papeetepatrick

Yes, Sweden, I'm quite sure. Ann-Margret Olsson. Yes, and I can't personally dislike his Godfather either, although Farrell Fan has told of some of his growing up in East Harlem, so may know more about what the accent should be. It is interesting, though, that most who have posted have not thought his ear for any accents was exemplary, and this goes along with what Bart and I were talking about musical ear--all you have to do is watch "Guys and Dolls" to see he's not that musical, whether or not he's dubbed. Although that movie is musically terrible except for Sinatra, and Jean Simmons (or her dubber) doesn't sing well either. So Brando and Simmons get either the Unmusical Award or the Bad Musical Pantomime Award. Putting Sinatra in that made them both look pretty bad.

I can see that point of view as very viable, but Leigh's mention of the familiarity of the soundtrack--to which I'd definitely add Willie Nelson's 'He Was A Friend of Mine' over the closing credits, and I remember this vividly as totally integral and indispensable to the emotional impact of the film, although I've only seen it once right when it came out in late 2005--strikes me as very important. It may be whether one wants to see something universal in this, I don't really, but rather am interested in the particular here, which is cowboys in the Rocky Mountains, and I want country/western music with it. I like opera and cowboys both a great deal, but I don't think they usually have that much in common But who knows, maybe Jack will learn how to play the piano as well as eat truffle sauces when he marries the rich man's daughter....

Oh yes, I adore this, if it's the one with Julie Rose as Clara--she's delightful.

Because everybody wants to be upper-class English, therefore the enthusiasm for more practice is greater even though one is still Wallis Simpson underneath. Unless you consider Elizabeth Taylor British as well as American (I'm not sure whether she ever decided, changing citizenships at one point, which was not as interesting as she thought....) Of course, it's still not subtle, and always a relative to what she imagines Scarlett O'Hara to be had she but been young enough, but she's even better in "Reflections in a Golden Eye" than "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." I watched "Reflections" the other night, and Brando is none too wonderful with his Southern accent, but Liz is just dandy as a Daddy's girl nympho. But more subtly, there is one I can think of which is very good: Miranda Richardson in Robert Duvall's "The Apostle". She really gets the little lower-middle-class housewife from the sticks down perfectly--and that's technique at work, because she was also amazing in "Dance with a Stranger" with lower-class British accents. I wonder what Cristian thinks of Al Pacino in 'Scarface' (or anyone.)

I vote for nobody and thinks it's a boring idea, like a sequel to or remake of a film that doesn't need one. It's the movie, not the story, that most people know and will be seeing as adapted, and it frankly sounds like an obvious kind of choice but superficial and embarassing, unlike 'Elmer Gantry', which I've not yet heard (and is the only one of these kinds of things that has sounded to me promising). But I did finally get around to a DVD of Britten's 'Death in Venice' the other night, and could bear about half of it. Britten is one of my absolute favourite composers, so I had to hate this to abort it--but the Aschenbach was made not to seem just old and having missed good sex--but unnecessarily bald and overly plain; as well, the young dancers who did Tadziu and his friends just looked ridiculous rolling around and lolling about mostly clumsily. I then read that they had made sure that Britten (and perhaps librettist Myfanwy Piper) not see the Visconti film with Dirk Bogarde and Bjorn Andresen, although that could only have helped; because, for all the critical dismissal of the film, it holds the secret to what Aschenbach is really looking for, i.e., it puts the power in Tadziu's hands, not Aschenbach's, which is the only way to make the impossible infatuation work toward its tragic end. To watch Robert Tear sing endlessly with the hotel staff (all that 'Signore! Signore!) and the various queens, many of whom are made to seem like 60s 'vintage body mags' is pretty pale after the intensity of Dirk Bogarde, is to watch something drab and untheatrical. Bogarde was easily conceivable as someone Tadziu might be inspired to tease and flirt with, but Tear is not. As well, Paul Zeplichal as Tadziu is not even alluring as dressed in this Glyndebourne Touring Opera production, looking not inaccessible but more like a Caravaggio type and already slightly fat. I couldn't believe how dreary it was; but it has made me understand more than ever that an opera is by now harder to really sell than any other art form. I haven't yet seen nor heard Previn/Fleming 'Streetcar Named Desire', which I'm equally prejudiced toward. Some of these obvious choices for opera are, I think, done because they will still seem accessible even if the transition is not smooth at all, because even it doesn't work, the basic material is familiar enough to have something to hold onto. And in this last case, one could glory in Renee Fleming's voice, even if I can't imagine a less credible actress for Blanche Dubois.

