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May 2005, Week 4

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"Larsson, Donald F" <[log in to unmask]>
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Mon, 23 May 2005 06:25:35 -0500
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Alan Bridges' THE SHOOTING PARTY (1985) is another possibility.  Also see MAYERLING (the 1936 Anatole Litvak version with Charles Boyer is probably a better bet than the 1936 version with Omar Sharif. ) There's a strong sense of that historic disruption in JULES AND JIM, even though it's not a central focus of the film.
 
Don Larsson
-----------------------------------------------
"Only connect!"  --E.M. Forster
Donald F. Larsson
Department of English
Minnesota State University
Mankato, MN  56001
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From: Film and TV Studies Discussion List on behalf of Leo Enticknap
Sent: Sun 5/22/2005 3:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SCREEN-L] Reply: Films dealing with European culture, 1900-1910



William Lingle writes:

>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?

Any of the three major feature films dealing with the Titanic ('Titanic' -
Germany, 1943, dir. Herbert Selpin; 'A Night to Remember' - UK, 1958, dir.
Roy Baker; 'Titanic' - US, 1997, dir. James Cameron) could potentially
qualify, and of them I'd suggest that 'A Night to Remember' comes the
closest to explicitly raising issues around the notion of an 'orderly'
society waiting to be shattered by WWI (the sinking as metaphor).  The Nazi
version does so as well, but in an overtly propagandist way (i.e. the
Titanic sinking showing that those decadent Brits are about to get what's
coming to them in 1943, too).

'Kind Hearts and Coronets' (UK, 1949, dir. Robert Hamer) has been
interpreted by Charles Barr among others as the Edwardian class obsession
and complacency being shattered by a post-WWII notion of meritocracy, a
reading which is reinforced by comparing it to Hamer's other major Ealing
film, 'It Always Rains on Sunday'.

There are also a number of potential Merchant/Ivory candidates, notably
'Howard's End'.  And, as a totally and utterly off-the-wall suggestion, how
about 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines'?

Leo

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