Honestly, if they wanted all the actors to use English accents, why not set the movie in England in the Middle Ages?
Would it really have been that difficult??
What, did you think I was gonna say something important? Pssh!
easier to understand?
how about all those ww2 movies where the germans all have british accents?
actually though i do like your point..the film could have been set anywhere if you want to know..could've easily have been a fictional town too..i think though that they wanted to turn it into a historical romance with familiar french characters....you know, king francis, henry, leonardo da vinci..you know make it seem as if it were actually the truth? and the story is actually french...
if they would have set in the middle age england would you know anyone other than king arthur?
No, but there in lies my point. They could have picked an English monarch out of a hat, and everyone would have been all,"I don't know, I guess it could be partially true." Honestly, though, with all the historical innacuracies, it would probably have come out to about the same story.
What, did you think I was gonna say something important? Pssh!
Maybe we shouldn't agonize so much over "provincial accuracy," seeing as "Ever After" isn't anywhere close to being the first picture that's "lacking" in this area. Here's what I wrote in a similarly-themed thread from the "Papillon" boards:
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 onto 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!
BRAVO.....BRAVO!!!!! I couldnot have conveyed it better....and their 'nitpicking' is putting it lightly......lol
shareI'm sure we all noticed it and have attributed it creative license but it is kind of off that almost no one speaks French or has a French accent... in a movie set in France.
Well, as I implied in my previous post, show me a foreign film (whose dialogue is all spoken in the native tongue of the movie's country of origin) where any actor who's portraying an Englishman or American is employing a Yank or Brit accent. I tend to think that there are more English-speaking films that attempt to employ foreign accents for foreign characters, then vice versa. But show me where I'm wrong, and I'll join in the critical fray against Brits and Yanks who sound like Brits and Yanks when they're portraying Napoleon, Caesar, Russian characters in movies adapted from the works of Dostoevsky, etc.
sharelet's put it this way...would you rather see subtitles or would you rather watch them speaking in english...my own opinion is that i would much rather hear english than having to read subtitles...
shareI think the issue is that American actors are playing French characters but using a British accent. Either speak with your normal American accent, or use an accent of the right country your character is from. That would be like a German actor playing an American in a movie and using an Australian accent.
shareif everyone would speak with their own accent in a film, the movie would not sound genuine...it would sound as if no one is from the same country...either it's uniform or it isn't period...i don't see a problem with americans speaking with british accents or germans speaking with british accents..
they are actors..that's what they do for a living....you would spend an awful lot of money trying to teach the ENTIRE cast how to speak french and then you'd bet subtitles..i don't need that...it's like star wars or star trek..maybe all the aliens should speak their own language too instead of english..i mean come on you're really taking this way too far..
Well, I have the DVD and I play it in French with English subtitles. Some DVDs let you select a language to watch a movie in.
shareI am a foreign language teacher and read a really interesting article on the way foreign languages are handled in the movies. Sometimes the actors just speak English, sometimes they have them speak their own language, but have sub-titles, etc. One idea was that they have foreigners speak with an English accent because it represents to us that they are speaking a foreign language. Since the English accent is foreign to us in America, our mind puts a checkmark in our heads next to "foreign", but we can still understand what they are saying.
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It took place in France because the Cinderella story we all know and are used to took place in France. But French accents are harder to understand and would have just sounded silly. I would say the accent is Mid-Atlantic english.
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To each his own, but I think it was fine. I mean its been 13 years. Can't change it now. Lol.
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i don't think that it sounds silly, ridiculous or nonsensical for drew to have an english accent..the same thing could be said for angelica huston and megan dodds who are also american..many actors in this film were british including dougray scott (scottish who also had to adopt a british accent) and i suppose to make it uniform all used british accents...it suddenly occurred to me that jeanne moreau is in here..she was born in paris france and used a british accent in the film..also jeroen krabbe born in amsterdam who also used a british accent for this film...
but i guess to each his own..i would so much prefer a british accent than a fake french accent...easier to understand and lovely to listen to...
my 2 cents...
It honestly doesn't bother me much. I think it would have been almost worse to have the actors speaking in English with French accents, because at that point, you might as well have them speaking French. I agree with a previous post that the point was to place us in Europe while still remaining true to the original setting of the tale.
~ j'adore faire l'amour ~
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Almost every American movie set in Europe has actors with English actors/accents.
shareI think Disney's Cinderella(the original animated one, not the Brandy one), as far as voices were concerned, faired out pretty well while having some American actors/actresses(if anything, the majority were Americans) NOT going faux-English accent. You can speak in a normal American accent and still fit in as long as you try to be classy about it(there as such thing as posh American, or American accent that has less of a low brow demeanor to it). Of course you could say it was a different time, and a lot of old Hollywood actors and actresses had that class to them, but one would think it SHOULD be a obligation that any actor can aim to play(or should study to play) a variety of roles that allows them to act at many different levels of society, be it foreign or domestic.