I like how Steve McQueen can get away with playing a frenchmen & not have an accent at all, thats star power.
shareat the end, when they were living in their huts, it's almost like Steve McQueen's accent turned into an old Jewish guy's. Degas' rambling on about his carrots, tomatoes, etc, and the meshugenah Papillon rambling on about escaping.. oy vey.
shareThe lack of accents is the biggest flaw of this film. It is less authentic.
shareThe idea that American actors affect French accents while speaking in English would somehow add "authenticity" to this movie is ludicrous. French actors speaking French might bring it a little closer to reality in one way or another, but as language played no important role in the film, it's probably best the way they did it.
there's no place you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
Americans speaking in fake French accents would have made this more authentic? How so? Did the prisoners and staff of the prisons speak English with French accents?
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
"The lack of accents is the biggest flaw of this film. It is less authentic."
But think about it: when French people speak French to each other, it doesn't sound to them like they have accents. So, if a film is being done in English, why not have them speak natural English to each other, with the understanding that all the characters are French? It's like WWII movies where Germans speak English with German accents to each other: wouldn't this suggest that the Americans should be speaking English with German accents?
Authentic ?They speak English ffs lol.. Never mind "authentic"
shareI was disappointed by the absence of French accents too. It reminded me of Tom Cruise in Valkyrie not attempting a German accent.
" Don't that picture look dusty?"
But that makes no sense because none of the other actors did either. All of the Brits in that movie spoke in their native British accent, yet Tom Cruise is the one that always takes the heat for not attempting a German accent.
shareWhy would they have accents? Presumably they're actually speaking French, but the movie's American so it's in English. It's far more distracting to have characters speaking in accents when we're already meant to understand that they're not really speaking English to each other (Seven Years in Tibet comes to mind). Geez, imagine Amadeus with all of the characters speaking in Austrian accents!
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You must be mistaking with Spanish.
"I don't wanna be the first nigg** to die from a crossbow!!"
Or Romeo and Juliet with Italian accents.
It is a film based on fiction, not a documentary. Ever heard of "Willing suspension of disbelief"?
Yeah I agree. If it is French people in France then it should have been spoken in French, which would mean everyone else would have to read subtitles. I think just having them speak English is better, it lets us watch it and enjoy and we just assume they are speaking French and we can understand. An accent wouldn't have made sense.
shareThey didn't have accents in Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) as well... And yet 99% of the characters in that are French. It doesn't really bother me (although I'm French Canadian) and I'm glad they didn't attempt half-assed French accents because that would've made the movie ridiculous... Imagine an American actor trying to speak his native tongue with a fake French accent. That would really suck.
BD Collection:
http://avoltaire.dvdaf.com/owned/blu-ray-disc
Good points raised by you (Avoltaire) and a few other posters. Here's my addition:
I understand that "Grand Hotel" (1932) was the first "all star" motion picture production, featuring a cast of actors and actresses who were all leading actors/actresses in their own right (and it was an experiment/gamble that paid off big dividends for MGM). The story is set in post-WWI Germany, but this is obviously an English-speaking movie. Starring Wallace Beery, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and John and Lionel Barrymore, only Beery (an American) and the Scandanavian Garbo spoke with Nordic accents; in Garbo's case, it was her natural speaking voice, but Beery had to affect his accent for the role. None of the rest of the cast (all American actors) spoke with a Germanic accent. Beery's acting prowess in this picture is, alternately, lauded and panned because of the affected accent; but in the end, most will agree that Beery's method therein clashes with the American accents of the rest of the cast who are all portraying Germans.
Then, there's the German production of "Titanic" (1943): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036443/ (Scroll down and check out the review at the bottom of the page, and, if interested, click on to further reviews.)
I watched part of this when it aired on TCM (had to break off, at some point, and head on to my job) but saw enough of it to consciously note that none of the German actors, many of whom were portraying Englishmen and Americans, bothered to deliver with Yank or Brit accents--but no sensible critic would take issue with this film over such a triviality. (The REAL problem of this movie was its portrayal of British and American characters as blackguards and villains, which one can only expect of anything generated by the Goebbels propaganda machine during the wartime/Nazi Germany era.)
Conclusion: it strikes me that to disparage USA-made movies and American actors because of their "Americanized" portrayal of European characters is just as shallow-minded and uselessly nit-picking as it would be to pan non-English speaking films (where the characters are Americans/English) for the self-same perceived "flaws." Translation? Give Steve McQueen in "Papillon" (AND the rest of all the other Americans who have portrayed non-English speaking characters and historical figures in countless motion pictures) a frickin' break, folks!
a propos of Paths of Glory, which I saw as a Tacoma High School 9th-grader the year it came out (1959), I noticed how Kubrick's actors had a large sprinkling of New Yorkese accents. The tribunal was especially abrupt like typical New Yorkers without any time to waste on formalities. Others in the cast had strict working class accents which added verisimilitude (i.e., "...take a swig of this...") Attempting a Frenchified tone would have been alien to Kubrick in any case and ruined the film. The only nuance omitted was a Bronx or a Brooklyn accent which would have been over the top...
shareFew things rub me the wrong way than having characters who would presumably be speaking French speak in a French accent, or any kind of accent substituting a language. It would have sucked for Casablanca, would have sucked for this. In the case of movies with Hitler, I think it's much more effective if he has no accent. He was speaking German, not English with a German accent. It gives you more the sense of how Germans would have heard him if there is not the distancing device of an accent.
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Reason is a pursuit, not a conclusion.
They all spoke with an accent - a North American one. Funny how people think their own country speaks with no accent. An American (US, Canada) accent is just as pronounced as a British or Aussie accent - simply a matter of perspective. I recently spoke with a Kiwi (Noy Zoylend) girl who also thought like that - "Oy noi way doint hev en eksint!" f'n hilarious!
shareWhile the concept of taking a foreign story and just doing it in English is a bit weird, it's miles better than the accent route(K-19 did this, didn't it?). Still, I would have LOVED to have seen Papillon in French, provided Hoffman and McQueen were French, of course.
If dolphins are so smart, how come they live in igloos
I honestly didn't even think about it, I just got caught up in an amazing film with a great story.
But I do think it is better to speak with an American accent, then speaking French with an English accent. That just sounds silly and would take away much of the realism.
I’m with jajceboy on this one. And will add..............just enjoy this engrossing story of triumph against great hardship and adversity.
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