I've appreciated the films of Whit Stillman for a decade now but I only just considered properly the implications of all the cameos in Last Days... In what year do the events of Metropolitan take place??? I had always assumed it was Christmas '88 or '89, and if memory serves the scene at Von Sloneker's place had a definite '80s vibe. But that wouldn't make any sense in relation to Last Days... Right?
shareMy time-line would be:
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"Metropolitan": 1974-75: End of Nixon administration, the Vietnam War. Debs.
"Last days of Disco": 12/1979: Studio 54 is raided. 1980 Owners sent to prison.
"Barcelona": 1982: Reagan 1st term/terrorism.
*** "Last Days..." may have been the final film of the trilogy but it occurs between "Metro' and Barcelona," in terms of a time frame.
This timeline seems about right to me.
Metropolitan could even be set as late as 76/77. It feels 77ish to me.
They really did televise the debutante balls in NY on channel 11. I remember watching it once or twice as a kid. I think that ended sometime in the early 80s.
Yes, Audrey's haircut seems post-Dorothy Hamill (1976 Olympics).
share
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100142/board/nest/26795266?p=1
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100142/board/nest/69778093?p=1
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It feels like the 80s. Fashion, hair, the politics makes it feel like the 80s. Checker cabs went out in like 82 or 83 though, so I think early 80s.
http://most-underrated-movies.blogspot.com/
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this movie and Barcelona (1994) were both picks on TCM last night (Sun, 9.28.14), and Whit Stillman was interviewed in the intros and exits for both fliks.
one of the questions he answered was about the setting in time for his movies. he said that he deliberately has no specific date (or year) in mind because it causes other (continuity? financing?) problems with production.
so, in answer to your question, it's sometime during the last third of the 20th century. (pick any year and you're right!)
I just viewed this film for the first time, and I seem to remember black vinyl disc records somewhere in the film. If I'm correct, then that would definitely set the time of the film to a certain degree.
However, I believe, overall, that this filmmaker deliberately obscured not only the year that the film was set but other time/space elements as well, such as the fact that the schools that this this upper crust gang attended is not explicitly mentioned in the film. Also, the name of the 5 star hotel where all the balls happen, and the bars and restaurants in the film are never mentioned by name in the film either. Also, that so much of the interaction of the group was in the cloistered confines of apartments also somewhat sets the film in a time/space warp as well.
I feel that all this time/space obscurity in the film might have been quite deliberate by the filmmaker, to the extent that his artistic vision here might have been an expression of universal truths about the human condition that exceed the limits of time, and space, and even social position, as the decidedly less than social elite character Tom in this film suggests. In the guise of the wealthy, socially elite, young adults in this film, Stillman's intent, at some level of his consciousness, may have been to hold up a mirror to each of us to reveal inconvenient truths to us about ourselves, and about the "gang" that we socialize with.
As to black vinyl records (LPs, to be more specific): I'm pretty confident we can assume that movie wasn't set after 1990 in any event. There were plenty of black vinyl records around in 1990. About all their presence tells us is that the movie wasn't set before the '50s, which I think we also know anyway.
As already mentioned, the time of the movie is obscure because (a) it costs money to make a period movie and (b) Stillman didn't think the specific time was all that important anyway.
I actually thought the geographic details were reasonably specific:
- Wasn't it explicitly mentioned that Tom goes to Princeton?
- I might be wrong, but I thought they mentioned the girls' high school. I don't remember what it was, though ... I'm thinking Miss Porter's, but that might just be me filling in gaps.
- There's an establishing shot or two of the hotel, which is the Plaza. Actually, Stillman had to make an effort to get this shot, as he did it on the run without a permit.
- I could've sworn there was an exterior shot of the bar they went to (J.G. Mellon), but it may just have been that the interior was recognizable.
- He gets his tuxedo at A.T. Harris, which is gone now, but was a very specific store until some time after the movie was made.
- Nick at one point lists the principal men's clothing stores with great specificity: Brooks Brothers, J. Press, Tripler's, etc.
- Southampton is reasonably specific.
- Tom's on the Upper West Side, everyone else on the Upper East.
- Doesn't Nick specifically say where he's going to be killed by his step-mother?
i didn't know either..
looked place-less.
I read somewhere that Whit Stillman wanted to set the movie in the early to mid 1960s, but he didn't have the budget for a period film, so he just tried to make it seem non-specific.
I really enjoyed seeing an Automat. Nice touch. The movie must have been made just before the last location closed in the early 90s.