Klonor
22-04-2006, 20:56
Well, I'm watching The Godfather: Part II and, for those wo don't know, Robert DeNiro is fantabulous. DeNiro, who plays Vito Corleone in his young adulthood, is amazing because almost all is dialogue is in Italian. There's hardly any spoken English, except for the odd word or sentence here and there, and he doesn't even speak Italian in real life. I don't speak Italian either, so I'm getting all my dialogue from the subtitles, but the flashbacks are still my favorite part of the movie. However, I'm wondering how Sicilians like his performance.
I was reading some information on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon yesterday and, as with The Godfather, most of the lead actors are not native Mandarin speakers, despite the fact that all the dialogue is in Mandarin. Though the actors read all the lines themselves, with no dubbing by native speakers, their accents were quite pronounced and actual Mandarin speakers had to read the subtitles in order to follow what was being said. That got me wondering about other such foreign language films, and now I'm making this thread.
Was DeNiro's accent authentic, or at least understandable, or do actual Sicilians find it as shockingly different from their native speaking as I find English from overseas (I might be able to understand it, but British English sure as hell doesn't sound like the speaker is from New York).
I was reading some information on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon yesterday and, as with The Godfather, most of the lead actors are not native Mandarin speakers, despite the fact that all the dialogue is in Mandarin. Though the actors read all the lines themselves, with no dubbing by native speakers, their accents were quite pronounced and actual Mandarin speakers had to read the subtitles in order to follow what was being said. That got me wondering about other such foreign language films, and now I'm making this thread.
Was DeNiro's accent authentic, or at least understandable, or do actual Sicilians find it as shockingly different from their native speaking as I find English from overseas (I might be able to understand it, but British English sure as hell doesn't sound like the speaker is from New York).