Skip to main content

V-necks, cobbles and bunting: why British film is stuck in the 1940s

This week’s new release, The Bookshop, is the latest in a glut of nostalgic movies centred on Britain in the period in and around the second world war

From today, you can pop into The Bookshop, a new period drama adaptation of the Penelope Fitzgerald novel. While you are browsing, you can get to know a courageous widow (Emily Mortimer), a melancholy recluse (Bill Nighy) and a snobbish busybody (Patricia Clarkson), all of whom live in a coastal town in 1959. The only snag is that you may feel as if you have visited this particular shop already. You may get a frisson of deja vu from the china teacups and the crystal champagne glasses; the ankle-length skirts and the three-piece suits; the cobbled streets and the unspoilt woods; and all the other signs that the UK film industry’s latest obsession is Britain as it was a few decades ago.

British films have always idealised our great nation’s glorious past, of course, especially when that past is embodied by Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, Mr Darcy, or Helena Bonham Carter wearing a bustle, but never before have so many films, released over such a short time, targeted such a specific period of our history: the outer rings are the 1920s to the 1960s, and the 1940s are the bullseye.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2KssQ8e
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knives Out review – Daniel Craig goes Columbo in Cluedo whodunnit

Craig grills an all-star lineup of suspects when a wealthy novelist is found dead in Rian Johnson’s sharp, country-house murder mystery R ian Johnson unsheathes an entertainingly nasty, if insubstantial detective mystery with his new film, Knives Out. Back in 2005, his debut movie Brick (a high-school thriller) paid tribute to the hardboiled noir genre. Now he does the same thing for cosy crime, although there is nothing that cosy about it. Knives Out has a country house full of frowning suspects, deadpan servants and smirking ne’er-do-wells and an amusing performance from Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc, the brilliant amateur sleuth from Louisiana who annoys the hell out of one and all by smiling enigmatically, occasionally plinking a jarring high note on the piano during the drawing-room interrogation and pronouncing in his southern burr: “Ah suh-spect far-wuhl play!” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L0NKO4
Post a Comment
Read more

Thirty Years of Adonis film review: sexually explicit gay drama mixes porn and pomposity

1/5 stars The line between soft-core porn and pompous art-house cinema grows ever finer in the seventh feature by writer, director and producer Danny Cheng Wan-cheung, also known as Scud. Intended as a philosophical statement about the meaninglessness of life, Thirty Years of Adonis instead comes across as a badly misjudged piece of sensationalist filmmaking. God’s Own Country review: gay love story set in the Yorkshire countryside The film revolves around aspiring gay actor Adonis Yang... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2qgQkop
Post a Comment
Read more

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more