ignored it to bust your balls a bit *grin*). I felt the way the language barrier was handled was a bit crafty. You knew they SHOULD be speaking another language and it was addressed. Yet, I wasn't left reading an entire movie. I could pace my living room floor during the torture scene and not have to read a word. I could simply FEEL the gut punch and follow along. No muss, no fuss...ok, maybe a bit of fuss but gawd, what a scene!
Thanks for being a good sport.
Vix
lets not get too deep into this. someone made as movie. they wanted the movie to make some money. they could hire a bunch of actors from around the world who speak 4 or 5 different languages, and had all characters speaking the correct one for their part. then subtitle the movie into English. this would have please a hand full of pompus idiots. or they could hire a bunch of actors in America and let them speak English. this would have the largest draw worldwide, and present this story to the most people. i am sure that if there were enough people who would actually pay to see a movie in the proper language, more would be made and all the American movies would not be dub'd when they go to other countries.
shareI like people speaking different languages with subtitles, because its authentic, and makes the movie look a lot more real..Have you tried watching chinese/japanese movies with subtitles compared to dubbed ? Imo, the latter always looks like a joke in comparison.
sharehmmm..
maybe.
i can see how oriental films look very silly with over-dubbed english voices emenating from their mouths.
but if you watch 'Das Boot' (very good film) i prefer the english overdub to the subtitles version.
the captain (Jurgen surname i can't spell) speaks english in both versions.
but...
in Pan's Labyrinth they have to speak Spanish. to have them talking in overdub would look wrong.
i think this is one of those things that has to be taken on a film-by-film basis.
plus, and of course in the film they didnt have so many languages to deal with, but in real life there were many languages there. french english russian yiddish german polish greek hungarian. on and on and on. how the heck would you make a cohesive plot line out of hand signals?
shareIt was made for English speaking audiences. It isn't supposed to be realistic but it was supposed to make money.
share