A Sense of History

[sartorias]

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

Comments

[mrissa]

That's funny, because my sense of the thirties is very grimy and dusty. Full of locusts and people selling beans and apples that other people would love to be able to afford. In Europe, wheelbarrows full of cash that bought you no bread. I never even think of movie glamour with the thirties! But of course it was major escapism from more than one thing.

[kalimac]

Yes. In the 30s you could buy no bread because you had no cash. The "wheelbarrows of cash" hyperinflation was specifically Germany, and a few other countries (Austria, Hungary, Poland), in 1922-23.

[sartorias]

Dust bowl, yes. I probably should have narrowed that to American perceptions of Europe.

[heleninwales]

It's not so much that I have conflicting impressions, it's that I have a sense that life was very different for the haves and have nots in the 30s. My only knowledge of the glamorous 30s comes from films and TV documentaries about the upper classes. My father, however, tells a completely different story of growing up working class at a time when if you were out of work, life was grim.

[sartorias]

Oh, yes. And who paid attention to the have nots, outside of the rare Studs Terkels?

[birdsedge]

Agreed. My images of the thirties come from family snapshots. My mum playing on the back step of the one-up-one down terraced house in a little grey pit-village in Yorkshire; my uncle Sam on his allotment growing vegetables for the pot; my Uncle Willie with his horse and cart (he'd do any job involving horses and wheels from house-moves to funerals); my Great Uncle Tom's wedding with everyone trying their best to look smart and serious; my mum's one school photo of herself at the High School where she went after passing the scholarship exam. Nothing in colour, of course, so the thirties were in black and white as far as I'm concerned. Glam? Not so much.

[sartorias]

Yeah, same with my grandmother's stories (pulled out of school to work full time at age twelve as a drudge for a dollar a week) but my question is really about how the younger generation--those growing up or hitting adulthood now--gain an impression of that time through what media is available.

[sartorias]

Parades--yes.

I should have narrowed it to American perceptions of Europe (here we had Depression and Dust Bowl) but it's interesting seeing these different answers.

[kalimac]

I once browsed through a book of fashion illustrations. One section collected illos from the 1920s, and the next from the 1930s.

One thing that struck me was that not only were the clothes totally different (hemlines went way down is just the most obvious one), but so was the shape of the drawn model's body. We all know that all women are expected to look like fashion models: well, the woman who in the 1920s was thin and willowy suddenly in the 1930s became more solid and chunkier.

[sartorias]

Well, the long, lean line was very much in evidence in the thirties (think Art Deco) but yes, not as wispy as the twenties.

[sollersuk]

My sense of the thirties mostly comes from my mother, who was 17 in 1930 and in the following years clearly had a lot of fun: her own car and a succession of boyfriends, plus a large circle of friends (she was a teacher in Swansea at the time). The best, or worst, story is probably coming back in a carful from a party in Gower and most of the car going past a piece of water known as the Coffin Pond - according to her, a good part of two wheels went over the pond, not past it

[sartorias]

Wow! Close call, eh?

[sollersuk]

I can give you a closer one: in the 1940s she was also out at a party in Gower... the night Swansea was bombed. She said it was the only time during the war when it was easy driving after dark (only thin slits of light allowed for headlights) because of the light of Swansea burning.

[sartorias]

WOW.

*shiver*