Agree, one of the most horrible things I've ever seen, but I'm only talking about the 45 minutes I kept it on. I'm sltightly annoyed to learn of this, because now I feel the need to see it--because you've no idea how hard a time I have imagining it. Another arms waving all around the keyboard is Ingrid Bergman in 'Intermezzo'. But it never seems to be as offensive in the old things. Best is when real pianists are used for the playing parts as in 'merci pour le chocolat', 'the piano teacher', and 'un coeur en hiver' (which is beautiful, and in the period when Beart and Auteuil, one of my favourite actors, were married) Would agree about 'The Piano', but didn't care too much because the sound of the music itself was torture enough. Now THAT definitely belongs in the Overrated Movies, and I think I saw it there.

It is not only just the well-trained American stage actors who can do the British accents. I couldn't remember some of them last night, but they're coming back to me now. Ann-Margret is marvelous as Lady Booby in Joseph Andrews and I can find nothing off in her accent on a recent 2nd viewing, given that we may not know exactly what 18th century English accents sounded like. She did imitate Edith Evans's Lady Bracknell's rolled French r's as part of her upper-class parvenu's privilege. She was also very much at home with Glanda Jackson and Julie Christie and Alan Bates in 'Return of the Soldier.' She is musical, and that has a lot to do with ability to do accents. But what's also interesting is that English actors can often be in American films without their necessarily having to be an English character or even get rid of the accent. Cary Grant is not quite purely American, and Deborah Kerr is definitely not, but it also never really seems as if they should try that hard to sound it, because the films were not all that regional nor local for the most part, I think. Vanessa Redgrave did need to work to get Isadora's California accent right by that time, and she did. Another early example of the accent not mattering was Charles Boyer, who could be in anything without having to suppress his French accent. I'm not sure what Gilbert Roland was supposed to be sounding like as the Cisko Kid, but it can't have mattered too much, what with all those gang-songs on the horses. Another American master of accents, including British, is Julie Harris. It does always that 'Julie Harris sound', but I always get used to it after awhile. But there are old Hallmark Hall of Fame shows where she did Queen Victoria, etc., and she's just never sloppy with such things.

Yes, Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey and Audra MacDonald among others.

Of course, but at least that went with the rest of the mess. I just remembered a TV movie bio of Rosemary Clooney with Sondra Locke, who was even more horrible than usual--coarse, vulgar and a total sell-out--since she'd started off very promisingly in 'the Heart is a Lonely Hunter' before her dreadful onscreen collaboration with Clint Eastwood.

Yes, those are strange, and very solemn, I'd venture to guess. Inner sanctums always hypnotize.

That is most interesting and elucidates much. Thanks.

Arlington, where I've spent some time, does have, like Washington, plenty of Southern accents in it (believe me, I was surprised), even though there are more cosmopolitan ones there. I was last in New Orleans in 2005 and there were accents there that sound much as they do throughout the Deep South, although not Cajun. I know what you mean about a 'generic Southern accent', it's just that this usually is surprisingly applicable for a film that was based on an off-Broadway play in any case. Gregory Peck in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' had little beyond a superficial bit of basic upper-class Southern (and that wouldn't even really be appropriate for Harper Lee's small town.) Christopher Reeve played an aristocratic Southerner in 'The Bostonians' and his accent was much more like George Wallace or some used-car salesman. But what Ashley said is something that's very meaningful anyway, because Joanne Woodward has done all sorts of Southern accents, and she has one of the best ears of all. She can do Arkansas, she can do Georgia, Mississippi, and you can hear the differences. Surprisingly, Lee Remick was able to do some good Southern accents even though she was from Springfield, Mass. Texas accents definitely also differ from Deep South ones, and especially Dallas ones, because there is desire to be like New York there, and one of the Dallasite accents is very peculiar, they use the Northern 'long I' in a way that it sticks out from the rest of the speech. Then nowadays there are actors from the South like Julianne Moore who I have never heard use a recognizable Southern accent. But Ann-Margret and Angie Dickinson can both do good ones (the latter being especially unexpected, and I think she only does it once.) Sally Field also very good with the Southern accent in 'Norma Rae', as was Sissy Spacek in literally anything (but she's from Texas and lives there most of the time anyway. I'd say Spacek has a terrific ear, and her accent for 'Coal Miner's Daughter' was very impressive.)

