GRAEME

I was watching this superb Richard Lester film yesterday.

Wonderful acting, wry comedy, slapstick violence and an intelligent elegaic poetry about aging and love and myth.

But...

What I noticed for the first time was THE SCOTS ACCENTS!

Robin - Sean Connery
Little John - Nicol Williamson

Ok - Scots. But both perfectly capable of toning down the brogue.

Friar Tuck - Ronnie Barker
Will Scarlet - Denholm Elliott

Not Scots. But there's a definite accent.

Even Marian (Audrey Hepburn) is doing a kinda Irish-ish accent.

The baddies like Robert Shaw and Kenneth Haigh are very English.

So, was this Lester's deliberate policy to distinguish the goodies (Anglo Saxon) from the baddie (Normans)? Codifying the Sherwooders with a single Celtic accent could be a way of distinguishing them from the Others. After all - their accent and dialect would have been very different - but closer, I suspect to West Country burr - than north of the border!

Any thoughts on this? Or on this great movie in general?

All men leak.

wadsy

... and an Irishman( Richard Harris) as the lionhearted King of England!!

christoph404

Its a very good film, agreed, and all filmed in Spain I believe. I think Connery pretty much keeps a Scots accent for every role he has ever played from Russian sub commander to Spanish nobleman (Highlander)

GRAEME

Not as Bond!

But yes, Sean is Sean.

But Williamson's accent is very broad at times in this and Barker and Elliot are just putting it on!

All men leak.

GRAEME

Yeah, but he plays it very English!

Which in the schema of the film seems to put him with the Normans/Baddies. Richard is very morally ambiguous here to say the least.

All men leak.

christoph404

I always thought his accent as Bond was quite Scottish too! maybe its because Im a Scot and I can hear the Edinburgh lilt coming through.

D Cairns

Yeah, Connery always sounds the same. He maybe got a little bit broader as time passed, but his Bond was Scottish.

My theory was that they gave all the Merry Men Scots accents to mesh with Connery's.

In The Wind And the Lion, director John Milius was asked about the wisdom of casting Connery as an Arab. "It's OK, we just assume that whoever taught him to speak English had a Scottish accent!"

Rrrrright.

GRAEME

I disagree about Bond - especially in the early films Connery is at least trying not to sound Scottish. He isn't very good at it which is p[robably why he gave up bothering.

In R&M however all the merry men are clearly Scots accented - even played by actors who were themselves not Scots.

Clever bit of creative directing? Or just forced upon Lester because if your Robin is Scots then you may as well make a virtue out of it?

All men leak.

narabdela

Considering that Bond was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh, it's perfectly acceptable for him to have a trace of a Scottish accent.

christoph404

Connery himself went to Fettes College most mornings......it was on his milk delivery round!