MovieChat Forums > Allied (2016) Discussion > Brad Pitt's french is not convincing.

Brad Pitt's french is not convincing.


So Pitt's character is supposed to be posing as a Frenchmen from Paris during the Moroccan mission. The problem is, he can barely mumble French with a thick American accent. In real life, the Germans would have spotted him immediately. Cotillard's character mentions at some point, his French may good for a Québecois but he needs to practice the Parisian accent. Wrong! I am Québecois and there's no way he could pass for either French from any parts of France or French Canadian. I couldn't understand any of his French dialogues, I had to rely on subtitles.

His French is about as good as Aldo Raine's Italian! "Ghoor-lah-mee!" LOL

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IT'S. A. MOVIE.

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Why do you bother commenting on a movie website if they're "just movies"? We can't discuss about the good or bad elements that makes up a movie? Have you seen it? Do you know how much of the movie's dialogues are in unintelligible French?

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IT'S. A. MOVIE.


wow, what a devastating argument 

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IT'S. A. MOVIE.


NO. *beep*

AND. IT'S. IMDB.

WE. TALK. ABOUT. MOVIES.

Back to the topic: Pitt's accent was indeed funny, they should have written the script, like in Inglorious Basterds, where he had a similar role, and he spoke with a crap accent in purpose. I am Hungarien but I speak French fluently and spotted Pitt's American accent pretty easy.

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It still has to be believable, you nitwit.

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Marion Cotillard is French, and she taught him this language. And she praised his successes in Q&A and various interviews on the film. She's not really a kind of person who could lie about that.

Nolan, I love you forever!

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First of all, you can't "learn" someone a language. You "teach" someone a language. She "taught" him this language.
Secondly, yes she is lying. Actors do all the time. They praise each other, it's called show business. She is promoting a movie. What was she going to say? Pitt's French is horrible? Maybe she praised him in the sense that he made a lot of progress from speaking no French at all. But trust me, Brad can't come even close to any real French accent.

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What could be the point for her to lie, if she wasn't asked about it, but rather told about it by herself? She could just stay silent, if it wasn't true.

Nolan, I love you forever!

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My gosh are you thick-headed. Marion has all the reasons to lie as noted previously by simonrhoule. Why can't you believe the people who can actually speak French fluently?

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I haven't any proof of that, while Marion proved that years ago.

Nolan, I love you forever!

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I am not a native French speaker, but I am fluent enough to understand the difference between a colonial accent (I have visited French Guiana), gauloise and Parisian in France, and both Ontario/Quebec in Canada.

Brad's accent is heavily accented (American, but could pass for a non-Quebec accent) as a previous poster put it, but I can say that from the time period the French spoken in both Ontario/Quebec and the colonies were heavily accented. Also remember he is speaking French as spoken during the '30s/'40s which is much different idiomatically than spoken today.

Brad's French is understandable enough. I wouldn't mistake him for a Parisian, but I managed to understand what and how he spoke. Marion was certainly exaggerating a little, but not too much.

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Brad's german accent in 'Seven Years in Tibet' was terrible as well. He was spot on tho in 'Thelma and Louise', lol.

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I'm French and I can assure you that Brad Pitt couldn't possibly be mistaken for a native speaker. I can understand him decently, but he has a strong American accent. His accent doesn't sound French Canadian either. Very few foreigners master the French accent and he's no exception. At no point in the movie did he sound French, even when he only says a couple of words.

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The movie does a very poor job of convincing us of many things with the plot-characters. I really don't know much about accents so it didn't bother me so much but i'm assuming the filmmakers thought putting 2 stars in a WW2 era romantic thriller would be enough and it's not. This will be forgotten soon.


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I appreciate Brad Pitt's efforts to speak a few words in French and I can understand that Marion said he really improved his skills (which doesn't say much actually) but he could never pass as a French man or a Québécois. The French couple would have spotted him immediately. I saw the movie in France and his lines in French were obviously not subtitled so it was difficult at times to understand everything. It sounded like French but as if the words had no meaning. Weird impression. Paradoxically some of the sentences he said were perfectly clear.

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I have no idea if his Paris-French accent is any good or not (I suspect not), but he stated/admitted he was from Ontario, Canada fwiw.

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His accent doesn't remotely sound French or French Canadian to my French ears. He has a strong American accent, but I can understand him quite well.

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Ya his French was terrible. Obviously not a native French speaker from either France or Quebec.

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Well, it was much better than his Italian in IB :)
I was able to understand him though not everything. But he still made a huge effort with the language. Most HW actors, especially big stars, would not even attempt it.

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In IB it was supposed to be bad though. Anyway who knows how much or how little effort he put in to learn. Maybe he tried really hard and just sucks at speaking French.

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tue-le

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Huh?

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well, now that we've beaten Brad's French to death, and can all agree that the only actors good at authentic accents are the Brits and the Aussies, how come nobody has mentioned the absolutely GLARING grammatical error in the big Spy reveal late in the movie?

SPOILER ALERT------SPOILER ALERT---SPOILER ALERT
The character late who announces "Ich bin ein Agent..." and is quite plainly "eine Agentin..." German differentiates between masculine and feminine. Jumped right out at me.

And for those who doubt the authenticity of this movie, I've found a photo of an OSS team about to parachute into France in 1944, and the young woman with the big hair is unquestionable Marion Cotillard. If IMDb allowed me to post images I'd show you. As it is, see National Archives College Park, Record Group 226-FPL-T-118. And another photo of her in the airplane is even more persuasive: RG226-FPL-T-84.


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You should be able to post the URL for the photos. I just tried searching for them and couldn't find them.

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ezsny: I'm really not trying to make fun, and I teach college "kids" every week so I'm not totally ancient, but sometimes I'm astonished by young people who believe if its not in cyberspace it doesn't exist--or worst yet, that everything there is true. Part of the world is still in the physical universe, and the National Archives are right up there in the mid-20th century. If you don't go to College Park, or Independence, Missouri, or Hyde Park, New York, you won't find it. And once there you have to paw through two running feet of actual photos (naturally not in order) to find the actual print. Then, if you have the equipment, you can scan your very own digital copy. But on the other hand, you can't imagine my satisfaction at finding Marion, all suited up and strapped into her parachute ready to jump into France in 1944 with her Jedburgh special operations teamsmates--that's clearly a final twist to how you thought the movie ended. She when on to further daring missions while poor Brad went off to Medicine Hat. And she grew her hair out.
I'm happy to upload the images if anybody cares or will show me how. :-p

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I caught that German mistake too! And it's such an easily-avoidable mistake too. :-/

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I thought it was very brave of an actor from Oklahoma to take on a role where almost half his dialogue was in French. How many would have the courage to even try it? (Americans are notorious for being bad at languages.)

No, of course, with his mumbling, his accent wasn't bang on, in French -- and he didn't sound like a Canadian when he spoke English EITHER.

But I was willing to let it go and just enjoy the movie. Which I did.

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It's mainly white americans who are bad at languages though. The white people from other english-speaking countries like canada and UK/australia are also bad. minorities such as asians and hispanics in the US, however, are very skilled at speaking other languages and are even linguistically superior to the average non-UK european

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This "whaddadeuce" person is joking, right? Either that, or he/she's a kid, or a university professor.

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