Movies that get to you

Americans and English people speak the same language and I'd easily say that a lot of the time they pull of the accent very well. This is not a good counterexample at all for that reason.

No matter how much of an accent Ralph Fiennes puts on his English, it's still English and the artifice disappears that he's German.

What is? My seeing it akin to or the criticism itself? Very unclear there, Lime.

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Or a white guy playing a black guy but is actually an Australian guy either??...

No, it bugs me a lot too but it definitely isn't the same as...

__________________
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

No it's not. But the big question there is WHY ROONEY? As if you couldn't get a decent Asian actor. As if Spielberg couldn't get decent German actors and have it in German language. Are we as an audience not ready for the real thing in either situation?

Of course he could get German actors. Perhaps he didn't want to make a German film. He lives in America and maybe he wanted to make an American version about a topic that is very close to him.

And no, for the most part American audiences are not ready for "the real thing". You know it and I know it.

If he'd of made a film like that it would have been a great film but very few people would see it. At least in America anyway.

__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

No you as an audience are not. Not you personally but you as Americans (and us British people too - in fact English speakers), otherwise why would there be so many remakes?

Okay then.

Then it almost feels like it was a studio decision to avoid subtitling. If so, that's awful. Not that Spielberg has ever been some kind of indie artiste.

And maybe it was, I doubt it because Spielberg has a lot clout but maybe. Even so, its an epic film. I don't love it myself, but that's simply because of its subject, not the way in which it was made.

Helluva film.

That's what I mean though. Speilberg probably didn't have to, and seeing as it was intensely about the Holocaust, the studios would have prolly been willing to make some concessions, but it was still the way it was. I just don't get it. I think it definitely takes away from the film.

In general I praise it for the way it was made. The cinematography and some of the tracking shots are breathtaking. I just don't like the English factor and, of course, the self-defeating ideology in the portrayal of Schindler.

I think you may be missing the "message" though. Spielberg is smart and he knows how to get people to see his movies.

If the flick was done in German with subs it wouldn't have been anymore epic than it is now and far less people would have seen it.

Agreed. However, the film is now and forever an AMERICAN film. Nothing wrong with that except the discontinuity with the subject matter. Sergio Leone didn't do his films in Italian because they were about America (but as you said, then they wouldn't be as popular here in America).

I get it. America and the English language rules the filmmaking industry.

I think the language question is interesting (even if it may be sidetracking the thread a bit...). I agree with Christine that having the actors speak English in English/American accents is preferable to speaking English in cod-German/French accents (like they do in the old sitcom 'Allo 'Allo). One of the things I liked about Inglorious Basterds was that the characters spoke in the language they would actually be using - English, French or German, depending on the characters and situation. It would defintiely be interesting to see that in more films.

However, I don't think it is necessary. One of the arguments put forward was for 'realism'. But what films in which realism is not the objective? Should everyone be speaking French in Moulin Rouge, for example? I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that it is somehow offensive to set a film in a country and not film it in the native language of that country. Is it equally offensive to film things in a studio or to film in the Czech Republic and pass it off as Russia?

And I have to wonder whether a US-financed and produced Spielberg-directed film, with actors speaking German would really be 'the real thing' in terms of being somehow authentically German. Perhaps people should only be allowed to make films about their own country, to make them more 'authentic'? I just think that while language and culturally authenticity may be considerations, they are not the only considerations when making a film.

Well sure, that's true at the core because of all the considerable amounts of money Hollywood can throw around.

Think about it though, what is Hollywood? What is America for that matter? A hodge podge on its best day. Maybe the majority of Hollywood is "white" dominated but even a lot of those whites at their roots come from another country. Everything changes and so does Hollywood. The movies that get made in Hollywood today are far from the kinds of flicks that were being made back in the 30's and 40's and will continue to change.

It has to or else another country will pass us by. If there's one thing that America excels at it's front running.

Well yeah that is a film with innacurate accents because the accents don't fit the setting or characters at all (also i probably worded it wrong; I meant that they should be speaking German, which they should seeing as they are a German family and the film is set in Germany)

Also why can't you just use German actors? They'd speak fluent German without the fake accents and it would add to the altogether realism of the film.

__________________
"Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican't?"

so ok it's a film with inaccurate language not accent. It just didn't strike me that the film would be any better by having the family speaking in German.
If you want to carry this on, then why wasn't the whole film spoken in German? Whay wasn't the cast German? So them as my previous point, would you have even seen it or it even been released in English speaking countries?

The book's written my Anne Holm a Danish writer who wrote it in Danish so should it have been cast with Danish actors speaking in Danish??

You misunderstand me, what im saying is they should stay true to the characters and the location (setting) as closely as possible to make sure the movie is as authentic (not (necessarily) realistic) as possible.

And yes if the cast was German and the whole film was in German I might not have even seen it, but that's irrelevant, and so is your point about the movie not being any better if the family spoke German, because my first post was not about whether the movie would've been better if they all spoke German (although that would've made it more authentic and I think it probably would be better if that was the case (but it's not) my first post was me stating how it annoyed me how all the characters speak English and how that therefore ruins the authenticity of the film.

According to IMDb, Spielberg initially intended to make the film in Polish and German with English subtitles, but rethought the idea because he felt he wouldn't be able to accurately assess performances in unfamiliar languages. (Even so there are bits and pieces of Hebrew, Polish and German spoken in the film.) Spielberg was basically going to only produce the movie but ended up directing it after many other famous people, including Scorsese, Polanski and Billy Wilder turned it down for various reasons. Now, getting even further off-topic but still somehow significant to why we're talking about this (at least temporarily), Spielberg was paid nothing up front for this film and all the monies which would have gone to him after the grosses came in were all donated to the Shoah Foundation. I'm sure this will still lead a few people to believe that Spielberg is a money-grubbing, headline-seeking AntiChrist responsible for the downfall of the movies. Believe it or not, this is what I look like right now:

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

For the record I was talking about The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas not Schindler's List, but whatever

But I get the whole not being able to assess the performances properly because they'd have been in a foreign language. However I still prefer authenticity with things like language and accent

Yes, and I was addressing my post as an open comment, not responding to a specific person, so that makes us even.

Mark, you have just personally insulted me in every conceivable way. Shame on you.