English accents in historical movies.

[ContrarianLemming]

I love how the whole world spoke with an English accent from 4000BC up to WW 2.

You know what I mean, take any movie set in the past, any ol historical epic and I garuntee you everyone has an english accent, or, if the actor is quite famous, sometimes an american accent is acceptable (troy, the skorpion king).

Is there any well known actual explanation of this? Or is it simply because Leonidies simply sounds way cooler with his Scotish howl compared to an actual greek accent.

Or is it just a new thing, like (sigh) 3D movies.

Also, who picked red to be the Roman color? see any movie with the Romans and they're wearing red, thats their "national" color in historical films and games, yet in reality they would have only had grey's and browns and earty colors since dying clothing back then was costly and hard.

[Diello]

On the other hand, which is worse: everyone having an American/English accent, or everyone inexpertly putting on an accent? (K19: The Widowmaker is the first instance of this that springs to mind, but there must be hundreds.)

I would like to point out an instance in which the application of historically inaccurate American/European accents actually works to enhance the film (though this must certainly be the exception, not the rule). In Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus and most of his followers have American accents, whereas David Bowie's Pilate speaks with the actor's own British accent. This contrast subtly highlights the fact that Jesus and Pilate are from two very separate societies, and the associations of sophistication and imperialistic ambition evoked by Bowie's British accent correspond well to the role of the Romans in the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zugJVfWfB54

[ComradeOm]

I love how the whole world spoke with an English accent from 4000BC up to WW 2.

You know what I mean, take any movie set in the past, any ol historical epic and I garuntee you everyone has an english accent, or, if the actor is quite famous, sometimes an american accent is acceptable (troy, the skorpion king).

Is there any well known actual explanation of this? Or is it simply because Leonidies simply sounds way cooler with his Scotish howl compared to an actual greek accent.

Or is it just a new thing, like (sigh) 3D moviesIts definitely not new, the tradition of using Shakespearian actors to play Greek gods and the like goes back decades. Probably due to the gravitas they bring to the role and the fact that US accents in a classical setting just sounds ridiculous


Also, who picked red to be the Roman color? see any movie with the Romans and they're wearing red, thats their "national" color in historical films and games, yet in reality they would have only had grey's and browns and earty colors since dying clothing back then was costly and hard.Red features prominently in various Imperial Roman vexilla (equivalent of a flag/standard). It has nothing to do with clothing

[Devrim]

I love how the whole world spoke with an English accent from 4000BC up to WW 2.

Er...they didn't unless you lived in an English speaking country. People in this country would be under the impression that they all spoke Turkish, as Cem Yilmaz said, breaking into English, in the Turkish sci-Fi epic GORA, aren't we lucky they all speak Turkish in space.

Of course the idea of doing a 'Roman English accent' in Roman films would be absurd.

To me when people do the correct accent reasonably well, only really applicable to films set in English language countries, it is OK. If people just speak in their own accent in historical films, it is fine. If the film is any good you don't really notice it.

What does annoy me is when people try to do an accent and fail. A good example would be Russell Crow in his latest Robin Hood romp. I mean really where was he supposed to be from? His accent changed from scene to scene.

Of course, the fact that the film was so poor that it didn't distract me from this itself didn't help.

Devrim

[Jimmie Higgins]

Often Hollywood movies use British accents to broadcast caste or class positions for characters in these kinds of movies - particularly Roman ones. Maybe I'm messing up my accents here, but it bugged the shit out of me that in Lord of the Rings the baddies had cockney accents while the wizards and kings sounded like they were off to stroll through a manor garden with Jane Austen.

I think they also use the accent for Roman movies because in Hollywood, America never kills people at the desire of its rulers, never oppresses unpopular religions, and never invades other areas to get new land, slaves, or loot! It's ok for the British to be imperialists - even ancient Roman ones, but not people with Yankee accents!

[RED DAVE]

I think my favorite mush of accents comes in "Spartacus." (That's the 1960 movie.)

Kirk Douglas, a Jew from Upstate New York, has a kind of New York accent. However, he is eclipsed by Tony Curtis (aka Bernard Schwartz) with his Bronx accent. ("I am am a singuh of song and a telluh of tales.")

On the other hand, most of the Romans have properly decadent upper-class British accents. But so does Jean Simmons (no, not the guy from Kiss although it would have been a triumph for nontraditional casting), playing a German slave girl, has the same accent.

RED DAVE

[praxis1966]

What does annoy me is when people try to do an accent and fail. A good example would be Russell Crow in his latest Robin Hood romp. I mean really where was he supposed to be from? His accent changed from scene to scene.

