A little effort to speak the language can buy a whole lot of goodwill in Italy. In most big cities and heavily touristed areas in Italy, hotel and restaurant staff, shopkeepers, and museum attendants ...

As indicated by the hodgepodge of attempted dialects in “House of Gucci,” Nicolas Cage’s strangely nasal intonations in “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin,” and Chris Pratt’s misguided voiceover in “The ...