The “Transatlantic Accent” was part of every actor’s standard repertoire in Audrey Hepburn’s time.
Photo: Jon Tyson/unsplash
Howdy from Texas, dear readers,
2023 is almost over and that’s a good thing. Before AI replaces everything I hold dear, I want to look with you at a domain in which Americans dominate the world, without question or dispute, and no, I don’t mean their consumer behavior or the number of confused politicians in the news. I mean the cinema. Everything that guarantees success comes together in the American film industry: talent, technical sophistication and a huge pile of money. Enviable. But there are also bizarre things, otherwise it wouldn’t be the USA.
In Germany, like most non-Americans, I saw American films primarily in dubbed versions; When I arrived in Texas, I watched some classics again in English and almost fell off my chair. Where did these crazy accents come from? At first I thought Audrey Hepburn sounded weird because of her Dutch-British roots. But when I heard Bette Davis and all the other Hollywood stars of the 50s chattering in a bizarre speech, I had to google: “Transatlantic accent” is the name of the silly phenomenon of the first half of the 20th century, in which it was considered chic all in one British-American amalgam to speak. Maybe because real British English was too strenuous? Then I watched “Schindler’s List” and was shocked to discover that all of the actors in this film have artificial accents in the original: Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth speaks English with a wannabe Ösi accent, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern with a quasi-Polish one. I asked friends if this was normal. They asked angrily whether it wasn’t normal not to do it. How else are you supposed to show in film that something isn’t happening in America? By announcing this? Through transfer knowledge? I was at a loss.
Talke talks
News from the Far West: Jana Talke lives in Texas and writes about the American and Americanized way of life.
Unfortunately for me, this confusing film trend refuses to die out. For example, in Ridley Scott’s 2021 Gucci film, all of the actors speak English with a (variably bad) pseudo-Italian accent. They simulate Italian. When the Gucci family emigrated to America, they kept their accents, even though they would no longer have to speak Italian with the Americans, but English. Accents even made it into the dubbing: In the US version, the series “Squid Game” is spoken by dubbed voices with a decidedly Korean pronunciation. I’m afraid this method doesn’t result in other countries being portrayed more authentically, but rather in making stupid Generation Z assume that people all over the world speak bad English to each other instead of their native language. And if you’re wondering what pronunciations historical US films are used in, mostly British English, but not transatlantic!
Let’s now come to the best films of 2023. They are primarily about the battle of the sexes: the films “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”, which were released at the same time and which at first glance have nothing to do with one another, were christened “Barbenheimer” by the audience. There are certain similarities, both films show very American characters and themes from the 20th century with German-Jewish influences. The films are also similar in their discrimination: Christopher Nolan deliberately leaves out female scientists who worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project; Greta Gerwig portrays all men, whether Kens or Mattel employees, as idiots. In “Priscilla,” Sofia Coppola dismantles the American figurehead Elvis by casting one of the most beautiful men in the world and then portraying him as a complete idiot. With “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, gives more humanity to another American superstar, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, who was torn as a gay man but deeply devoted to his wife; Cooper plays him himself, full of sensitivity and chutzpah.
And Martin Scorcese? He does the same thing every few years: takes four hours and lets DeNiro and DiCaprio demonstrate their talents. This also succeeds, and this time especially, because “Killers of the Flower Moon” tells a scandalous, depressing and deeply American story of racism and injustice. You see: no matter how bad the world situation is, sooner or later there will be a good American film about it.
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