OT Watching John Adams on HBO currently
- Thread starter Bwifan
- Start date
Always wondered how they did the appropriate accent/speech patterns, since there was no recordings back then.
Perhaps. But somewhere in the history of film making someone had to be the first to make a relatively authentic period piece - so how did those film makers know how the colonials spoke? The easy thing is to simply ignore the language issue, but to make an accurate period piece requires some information on their speaking style.
It’s likely they depended on written works from the time. OTOH, in the preface to The Killer Angels, Sharra basically says he made up the way people spoke at that time because otherwise it would be too turgid and sentimental.
Speaking of accents....I'm wondering why Hollywood uses X accent when filiming an English movie set in X country. For example, we just watched 'House of Gucci' and Driver, Lady Gaga, and everyone else speaks English with an Italian accent. They also speak Italian at some points. I never thought much about it before but now I'm wondering - do you have to have any accent if it's not in the native language? Seems weird for some reason....
Does the Italian-American accent add to the authenticity? I dunno. What happens if you play it straight? Sort of like giving Brad Pitt's Achilles an English accent in 'Troy'....
It would probably be worse and make it harder to suspend disbelief. Hearing an American accent when playing an Italian, German, Russian… would likely be really distracting.
I can't agree with that statement. The Adams series made a real effort to be historically accurate. Specific dialogue is always imagined, as nobody was recording the actual conversations, but the Adams series was pretty much based on historical facts. By contrast, Turn took a historical event (American Revolution, and the spies engaged by the Patriots in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, etc.) and pretty much butchered the historical facts to create the drama they wanted to depict.
I always thought it was funny watching any of the Roman movies or I Claudius that they all had British accents.
Which by the way I Claudius is dying for a reboot.
A posh British accent for villains is another go to for Hollywood.
Get unlimited access today.