I always find it interesting when I hear people say a specific date in a film now many decades old.
For instance, in the original Cape Fear (1962), Gregory Peck's daughter asks him when they'll be able to afford a big cabin cruiser such as the one she sees on the river, and he replies, "It's on our fiscal program for the year 1980."
In the Powell/Pressburger film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), a bunch of young soldiers in a war game in England decide to start the "war" early and capture the elderly commanding officers of the Home Guard -- as a lesson against thinking about this war as some chivalrous affair of honor and rules. When they capture the men, the film's elderly general sputters that he's spent 40 years in the Army, and that the young officer who's captured them is an upstart. The younger man replies insultingly, and after repeating the general's line about all he's done in 40 years, says, "But in 1983, I'll be able to look back and say, 'I was a fellow of enterprise.'"
Even in the 1955 sci-fi flick Tarantula, scientist Leo G. Carroll, in explaining the food shortages expected as the world's population grows, tells John Agar that there are 2 billion people in the world today, then proceeds to give (very inaccurate, low-ball estimates) of the world's anticipated population, first in 1975, then in "the year 2000". "Not many of us look that far ahead, professor," says Agar. It's cool, today.
What's the old song? "Where Did the Twentieth Century Go?"
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schappe1
12 years ago
The 1941 film has hero whow as fated to die on a certain day in 1991 but by mistake dies to early and is given the life of another to compensate for it. AMC or TCM broadcast the film on that day in 1991 and I watched it then without realizing why it was being shown then. It gave me a start when Robert Montomgery, (who missed living that long by a decade), is told that was when he was supposed to die and I realized it was today's date!
The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are privileged to witness
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hobnob53
12 years ago
He was meant to die on the morning of May 11, 1991 -- a Saturday. I noted it at the time, too, and even mentioned it to a couple of people that morning! But if I recall -- and I have no idea why I remember this -- the film was shown a few days earlier, not on the day itself. I remember because I thought they had made a huge mistake in not running it on the exact date.
I think it was run on AMC, but it couldn't have been TCM, which didn't go on the air until 1995.
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pouncemo
11 years ago
Did TCM really not come on the air until 1995? I thought it was much older than that.
Anyway, I think about these things having to do with the passage of time a lot too. I always thought it was just me; good to know I'm not alone.
I wonder if film has a way of making you think about time. For me, it might be that many, if not most, of the color movies don't seem that long ago. You go along watching as if it was a few years ago at most. Then you are jolted into the realization of just how much time has gone by and how old the actors are by now.
Black and white films "feel" old and I don't think the same time head warp happens, at least for me.
Also, pre-tech age, the phones and gadgets didn't look that different from what we were using. Up until computers and cell phones. As mentioned above, the cell phone in "Wall Street" is an accordion and dates the film.
I love how great homes used in film are quite timeless. The ones that come to mind are the farm house in Christmas in Connecticut, Bing's home in Holiday Inn, the ranch hacienda in the 1961 Parent Trap, and the Frank Lloyd Wright in A Summer Place. I'd feel like I died and went to heaven in any one of those great homes.
So here's the time warp I remember from a movie. In "Send Me No Flowers", Rock is buying cemetery plots and Paul Lynde tells him there are plans for a state highway to go right through "Green Hills". But he says it isn't definite and not until 1980. Then they discuss whether Rock would want to be moved or buried deeper under the freeway. Rock says "whatever the others do, I'll go along with them." A perfect line actually for the conformity of the times.
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hobnob53
11 years ago
I understand where you're coming from.
I'm a big fan of black & white, and hate things like colorization, but I agree, most color films "seem" newer -- just because they're in color, like everything these days.
Gadgets seems more dated to me if they're immediate ancestors of things we're using today than if they're items long out of date. Your example of the Wall Street cell phone is a perfect one. On the other hand, if I see a movie from the 30s and they're using the old "candlestick" phone, that doesn't seem dated to me at all because it's what you'd expect to see for the period.
But great houses seldom go out of true style. The house in A Summer Place looks as timelessly lovely now as it did in 1959 (though perhaps not quite so unique). Same with the Frank Lloyd Wright house shown that same year in North by Northwest.
I remember that "1980" line about the cemetary in Send Me No Flowers. Like the mention of 1980 in the original Cape Fear, which I noted above, it sounded farther into the future than it really was -- just 16 years.
What strikes me about TCM isn't that it's only been on 18 years -- it's that it's already been on 18 years. 1995 doesn't seem that long ago! (And, per this movie, back then Dorothy McGuire, Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue were all still alive, if not altogether well.)
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