Shot in '68 and seems SET in '68

I concur. Was thinking the same thing when I watched it last night on TCM. It reminds me of one of those, "Straight to video", movies on VHS, you used to find at Caldor or Ames stores in the 80's, in the cardboard box bins in the entertainment dept.

Timmy comes home from WW2 not Korea. The dad mentions the Jews at breakfast.

And I agree the movie seems set in 1968. No one tried to make it look 40s

i have noticed this with films made during the 60s-80s. The directors thought the movie goers will not like the actors if they are not wearing the current hairstyle and bell bottom pants!

Robert Redford was a big star in The Way We WEre. But it was stupid and goofy that he had the sideburns like the Sundance Kid!

But yes, the arguments about SW Roses looking like the 60s is correct!! I was mesmorized by the acting!! so I didn't care.

I wholeheartedly disagree with everyone in this thread. This movie looks like it's setting, 1946. Are people going to tell me Neal's hairstyle was out of date? Watch Neal in her older movies from the late 40s. She has the same hairstyle. She also dressed the same way. I think the main thing that made people think it felt like the 60s was the music. But movies made today about the past don't have the same type of score from the past. For instance, the classical music soundtrack for Valkyrie was quite different than the type of music that would have been used if the movie had been made during the 40s. I agree with you about MASH and the Redford movie though.

I wholeheartedly disagree with everyone in this thread except for davannacarter. This movie - with a few exceptions - does look and feel like its setting: mid-forties America, right after WWII. The clothing (especially the son's US Army uniform, which was clearly of the WWII period), the cars, the bus, the music heard on the radio and in the nightclub, the furniture, lampshades, appliances, etc. etc.... all are very reminiscent of mid-forties Americana.

I say this with at least some authority, because, even though I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s, I was nevertheless surrounded by parents and grandparents who still had furniture and clothing leftover from that era. I could relate to the old cars, the large wooden console radio set (just like the one my grandparents had!), the refrigerators, some of the music, and so on as being part of their earlier generation.

That Judy Collins folk song in the middle of the movie did throw it off key for just a bit and made it lose that mid-1940s feel, but other than that, I thought the filmmakers did a fine job of recreating that post-WWII America time period.

If you see enough films from that era, you realize that it was completely normal at that time for period films to look more contemporary than historically accurate.

It was about the audience's expectations back then. People didn't demand that every single detail be authentic. Just a few hints here and there to suggest another time, that's all that was needed. Some old cars, an old stove, and old phone...

Check out "Bonnie and Clyde" or "MASH". Or a lot of westerns, especially TV series. Full of women with the most modern hair and make-up combos, and dresses somewhat influenced by the setting. It was just normal back then.

(Even Melinda Dillon's shaggy 80s-style perm in "A Christmas Story" in 1983. Of course by then, we had been trained to expect accuracy.)

To be honest, Patricia Neal's hairstyle never changed much throughout her career.

I'll agree--when the film started, it took me a while to figure out it was supposed to be set in the 40s; at first I thought the son had come back from Vietnam. This is primarily because the Judy Collins music immediately gave the film a late-1960s vibe, and Patricia Neal's contemporary hairstyle threw me off. If you Google photos of Patricia from 1945-1949, you'll see exactly what her hairstyle SHOULD have looked like in this film. It was most definitely out of period, and as such I found it very distracting.