rec.arts.movies.past-films

"Okierazorbacker" wrote in message
news: @ ...

>
> The Shop Around the Corner (1940): James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan,
> Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Charles Smith (Ernst Lubitsch)
> Pardon my nitpicking, but this would've been such a better movie if
> they'd even TRIED for Hungarian accents.

In Hungary, they speak Hungarian, not English with Hungarian accents. For
me, the use of accents is to indicate that the speaker is not speaking his
first language, not to make us think he is.

This, of course, does not apply to dialects, where various characters are
all speaking the same language, and the same language as the audience, .,
an Irish play being performed in Chicago. But I don't want to see SHOP
AROUND THE CORNER or UNCLE VANYA or MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT or FAUST or VOLPONE
or RASHOMON in English with a bunch of actors pretending they're speaking
Hungarian or Russian or French or German or Japanese when what they're
really doing is speaking English with an accent. Three and a half hours of
UNCLE VANYA in English with Russian accents -- saints preserve us!

Jim Beaver