British actors have more technique. Vanessa could always do fine American accents of various kinds, as in 'Isadora' and Italian-American in 'Orpheus Descending'. I can't think of any Americans even able to do the posh talk that well, but the Australian Coral Browne could do it as well as Penelope Keith and Edith Evans, except nobody has ever equalled Edith Evans in anything! She and Joan Greenwood are the greatest mother and daughter pair in history, I watched 'importance of Being Earnest' again the other day, and I love it more every time.

How is an American in Britain foreign?

I'd been thinking of that one too, but recalled how surprised that Shirley MacLaine's was good. She's from Richmond, and there is plenty of Southern that she would have grown up with, although most of it was gotten rid of by the time she was in movies.

What's Anne Bancroft tin-eared in? I don't remember her doing British, but I haven't seen all of them. Thought that movie 14 Charing Cross Road was awful, but I think she was American in it.

Clever post, miliosr. Keith Carradine in 'The Bachelor'--failure to achieve British accent. Julia Roberts in 'Michael Collins'--failure to achieve Irish accent. Jessica Lange in one of the versions of 'Streetcar Named Desire'--failure to achieve Southern accent, or just continued to project Midwesternness, in any case. Lee Remick as Kay Somersby in TV movie of 'Ike'--failure to achieve British accent. In the old days, standards weren't nearly so strict. One of the light Garbo romances has her as an Italian opera singer and she uses her more 'European accent' for that. For American roles, she just tones that down, and it's all just fine, she never hits a false note. Edited to add: That light romance is 'Romance.'

For where, if I may ask? I'm just wondering if she went in pursuit of ballet or some other art, or if she just gave all that up. I was going to let the more knowledgeable about her answer this, but they probably didn't see it. In fact, it was on BT that I recall someone writing that she lived in Connecticut, but that's all I know. This bumps it up so somebody else can answer.

There's not necessarily a disconnect between the ideas and the dance works, but rather a disconnect between the verbal statements in any literal sense. That's the obvious place, and it's not fault-finding, but rather that it would be impossible to do a perfect verbal reflection. Those are secondary, and they are the privilege of someone who has achieved something important in a domain which is, as kfw says, an entirely different form. They could even be said to be 'dancer-words', which like 'musician-words' are not the purest form of words in terms of comprehensibility and clarity as would be those of a writer (any more than a musician's or writer's movements would be the pure form of dance, but they'd still reflect the style and being of the writer and/or musician and reflect those more concentrated identities.) Even if he wasn't trying to do this, that is what the statements do, stemming as they do from his real authority as a ballet artist. This happens quite as much with the ones I dislike (the Lehar/Beethoven, which has a toffee-nosed sound to it, but still forces you to make a decision about Beethoven--which Balanchine obviously knows is the serious issue more then Lehar) as the ones I do, such as this one about classicism, which makes you look at the pros and cons of the personal and impersonal (you can't really arrive anywhere, because both of them persist no matter what one 'likes.') Kfw's idea of theology flowing into the 'World of Art', as I had termed it, would naturally do so, of course, but the subsuming is only the matter of the material: The material in Balanchine's case is Dance. Therefore, even if it theologically informed, it is always compared to other dance and other art, not other theology; in the same way that his verbal statements can be profoundly philosophical, but they are not compared to Nietzsche or Spinoza, but rather more likely to things that would be said by Picasso, Graham, Stravinsky, etc.

I think so too, but no one ever says that part; it won't work if you verbalize it, because doesn't sound lofty. Or maybe he didn't know he thought of himself as 'the Father', but rather thought God was. But since, as you say, practical considerations demand to be attended to, he was formulating the best combination of theology-ideology and praxis that could have been found for his project. So he just went about whatever it was he was doing and saying, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't all hold together if one tries to dissect it too closely. His remarks sound profound and philosophical sometimes, but they don't seem as profound as the works--not by a long shot. In fact, the disconnect is interesting.

That's so Romantic...and Personal

Agree that's a good point, especially like 'God assembles, man creates', which I find is one of the remarks these days I find myself increasingly attracted to. I first saw it in a cookbook by one of his former dancers! I don't believe it all the time, but I do know what it means some of the time. Edited to add: I obviously don't understand it all the time: It's 'Man assembles, God creates' or these two in reverse order.

