Period Films and Inaccuraces

[Fading Fast]

Agreed. To me, I don't need to dress up in a hot wool uniform, carry a musket, eat hardtack and sleep out under the stars and get shot to appreciate a Civil War movie, so why should the language used become a barrier to my enjoying the film. If it's an English-language audience, let 'em speak English. We'll get the idea they're Germans by the uniforms, salutes, airplanes, tanks and whatnot. I don't need them speaking German and me trying to read subtitles to get the idea.

I remember reading something by Ayn Rand a long time ago in which she said it bothered her every time she went to a WWII movie and all the Germans spoke English with a German accent. She argued that they should either have spoken in German and used subtitles or just spoken in non-accented English (since. in that case, you are asking your audience to recognize that they don't really speak English, but we are doing this to make it easier for you, the viewer).

My girlfriend and I, who watch a lot of old movies, talk about this all the time and we are fine with subtitles (for me, I don't even notice that I'm reading them five minutes into the movie) or - and while we hate to admit this - like the Germans speaking English with a German accent (versus the Germans speaking non-accented English). We acknowledge that it is illogical, but it feels better and seems to keep the atmosphere right when they have the German accent. There, I admitted it. That said, I know Ayn Rand could convince me otherwise as she was a ferociously powerful debater.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I remember reading something by Ayn Rand a long time ago in which she said it bothered her every time she went to a WWII movie and all the Germans spoke English with a German accent. She argued that they should either have spoken in German and used subtitles or just spoken in non-accented English (since. in that case, you are asking your audience to recognize that they don't really speak English, but we are doing this to make it easier for you, the viewer).

My girlfriend and I, who watch a lot of old movies, talk about this all the time and we are fine with subtitles (for me, I don't even notice that I'm reading them five minutes into the movie) or - and while we hate to admit this - like the Germans speaking English with a German accent (versus the Germans speaking non-accented English). We acknowledge that it is illogical, but it feels better and seems to keep the atmosphere right when they have the German accent. There, I admitted it. That said, I know Ayn Rand could convince me otherwise as she was a ferociously powerful debater.

Did it bother her to go see Hamlet on stage and see the actors speaking in English? Did she want them to speak Danish and have someone standing off to the side with giant cards translating the dialogue?

 

[Stanley Doble]

Since when do movies have to be logical? They don't appeal to logic they appeal to feelings and emotions. If an accent gets the story across effectively then it is the artistically correct choice and the hell with logic.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I thought the film Enemy at the Gates did the Germans speaking English thing rather elegantly. In the scene where Major König (Ed Harris) arrives at the German headquarters there's a babble of German voices when he gets there and is greeted by the staff officers. And then when he reports to the general it switches to English.

 

[Shangas]

There's a line in a film that always tripped me up. It's otherwise an excellent film in my opinion, but it always nagged me.

In "The Green Mile", set in 1935, Tom Hanks lectures the upstart prison-officer, Percy, about his temperament on Death Row. He tells him to consider Death Row like the "intensive care ward of a hospital".

According to what I've read, intensive care wards or units did not exist as a specialised hospital department until after the Second World War. Is this correct? Was there some sort of pre-war equivalent? Or did they simply not exist until the 1950s (the earliest date that I can find for such a ward).

 

[Matt Crunk]

I thought the film Enemy at the Gates did the Germans speaking English thing rather elegantly. In the scene where Major König (Ed Harris) arrives at the German headquarters there's a babble of German voices when he gets there and is greeted by the staff officers. And then when he reports to the general it switches to English.

I love the way they do nearly the same thing at the beginning of The Hunt For Red October where the crew of the October starts out conversing in Russian but then transitions into English a few minutes in.