not even slightly for a moment. OK, Freddy seemed fairly American, but the others...they looked French, they acted French, they had French mannerisms, they said things French people would say...I think the director would have been better off just making them French. Or maybe Canadians from Montreal.
shareI agree that Philippe and Tom have no American characteristics. I think I agree that they could have easily just been made French, Ripley coming to Italy from Paris instead of San Francisco. That would have nullified the entire language issue.
shareI've been wondering if the Marge character might actually be French. I seem to remember Paris being mentioned? However, I don't have the movie at hand to check. If someone could comment I would appreciate it; I would like to include it in the IMDb FAQ.
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Of course, but Judah Ben-Hur does look American in Ben-Hur (1959) and I am pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be.
"What If" is a game for scholars.
Timothy Dalton, The Lion in Winter (1968)
Boromir007 has said it all..
After all, there is a thing in art and in cinema in particular, called "artistic liberty". It's not documentary, not everything has to be done by the book.
That's like when people complained so much because Harvey Keitel sounded like a New Yorker in "The Last Temptation of Christ". I told them, "Look, if the characters are speaking English, it isn't accurate, so what's in an accent?"
It doesn't matter.
In America, we've often made films set in foreign countries and had the foreign characters speaking English, sometimes with a silly accent, but still English.
I wondered why they changed Dickie's name to Phillippe, but left everyone else with an American name. Wha?
shareIt matters to me. I didn't see Last Temptation, but a New York accent would have bothered me. (Everybody knows that in ancient Rome they spoke British English, with social rank indicated by the poshness or lack thereof of the accent. I'm joking, by the way.)
The problem isn't that they're speaking French. Of course they are - it's a French film. The problem is that they don't seem at all American in any way. For example, another post in the thread mentions social class. This was an important aspect of the book and was carried through in The Talented Mr Ripley. It's hardly touched on (and, tellingly, only when the American actor is in the scene) in Plein Soleil because, I suspect, it would be difficult for a French director and actors to convey the subtle distinctions that mark the American class system.
Plein Soleil is a very good film, but it lacks one thing TTMR has - it lacks the sense that the characters are not only foreigners but foreigners from a much richer country with a different culture and heritage. TTMR's characters were very much Americans abroad in postwar Europe. That was a thing, as we say nowadays - being an American expat "slumming" in a relatively poor part of Europe. It was a phenomenon that was fully exploited in TTMR and contributes greatly to the atmosphere and accuracy of the film. It isn't exploited in PS because it can't be - the characters are not American enough.
I agree with you, and this made the film much more appealing to me.
Snobbery is a form of romanticism, the chastity of the perfectionist
Have any of you guys seen Ever After? It's supposed to be a Cinderella story set in France, but the people have British or in Drew's case, posh American accents. It was a bit jarring at first, but now I know how the rest of the world feels watching an obviously American film set in France or England or anywhere else. I might've been better if they made the characters French, but I don't know much about the French class system. I know they did away with the aristocracy with the Revolution, but what kind of affect if any did that have on the upper class? I haven't read the book, but from both films, it's easy to ascertain the themes about class.
I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.
I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to find American actors who speak perfect French, or French actors who could do a perfect imitation of the speech and mannerisms of an American. Even if they could find American actors who could speak perfect French, it wouldn't make much sense that Ripley and Greenleaf would never speak to each other in English, even when they're alone together.
Of course, it's also possible that Greenleaf and Ripley are both French people who live in the United States, or Americans who have lived most of their lives in Europe. Either of those would account for their European manner and speech.
Yeah, gosh, they even SPOKE French. More puzzling, however, was that they all seemed to be perfectly fluent in Italian - even Ripley who´d been there only for a very short while. Also, for some reason Italian police officers appeared at ease speaking French which most certainly isn´t realistic.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
This stuck out to me as well; down to the fact that they never spoke English amongst themselves as most Americans would. The only one who was obviously American was Freddy. It didn't bother me though, the casting was perfect. They couldn't have found a better Ripley or Phillipe.
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