No accent?

I'd much rather have McQueen not even try, than try and fail (as so many actors do, to the performance's detriment). I also think that having American actors fake French accents would sort of be like a cast of French actors filming a movie that supposedly takes place in America, speaking French with American accents.

I aggree with most people in this thread, speaking english with fake accents is absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah, because the French speak English with an French accent, right? Why did they just get everyone to learn French?!

Idiotic post imho, sorry. Either one'd film the whole movie in French to make it look more 'authentic' or else stick to the original actors' languages (whatever they'd be) without any fake accents (which would be insulting both to the real history behind and also to the audiences - even the US-american. Well, hopefully. :-)).

A man builds. A parasite asks "Where is my share?" - Andrew Ryan

I think that this falls into a category with films like Schindler's List and All Quiet on The Western front in that, while they're masterpieces, it is hard to get past the fact that they're speaking American English while playing European parts. For me, it's just hard to get past it. Frankly if they're going to be speaking English, they may as well not force accents. That just makes it all the more irritating.

It's weird because I thought not bothering to use accents in these sort of films was relaively modern phenomenom, but after recently seeing movies such as Dr Zhivago and Papillion, I realize it has been in vogue for many years now. There's a train of thought by an influential few that it comes accross as corny to use European accents (apart from British) when the film is spoken in English. Well it may not be truely authentic to use these accents in an English language portrayel, but in my opinion the use accents helps enormously in giving a feel for where the movie is supposed to be set. I mean with their broad American and English accents, it was so hard to appreciate that the majority of characters where supposed to be French.

This first started to get to me when I watched a movie called 'Girl with a Perl Earring' staring Scartlett Johansson, which was set in the Dutch republic, but for half the movie I kept thinking it was medieval England, because everyone spoke in a British accent. It gets extra confusing in these movies when British or American characters come into them and ofcourse they have the same American/British accents as the French/German/Russian's characters are using.

Seeing as the script was written in English, for English-speaking actors, why should they have bothered putting on (inevitably) hammy French accents. Much better for them to speak as they are most comfortable and give a better performance. Otherwise, write it in French for a French cast.

Star power indeed! Not unlike Costners' missing accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.