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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