This could be said of pretty much any American made movie about Robin Hood. Ever see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves? At the beginning, Kevin Costner and Christian Slater are doing their level best to put on an English accent and making a real hash of it. Then at some point, it's as if Christian Slater popped in Costner's trailer and was all, "Dude, I really don't feel like doing the accent today. Are you going to do it?" Costner, "Nah, I'm tired of it, too." Slater, "Fuck it then. If you're not gonna do it neither am I." Of course, Costner's never been good at accents. Anybody who saw him arm wrestle and lose with the Louisiana accent in JFK could tell you that. And don't even get me started on what the fuck Morgan Freeman was doing running around the woods with Robin of Locksley or that the film was responsible for the second worst movie song of all times, but I digress...

Anyway, I've noticed that about American period pieces. It's been going on since time immemorial, and I can't rightly explain it in a lot of cases other than the Shakespearean thing. Take for example the HBO series Rome. Granted, that was a co-production with the Beeb, but why the fuck did everybody, including Cleopatra, have a damned English accent?

Other than that, Star Wars is a great example. For whatever reason all the Imperials, save Darth Vader presumably because he was at one point a good guy, have English accents. Chalk it up to Americans thinking that the English are snooty and stuffy, so the accent makes bad guys easier to hate, lol.

[ContrarianLemming]

Other than that, Star Wars is a great example. For whatever reason all the Imperials, save Darth Vader presumably because he was at one point a good guy, have English accents. Chalk it up to Americans thinking that the English are snooty and stuffy, so the accent makes bad guys easier to hate, lol.


Think Disney, the bad guys in the classic cartoons of the 90's tended to have English accents.

[Diello]

Of course, Costner's never been good at accents. Anybody who saw him arm wrestle and lose with the Louisiana accent in JFK could tell you that.

Remember his Bostonian accent in Thirteen Days? Jesus.

[Wanted Man]

Other than that, Star Wars is a great example. For whatever reason all the Imperials, save Darth Vader presumably because he was at one point a good guy, have English accents. Chalk it up to Americans thinking that the English are snooty and stuffy, so the accent makes bad guys easier to hate, lol.

And Princess Leia started with a British accent, then switched to American.

[redz0nia]

Take for example the HBO series Rome. Granted, that was a co-production with the Beeb, but why the fuck did everybody, including Cleopatra, have a damned English accent?


In "Rome" the accents vary depending on the class and status the character has. The nobles speek in a posh accent whereas the plebs in a more of a cockney. I see no issue with this. For ex. does one of the characters (Pullo) say to the girl he had saved and likes "you speak our words" but she does it with a foreign accent to mark that she in fact is not Roman. But the reason Cleopatra does is surely that she had been taught different languages and spoke the same as the Romans. She was after all of noble birth and not an Egyptian but actually Macedonian (descendant of Alexander the Great who was Macedonian, why they were all so much more fair than the locals and a probable cause of why they spoke the Roman language).The Greeks all had accents as another example.

I see no problem with actors speaking with different British accents to highlight the different statuses they have in the society. Also the fact that they do speak with a British accent, for me, gives the film more weight. I just saw the trailer for Nicholas Cages new movie "Season of the Witch" and practically everybody speaks with an American accent that doesn't feel very believable and just bothers me. Maybe because I have grown accustomed to the fact that all epic movies are spoken in varied British accents, but face it - it just sounds better. We of course all understand that this isn't the language that was actually spoken then (doh) but I'm pretty sure not many countries are as used to subs as in Scandinavia for example, so if they would have spoken in the Roman language in "Rome", it wouldn't bother us reading the text, but I'm sure many others would be fairly annoyed.

But - if you are going to attempt to speak in a different accent in a movie then at least do it well or get a better tutor! Otherwise don't go there, it's just embarrassing and very very annoying.

[Vampire Lobster]

This thread is stupid. The movies are directed at English-speaking audience who understand the meaning of playing around with different accents. Attributing a certain accent to a person is usually done in order to tell us something about his personality or the general nature of the character, often class. Usage of accent in British English is very closely related to your class background (see RP/Cockney) and this is something even American audience gets. They immediately recognize even from the speech who's the upper class twat here and who's a working man. Using actually local accents would have no point, honestly. It would probably sound pretty retarded and it would probably be a lot more difficult to 'get in' to the movie if all the characters were using a weird, foreign accent. Using standard American accents of course works in some situations, but in other situations a British one is a lot more effective to make the situation natural for an English-speaking watcher.

[Manic Impressive]

Just want to say worst actor for accents ever must be Ray Winston seriously he sounds the same as Henry the 8th as he does as a Boston Gangster in the Departed.

[Diello]

Just want to say worst actor for accents ever must be Ray Winston seriously he sounds the same as Henry the 8th as he does as a Boston Gangster in the Departed.

Have you seen Kevin Costner in JFK or Thirteen Days?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

God I hate this too. I've always found it ridiculous. Always Romans have English accents. Even having stuff like Othello with English speakers pisses me off, if it's in Venice why are they speaking English!

[Kléber]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_English