“Way of the Gun” was set in modern times (Being the 1990s at the time), but the colors of the film, the clothing worn, the settings, and the overall dusty feel of the movie made it feel like a gritty 1940-50s pulp story.
Sin City has a 40’s/50’s “noir” feel, but takes place in the present.
Most “Spy vs. Spy” films, to me, have a 70s feel - Bourne Identity being one of them. Assasins, the Stallone/Banderas/Moore flick had that vibe too. Still very Cold War-y
Curiously, the latest Mission Impossible and Charlie’s Angels revivals didn’t.
The Wolf Man was actually set in Wales, not England. And some early scenes in *Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man * were explicitly set in Cardiff.
Well, Wales was an island in that pond, you see!
Thanks for the clarification- in all my years of classic monster movie-watching, I never caught that.
Dark City, The Incredibles and The Matrix all cultivate a purposeful air of “Retro Modernism,” if you will, with cars, weapons, clothes and interior design that draw from the best of various eras from the 1930s on, even though each is set in “the present.”
I suspect a long list could be made of neo-noir films that evoke a distinct 1940s vibe. For starters, how about Body Heat (1981); Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me (1984); and Hustle (1975), starring Burt Reynolds.
…although perhaps those films are evoking a 1940s movie vibe rather than an actual 1940s vibe.
Brazil was a 1950s vision of the future gone wrong.