Favorite Belle Epoque flims: 1890s-1920

[Chasseur]

I don't think we've had a thread on this before.

In addition to my love of the Golden Age, I also have a soft spot for the 20-30 year period from the 1890s-1920 (or 1914, WWI if you like). What the French term the Belle Epoque, the British the late Victorian/Edwardian, and Americans remember as the Gilded Age from history textbooks.

Any favorite films that are set in this period?

Mine would have to be:

(1) Out of Africa (made me go out and get a double *****, well after about a decade of saving...)

(2) The Illusionist (made me go out have a custom homburg made after Giamatti's one)

(3) The Glory of My Father (made me get into early 20th Century hunting clothes and equipment, well no really, I was interested in them for a long time earlier)

 

[Marc Chevalier]

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Time Regained, by Raoul Ruiz (a Chilean filmmaker). It even had absinthe. Images here:


http://media.photobucket.com/image/IMDB %2522time regained%2522/mkerpan/retrouve/time04.png

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/51/51_images/1proust3people.jpg

http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image09/gabrielle3.jpg


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["Skeet" McD]

I also have a soft spot for the 20-30 year period from the 1890s-1920 (or 1914, WWI if you like)...Any favorite films that are set in this period?

SET in this period, rather than OF this period:
A Room with a View
1918 and Valentine's Day (by Horton Foote, filmed for US TV)
A Night to Remember
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (l'Albero degli Zoccoli by Ermanno Olmi)
Meet Me in St. Louis
Breaker Morant
Gallipoli
The Grey Fox

And, although it misses your start date by a just a few years...for sheer excellence in depicting a whole range of society in detail and accurate to the tiniest detail, as far as I can tell:
Topsy-Turvey
There are surely more, but that's a first harrowing of the brain....

"*****"

 

[Chasseur]

Marc,

Magnifique, a Proust movie in a belle epoque thread, hard to beat. I remember that it came out when I was in France, and I enjoyed watching it. But I haven't seen it since then.

*****,

Some great ones there, in particular Breaker Morant ("We caught them and shot them under rule .303.")

 

[Maguire]

I also liked the Illusionist- this period is appealing because despite all the semblences of modernity on the rise (the suits, the electricty, etc), you still have the deeply traditional and pre modern factors, horse and wagons, stovepipe tophats and of course, the everything you see the austro hungarian aristocrats wearing in the film. It is old enough to have a folkish appeal to it, but modern enough to be recognizeable and comparable to our likes today.

The Prestige was also a good film in this era, although not so much for the costuming for me, as catchy as the costuming was.