Were all the actors in this film upper class English or something? They try, now and again to put a little accent on some of their words but regardless where they are from, It's the same well pronounced English. This really made me laugh.
Did anyone else pick up on this?
That was the way British films were made at that time.Kitchen-sink dramas were still relatively rare.
shareNo, but I think your post is hilarious. So, they have upper-class English accents. So what? One of the themes of the movie is the class difference between Lebel and his bosses and the effete ministers. What are they supposed to do, have upper-class French accents? Give me a break! Fred Zinnemann was one of the great directors, who did intelligent movies, who assumed that audiences were grown up enough not to quibble over whether the accent should be French or English. That kind of nonsense is for Pink Panther audiences.
shareI'm with the OP. You can go on about intelligence all you want, but to me it is hilarious you have two actors who are supposedly French talking to each other. Fair enough, for commercial reasons they speak to each other in English. But to have one speak in English with an English accent and the other answering him in English but with a French accent is hilarious, non?
shareMy thoughts exactly. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the actors' accents.
Yup nothing wrong with any of the accents, should they have used "poorer class" Cockney or something? It sounded like what you'd expect government and high police officials to speak with anyway. Besides the Jackal circulated in mostly a high social plane.
shareThe accents were fine, especially as the characters had to be understood by a worldwide English-speaking audience. In the scenes in London, we can see how the accents have meaning, and here they were NOT all upperclass, especially the cop Brian Thomas's. The poster who made the comment reminds me of a woman who sat behind me while we were watching "2001", and said, during the early human section, "You can TELL they're people."
shareSpeaking of which, why does Tony Britton (Inspector Thomas) put on a phony working-class British accent here? In all his TV work he has an upper-class British accent, which I assume is how he really talks.
shareSiiigh - that was edward Foxes real accent and a lot of the French casr WERE French.
Speaking of the Pink Panther; as they were sitting around the conference table and they ask who the best detective is, did anyone else immediately laugh and think, "Clouseau"! lol Although, at the time in the movie, Clouseau was still a uniformed officer.
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
May I add the old chestnut that, since the characters are speaking English when they're really French... it wouldn't really be "realistic" for them to be speaking English with a French accent either, would it?
"General, how does a child shot with a 303 Lee-Enfield "apply" for help?"
Which is precisely the point of an hilarious (an!) MAD Magazine parody of WHERE EAGLES DARE, as I recall. The characters spoke English with Cherman accents in some scenes, or sort of did. Then did not. Arrggh.
A similar comment came up about the movie "Valkyrie" - and I had the same response - I'd rather listen to an actor's natural accent because it will flow better and convey thematic stuff, not just the words themselves. There would be nothing worse than them all running around with very badly mimiced french accents.
Take James Coburn in 'the great escape' - that accent is like nails down a blackboard to any Australian who watches that fantastic film.
All in all though, who cares, it's a fantastic thriller, set in a time where the electronic age wasn't apon us, now it's all information exchange, you can't walk around half of the highly populated cities in some countries without being on a million surveillance cameras, and the movies made now are all computer generated special effects.
Ultimately the films get made for both artistic and financial reasons, and sometimes they have to concede to one to satisfy the other. With the calibre of film that it is, they'd have to still have 'accessible' actors to the world-wide audience to make enough money that the director/producer etc could make more films. Apparently this didn't do so well in the box office, I would love to have been able to see it in a cinema on a big screen.
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Tony Britton is not putting on a working class accent. He is in real life a Brummie- i.e. he comes from Birmingham UK. This is his regional accent. He didn't need to put it on!
shareWould have been better with subtitles.
shareRe accents, I like the bit when Tony Britton picks up the phone and says 'Get me the Foreign Office....' in Queen's English and then: '.....would you please love' in pure Brummie! (Brummie is someone from Birmingham.) I'd have thought the director would have done another take.
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This all reminds me of the TV show "'Allo, 'Allo" with all the (sometimes widely diverse) French accents spoken by British actors. Except Fairfax and Carstairs, who both spoke with British accents because they were playing Brits. I think one of them had a Cockney accent, but it's been forever since I've seen the show, so I'm not positive. Then you had Gavin Richards (EastEnders' Terry Raymond) speak with a bad Italian accent ("what a mistaka to make!"), and the British cop who was supposed to speak French very poorly doing these crazy pronunciations. That show was nuts!
In terms of "...Jackal," I just tried to forget about the accents entirely, and it worked well enough for me. It's a terrific movie, so why split hairs?
Completely uninformed post by the OP. That's all I picked up on.
Enrique Sanchez