Film then and now

[sartorias]

Ein Stern fällt vom Himmel (A Star Falls from Heaven), featuring the magnificent tenor voice of Joseph Schmidt, was made in 1934. Even though the quality of the restored film was jerky in places, and the sound typical of the time, The Bel Canto Society did their best

Comments

[oursin]

Ins't Tea with Mussolini delightful? I had never heard of it but spotted a DVD in a local charity shop, and the cast pretty much sold me on it.

[sartorias]

I just loved it. Maggie Smith plays the stuffy old trout so beautifully, and Lily Tomlin was terrific.

[paragraphs]

I must watch this Tea With Mussolini!

Still SO loving your LHIND THE THIEF and if anyone here hasn't read it yet, DO! You must do!

edited because I got excited there....

[sartorias]

Heh--thanks!

[anna_wing]

What sort of details?

[sartorias]

Like the fact that the attractive people in the modern film have all the right clothes, but their bodies are thin and muscle-tight. 'Thin' was in among the upper classes, but women had thin arms and legs, no muscle tone. In the German film, the girls don't wear pointy bras, they jiggle all over, their leotards are obviously made of wool, and everyone's body language is oriented toward Vaudevillian state presence, not toward the mics-everywhere, big sets of today. Teeth are normal, not whitely perfect as in today. That kind of detail.

[anna_wing]

How interesting. And this is from a film that was presumably trying hard to be authentic in details, rather than the traditional practice in old Hollywood films (and traditional to the stage too) of basically putting people into "costume" (very) vaguely reminiscent of the period.

I suppose it is like the difference between reading an old novel that was contemporary to the period it was written, and a novel written later than the period in which it is set. The contemporary novel always has different emphases on things than the one that was about the period but written later. It's why I enjoy reading Golden Age murder mysteries. They are as good as science fiction in the amount of interesting social detail that is just casually mentioned as part of normal background setting, and in the kinds of motivation that would have been plausible in context (like killing someone to prevent it coming out that the murderer's parents weren't married).

[sartorias]

Yes, and yes!