Many songs and movies, even though they’re obviously referring to another time and place (usually sometime in the past), just don’t have quite what it takes to make you feel that time or place. Something not quite anachronistic but just otherwise not right will keep you from getting into the desired spirit of the writer’s or director’s vision. Maybe it’s the hair styles, maybe it’s the cars, maybe it’s the home furnishings, maybe it’s the architecture, and on and on.
But then (in other cases) something maybe not even intentional (or at least not obviously so) will transport you almost completely into that other period. Something about the song or movie will make you “go there” emotionally.
I was just listening to the June Christy song Something Cool and was returned to the 50’s or 60’s almost totally. Similar things happen when I hear Glenn Miller music. The best movie example I can think of would be Chinatown. It was made in the 70’s and refers to the 40’s, but it has the feel of the 40’s, as best I can tell. I’m not even sure I could isolate the elements of these things that cause that time transfer. I just know it happens.
Even if the song or movie doesn’t have a strong reference to some other time, are there some that “take you back” almost every time you hear or see them?
There’s probably a better chance you would feel that “spirit of the times” toward something actually produced during the time in question, but even then sometimes it just doesn’t work. Here I’d be thinking more of movies than songs, since the songs that tend to work in the way I’m trying to describe would most likely have come from that older period. I’ll cut the songs a little more slack in that regard.
Whenever I hear Neil Young’s Powderfinger, I am immediately taken to the frontier days, on a river, and shots are fired. I am not quite sure how he did it, but it works.
The lyrics paint a picture, the guitar chords reinforce it.
I will stand firm in the belief that something can be intentionally, grotesquely, absurdly anachronistic and still give the viewer a strong sensation of another time. Moulin Rouge! being Exhibit A. The costumes were “incorrect” (none of the girls should have been wearing underwear, and petticoats weren’t colored), the music, of course, was completely 20-21st century in both tune and style, and the dances, while inspired by some dances of the time, were like nothing that would have been performed back then. But it was all done intentionally to evoke the same sort of exhilarated, out-of-breath excitement and sensory overload that the patrons of the actual Moulin Rouge would have felt. And honky-tonk on a tinny piano to a static line of girls doing high kicks just wouldn’t do that for an audience today.
Whether it succeeds or not is a highly individual reaction, of course. Once I understood it, I loved it, and I feel like I shared the experience of the Moulin Rouge even though I wasn’t even a gleam in my grandfather’s eye at that point!
It’s UNintentional anachronism that bugs the hell out of me and pulls me right out of a movie.
I think WhyNot nailed it. In regards to Moulin Rouge, at least. There are some movies I am just not moved to knitpick the historical correctness of, and this is one of them. The sheer energy of the movie carries it forcefully to 1890s Paris.
North & South (2004, Elizabeth Gaskell novel) captures for me the Industrial Revolution in northern England, and the clash between the north and south. The characters embody so well different aspects of the culture at the time. It probably helps that it’s based on an Elizabeth Gaskell novel, and not, say, one by Sarah Waters, who writes fantastic books, but whose characters still feel very modern. The only aspect of North & South that pulls me away is the kiss at the train station in the end, but that kiss is so phenomenal and amazing that it usually just pulls me along. To be kissed like that. Just sigh.
And, to haul out my old favorite, Master & Commander. Seriously, this movie is the closest we’re ever going to get to a history geek’s wet dream.
The book “Camber of Culdi” by Katherine Kurtz really has the feel of the 800s. Her others books don’t have that feel but that one does. I can just sense the sputtering torches on the wall.
“St. Elmo’s Fire” does it for me, even the music.
I love that movie! It takes me back to fun memories of school and good friends. I still watch these days.
*Badkitty runs upstairs to get the movie out of her room to watch! *
The Thin Man movies always take me back.
Which is funny, because other mysteries of that era, like Charlie Chan, or the Basil Rathbone Sherlocks, seem to be happening in the present.
I think Gather The Horses by Charlie Mars really evokes the feel of the “wild west” frontier wars, despite the song being a metaphor. You don’t need to take my word for it, though click this link and the song ought to start immediately for you.
Most of the movies Cameron Crowe wrote/directed are very much of their time. Not only that, but they often cover a very short time period. Any of these captures the mood of its year precisely and almost perfectly :
Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982) Say Anything … (1988) Singles (1992) Jerry Maguire (1996) (this was just a tiny bit ahead of its time, IMHO)
I haven’t seen it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Elizabethtown does the same for 2005.
…Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Fantastic opening montage that sets the scene and pulls the viewer back in time…images of workman guiding girders high above New York’s Skyscrapers, people queueing for soup at the soup kitchen, protests and illegal alcohol stills, all to the tune of Al Jolson’s “I’m sitting, on top of the world…”
Another vote for this one. It was right on the mark.
Also, I felt Gangs of New York had the feel of another time. The dirtiness and ignorance seems as I would expect it to be.
The song Greensleeves to me very much has a feel for a time of wandering minstrels and courtly love.
Orwell’s works in general, long and short, are good at transporting me. Poke around the site I linked to for a very good and complete collection of his (now public domain) work. (Yes, Nineteen Eighty-Four does transport me as well. But Down and Out is more about real life, as it is based quite closely on Orwell’s real experiences (I’m fairly sure), so it is more effective for me. It is also a deserving work unfairly ignored.)
