MovieChat Forums > Paris brûle-t-il ? (1966) Discussion > The Fashions Are Not Accurate

The Fashions Are Not Accurate

posted 9 years ago by richard.fuller1
6 replies | jump to latest

This always miffs me about WWII movies from the sixties especially. They end up with that artsy look to them.

I'd get more into Hogan's Heroes (with a Brit, a Frenchman and three Jewish actors who fled Nazi occupation) if it wasn't for the incorrect styles that suddenly appear on the women.

Would it have been so difficult for these things to just have the women wear their hair up if they didn't want to style it like the '40s? Or tie the babushka around their heads.

I mean, I'm no fashion guru, but I've watched enough documentaries and movies from the '40s to see how they dressed and how these are wrong.

I'm mainly going to watch this now (I've never seen this movie before) for the locales more than anything.

Normally it's the women's styles that bother me, but already I've seen guys with the tousled sixties hairdos.

[–] agracier-574-436194 9 years ago

You're absolutely correct on the hair fashions in these old war movies. The women wear fashions as if they came right off the street and the men so often look like they are California surfers in a German uniform or something ... all of it a big shame since it doesn't do anything positive for these period movies.

And it wasn't only with war movies that the directors and wardrobe got so much wrong. Even in movies set in the 1920's like 'Some Like It Hot' or 'Ziegfeld Follies' or 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' (1953, they also have everyone run around in contemporary hairstyles, instead of dressing them in authentic looking fashions ... sigh sigh ...

I suppose directors just didn't think it very important back then. Audiences would go see anything on a movie screen and not complain.

One big exception that got so much right fashion-wise was 'la Grande Illusion'.

[–] skat1140 8 years ago

I never understand this.

For the males, how difficult would it be to give all the actors and extras in the movie a haircut? The shorter styles of the '40s would immediately give the movie an added air of realism. (Something thats needed in a film like this with such poor production value.)

They took no small consideration to rigging the cars to look like they ran on natural gas (those large tanks on the top). Why not spend a few minutes and minimal expense with the hairstyles? You're paying Kirk Douglas $50,000 for a day's work; give him a haircut.

It's something that seems to elude most filmmakers, throughout the ages. They see the current-day haircuts as "normal" and dont think to bother with them.

With comedies or musicals, really, who cares? Realism isn't the standard the movie is judged by (people are singing instead of talking). But with a historical event... there's really no excuse.

[–] agracier-574-436194 8 years ago

Exactly!

In 'the Great Escape' the German soldiers and some of the younger officers looked like they came straight off the beach at Santa Monica or something ... ha ha

I sometimes wonder of directors in the 1960s thought the war was still so recent, only 20 years in the past, that they didn't realize that fashions change, even in short amounts of time.

[–] chrissso 8 years ago

I kept thinking that the men looked so 1966 ... with greased hair and skinny ties. I just kept waiting to hear someone yell out "Daddy-o."

Now the women ... who cares because Marie Versini & Leslie Caron where just dreamy in a French woman kinda way!

[–] Jamal-Nazreddin 8 years ago

Anachronistic fashion is movies is lessening now.

The Brits are good at accurate fashion (viz Downton)

[–] [email protected] (1623) 5 years ago

I've noticed this about films in the 60s and earlier when they portray an earlier period of history, most don't even bother. Even in the 70s you can stop see this like in The Godfather film, Kay and Apollonia have that 70s pencil thin eyebrows and 70s hair combined with the 40s.