A film that fits most of the criteria is Olivier Assayas' Les Destinees 
sentimentales.  It's set in France from 1900 to 1929, is not a war film and 
is mainly about the cultural/political changes of the time though in 
specific rather than abstract terms.  Actually in a way it is vaguely 
similar to Remains of the Day but perhaps a bit more like the novel than 
the resulting film.  Plus it's easily available on DVD.

I also can't help mentioning Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of 
Extraordinary Gentlemen, the comic not the terrible movie.  Though it's set 
a smidgen earlier it is--among so many other things--an explict critique of 
Victorian imperial thinking though it's also a Manny-Farber-esque tribute 
to some of the resulting culture.


Lang Thompson


>A colleague is looking for a film to show that captures the hubris of 
>European culture in the first decade of the 20th century, just before 
>World War I -- the idea that everything had been invented, the world was 
>an orderly place divided up among the imperial powers, that culture had 
>reached its zenith.  Ophuls' La Ronde has been suggested, but I think 
>there might be a better one, perhaps set in France or Britain rather than 
>Vienna. She doesn't want a war film, so La Grande Illusion, All Quiet, The 
>Big Parade, Paths of Glory et al won't work.  A film like The Remains of 
>the Day, set pre-World War I, might work, but even that might be too 
>explicitly war linked.  Any suggestions?




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