"so that it could be translated into English"

Film Something which has always slightly annoyed me about some film criticism is when what's quite obviously a choice by the film maker is assumed to be a failure due to perhaps their nationality, age or gender not fitting their vision of the material. Nicholas Roeg recounts a typical example of this from when he worked as cinematographer on Truffaut's Farenheit 451:
"I remember there was a lot of criticism of Fahrenheit to do with François’ knowledge of English. The critics complained that it was so stilted. But that had all been quite deliberate. He hadn’t even wanted to place it as an English film, or to suggest that the language was necessarily English. The script was written first in French, deliberately, so that it could be translated into English, then translated back into French, because he wanted to lose the English idiom completely, then finally translated back into English. He wanted it set- and I thought this was a marvellously futuristic idea – in a time when people had lost the use of language. After all, the whole premise of the film was to do with losing a literary background. And that was completely missed by the critics."
If only Roeg had worked on M Night's The Happening so that he could later explain what was going on with the script, the acting and the direction in that film.  "Central Park?  That's odd."

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