A Sense of History
I've been binging on a lot of thirties films, especially those written and directed by Europeans who came to America for various reasons. (Billy Wilder stated in Conversations With Billy Wilder that some came for the sunshine, or the opportunities, and some, like him, came to escape the gas chambers. Most of his family was killed at Auschwitz.)
Anyway, so many movies made during the thirties convey this strange, glamorous picture of that time. What is your sense of the thirties, whether from books, films, or both? Do you get conflicting impressions, or one uniform one?
This makes me think about a sense of history, how difficult it is to wrap oneself completely in it, even with a lifetime of study. Yet there are those odd moments if you enter a space and see how the light falls differently on the furnishings of the time, perhaps sounds and smells all combine to give you this peculiar feeling that--right then and there--time has vanished between you and then. Liminality. (Or that could just be fancy.)
Anyway, so many movies made during the thirties convey this strange, glamorous picture of that time. What is your sense of the thirties, whether from books, films, or both? Do you get conflicting impressions, or one uniform one?
This makes me think about a sense of history, how difficult it is to wrap oneself completely in it, even with a lifetime of study. Yet there are those odd moments if you enter a space and see how the light falls differently on the furnishings of the time, perhaps sounds and smells all combine to give you this peculiar feeling that--right then and there--time has vanished between you and then. Liminality. (Or that could just be fancy.)