I hadn't been specific, but when I was talking about his kind of statement (which is not exclusively theological nor religious in any case), I was pointing to a kind of faith in beliefs of some sacred kind when talking about how they were necessary to protect a domain that is considered sacred. Theology would therefore explain why certain of his remarks were developed into such forms they took. But to assess them objectively, they have to be placed next to the opposing aesthetics, because the realm is first ART, and if religion and theology play a major part (as they obviously did with Balanchine), they are still necessarily subsumed to the World of Art in a way that is not the case with the church itself and singularly religious pursuits as with convents, monasteries, etc. That's why they are equally meaningful and powerful even if not literally factual--which they are not, because classicism is not the only thing to either endure nor is it nearly always impersonal. Is 'Le Nozze di Figaro' classical? I think so. So that it may also be possible that classicism has to mean something that applies to all arts, or at least all the very related ones, surely music and opera and theater, to mean anything. To make a universal assumption on classical ballet alone or classical music alone is much too circumscribed, and probably nobody has ever even tried to do it; whereas classicism in music and dance can have some resonance.

I think most of Balanchine's quotes, varied and many, are about his own work. Surely this 'home of classic ballet now in Ameica' is his work being talked about. Similarly, nad more egregiously (because the previous may have been the case for a period of decades anyway), when he talks about 'between Lehar and Beethoven, I prefer Lehar, he is more interesting, less boring', he is talking about how Lehar is more suitable for his purposes as a choreographer. Only the most die-hard fans, with little interest in musical content as a thing in itself, would take it as a serious criticism of Beethoven. In fact, the more I hear of some of his quips, the less impressed I am--his wisdom displays itself considerably more in his metier, which is not letters. And this remark about America as home to classical ballet would not resonate very much based on the Peter Martins NYCB--especially for those of us who just saw the Kirov, nevermind that we saw it in America.

Yes, and it's now too late for me to go back and change my first sentence--obviously I do take such remarks seriously, just not literally, for the reasons outlined. They are important and serious because they demarcate and protect, but the 'endure' part is not literal in either the sense that nothing else endured in quite the same way (enduring is enough in itself, and this other styles and sensibilities did also last), and also that the 'impersonality' may not be the only reason why classicism does endure. I had mentioned the aim toward being godlike, and this is inevitable; it is peculiarly human to strive for--and achieve--the godlike. But there is always the less advantageous side to the 'impersonal eternal' of the gods, which is what the Ring Cycle is all about, with Wotan at the center of the decision-making process, having built Valhalla on corrupt 'funding', having to defer to Fricka because her defense of marriage is stronger than the products of his lechery and adultery, viz., the Volsung Siegmund; followed by Brunnhilde's inability, even as instrument of his will, to carry it out when it comes to destroying all love just because 'Fricka is right' about the uncleanness of Siegmund's and Sieglinde's incest, i.e., she won't kill Siegmund just because it worked within the laws of the all-too-human greedy gods. It is interesting that this towering epic, much like the Bible in its ambitions, has at its core the limitations of gold. So that the divide is always there, as you point out, and it needs to be. And those on either side of the divide must cultivate their art by opposing the other side--this is not a matter of fairness and being democratic about someone else's work when you are in the hot places of actually creating it. What occurred to me when kfw first brought up Balanchine/Kirstein and Graham was ways this divide has presented itself in music in the 20th century, not yet far back enough in time for it to seem as clear as when we look all the way back to the 19th century. When the high modernists like Boulez and Stockhausen were at their hottest, their evolution from the Viennese School seemed to be the only thing worth talking about in the 50s and 60s, it was the vanguard. I've recently been getting familiar with large amounts of Britten and Michael Tippett and, when I hear it with no received wisdom (or have minimized it as much as possible), I cannot find it to be less important music. But these great British composers were not using the techniques of the high serial composers, it went along in its own mostly separate tradition. By contrast, some of it like Britten's 'Spring Symphony' and Tippett's 'Midsummer Marriage' and Piano Concerto, are very romantic by comparison to the severe and impersonal serialism in Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre as well as all of his piano sonatas. I've even played the Second Sonata of Boulez in public. But even that familiarity was as nothing to when I heard Tippett's concerto: There was a cerebral excitement to the more severe music, but it is never enough to sustain one. When I worked on the Boulez, I enjoyed only playing it, but I never wanted to listen to it; but in the last 3 weeks I've listened to the Tippett concerto perhaps 12 times....these are just some related thoughts about the dialectic of personal/impersonal, classical/romantic. Definitely agree with Hans on this, which again bolsters my contention that statements like this are not so much literal, but are very important for buttressing and fortifying the battlements of a school.