I've just seen the film, and I was surprised to see Marion Cotillard speak polish! She sounded really natural to me but to those who've seen it, is she fluent or not? (I don't speak the language so I can't tell)
It was a really good movie by the way, with haunting score & cinematography !
No. She learned her Polish lines.
She stunned and impressed James Gray by learning Polish with a German influence because the town which her character left was on the German, Polish border.
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"
Great job. Her accent in English seems polish to me too. Katowice had lot of German influence, it was near, yet not at the border with Germany.
shareHer polish wasn't that good, but it wasn't bad. I think for a non-speaker of the language she did a great job, especially with the accent in English. Now for a FRENCH person she did an amazing, aaaah-may-zeeen(!), job at getting a Polish accent in English and a decent spoken Polish. That's just pure talent, such a great actress. The French are not that good at mastering accents other than their own - which is fine since French always sounds sophisticated even when they're broke
(•_•)
can't outrun your own shadow
I AM DEE BEE -- 10 years !
The reviewer on rogerebert.com is Polish and said that MC did an excellent job, the best he had ever heard.
shareI'm Polish and I'm positively surprised with how well she did! With exception of a couple of really minor and hardly audible pronunciation errors she could almost fool me that she's a native Polish speaker.
shareShe did good enough job learning her lines in polish but it's obvious she doesn't speak the language. The words themselves are pronounced properly - wich is a big achievement, since polish is a hard language to learn for an english speaker. Just look at Yvonne Strahovski - she is said to be bi-lingual (she has Polish parents but was born and raised in Australia) but even she has some problems with proper pronounciation of certain words.
Unfortunatly there are many misplaced accents and emphases put on wrong words or syllables. But I guess it's not that important - it's just supposed to make the character more believable to be Polish for international audiences. I don't expect every actor to learn the language in wich they have just a few lines in a movie.
Over all good job. A whole lotta better than Sacha Baron Cohen's "Dzien dobry" and "Jak sie masz" :)
wich is a big achievement, since polish is a hard language to learn for an english speakerDon't forget that Marion is French, not English! I doubt that made it much easier for her, but I thought I'd point that out.
As an avid polish language practitioner, i cud barely understood her
Werd 2 ur mudda, bruddafcker
As a polish person by birth and by nationality, i can assure you, Marion Cottilard did an AMAZING job with pronunciation and accent of my language in this movie. I was astonished how well did she managed to speak it. Of course there was a (very) few little mistakes but overall she's winner in my eyes, as polish is very hard language not only to learn but also to speak properly. Even polish people often has a hard time to speak it right. I know because i'm one of them :)
sharePlus she added the German influence of a close to the border Polish town.
The layers of her performance is amazing.
Also people forget nowadays that in those days neither education nor media was centralised and standardised. Hence every place in a country like for example Italy would have a seriously different version of Italian. Then add the experience of a country like Poland that went through many conquests and border changes by empires and their armies.
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I'm Polish and I think she speaks Polish incredibly well in this movie, I was expecting something funny to hear like almost always when foreigners try to speak Polish in movies but instead she speaks perfectly understandable, with almost no mistakes and with almost perfect accent, with a bit of trouble in pronunciation which can be heard in some lines but really, she's awesome. I would probably have to learn French for a couple of years to speak it as well as she speak Polish in the movie, with such spot on accent. She did really amazing job, some people live in Poland for over 5 years and aren't even close to her level of Polish she presented in this movie, especially if we would judge the accent. Terrific job.
shareI agree - I thought she did a fantastic job... she kinda had a slight russian accent going on at times, but overall, she did an amazing job at the pronunciation. especially since french and polish are at kind of at the opposite ends of the pronunciation spectrum!
And she had a LOT to memorize.... polish is a hard languages to learn so for her to be able to memorize, pronounce and ACT at the same time? really take my hat off to her...
as my husband said when I called him over to see Marion Cotillard speaking polish - "skubana!"
A chat with you and somehow death loses its sting.....
She is amazing and remember when she spoke English she had to have a Polish not French English accent.
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