linguistic movie moments

[Marie-Lucie Tarpent]

Hi,

This may be a little old, but in Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid there are wonderful moments when they
struggle with the Spanish language, which they need in
order to flee to Mexico.  Once there they manage to rob
a bank with their obviously limited Spanish, but these
limits become painfully obvious when they encounter
real Mexican bandidos.  A great excuse for linguists to
see this classic again.

On a different and opposite note, also much older, many
years ago i saw The 25th Hour, a movie about Europe in
the turmoil and aftermath of WWII.  The main character,
a simple man who is uprooted by the war and thrown
about by circumstances totally beyond his control, gave
me the impression of being almost an idiot.  I was
quite young when i saw this film and later realized
that this impression was given because there should
have been 5 or 6 languages spoken in this film, and of
course the hero, played by Anthony Quinn, could not
understand them, but since the same language (with
varied accents, but all understandable) was spoken by
all the characters in the film, it did not make sense
that he, unlike the audience, could not understand what
was being said.  An object lesson in how to gloss over
language difficulties.

Marie-Lucie Tarpent
Mount Saint Vincent University
Halifax, N.S.  Canada