MovieChat Forums > The Big Sky (1952) Discussion > Best non english ever spoken in Hollywoo...

Best non english ever spoken in Hollywood movie

posted 16 years ago by tallard
4 replies | jump to latest

I wouldn't normally stop my zapping for Kirk, but when I heard the trappers singing and speaking French in a "western" movie, I had to stop and look. After reading many comments, I can see why!

It takes a great director to get so many things right. Most people are raving about script and scenery and music, but let me add the French spoken in the movie is quite typical of those days, as well as the dress and physical presence of these Metis trappers.

Truly amazing movie!

***So I've seen 4 movies/wk in theatre for a 1/4 century, call me crazy?**

[–] GrandeMarguerite 14 years ago

I wish Hawks had directed real French speakers. One of the reviewers states Hawks used real Franch actors. Wrong : not a single actor was from France. And you can alas hear it : while Henri Letondal speaks and sings in a very fluent French (he was from Quebec, he was thus speaking his mother's tongue), the other actors are sometimes very hard to understand because their French is so foul. In particular, Steven Geray sounds like some Italian or Spanish guy who has just learned French at school -- his accent is terrible. Thank God he had to repeat some of his cues in English, or else I would have had trouble understanding him ! The other guys' French is OK, but sounded however very phony.

[–] hobnob53 13 years ago

None of the actors was French. Henri Letondal was, as you say, from Quebec: French was his native language, but he had a Quebecoise accent. Steven Geray was Hungarian, but often played Frenchmen, Spaniards and the like. The others were all Americans, mostly speaking English using phony French accents. But they didn't speak much French in the film. Interestingly, Kirk Douglas is fluent in French, but didn't speak it in this movie.

[–] psdhart 9 years ago

re "Best non english ever spoken in Hollywood movie", I would add the "The Passion of the Christ" (ok, maybe not a hollywood film per se) but it was in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew.

I agree with Tallard, even if most the actors were not French speakers
I did not know Kirk Douglas spoke French

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

No one's commented about the Blackfoot spoken by Elizabeth Threatt. I don't know how good or authentic it was but at least in theory she was speaking the language.

I have no idea how good the Latin, Hebrew or certainly Aramaic were in The Passion of the Christ, but I would lay odds the actual speakers 2000 years ago sounded very different. But at least the film made an effort to move beyond having them all speaking in English.

Every so often TCM runs a short promo film from 1956 about the making of the movie Lust for Life, with Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh. In the short he speaks fluent French to an elderly woman who had known the real van Gogh. I've seen other film of him speaking French, also a bit of German, though I don't know whether he was fluent in that language. His parents were Russian emigrés and I would have thought he spoke at least some Russian, but I never heard.