@Stan_Kubricks_Mentor: Not sure why I'm answering you, since you seem to have very different eyes than I have...
>newsflash: bejo, like most argentines, is white.
Depends on how you define it--it's not like race has any medical definition. She looks more like Delores del Rio than Clara Bow to me. She played an Egyptian in the first OSS 117 film. She is gorgeous, as they all were, but it would have affected how she was cast at the time.
>(paraphrase) "Bow and Brooks--just like models of today..."
Um...no. They were tiny, but their faces were very different from models today, they were both short, and, as another poster pointed out, they were not "toned" in the way models/actresses are now, even though Brooks was a dancer.
Brooks: http://theselvedgeyard.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/louise-brooks-front-now-were-in-the-air.jpg?w=600&h=763
Bundchen: http://www.howmuchdotheyweigh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/gisele-bundchen.jpg
>you're obviously not a fashion expert either, because her costumes, when she became the movie star, were not flapper. she was in long gowns and furs. you seem to be blinded by your own preferred details.
Yeah, that white almost-babydoll dress in the last scene was JUST like something Ginger Rogers would have worn!
To be fair, I now don't think the costume designer was going for perfect period-verisimilitude, judging by some of his (taped) Oscar-ceremony remarks. But many critics claimed the movie was an exact reproduction of a real silent film, so my expectations were a problem.
>besides, the movie is not ABOUT "confronting" racism of the 1920s,
I know it's not; I think it would have been a more interesting movie if it had been, at least in a small way (but bigger than the tiny thing you mentioned). It's perfectly legitimate to say that's an unfair criticism, but it's how I feel. Someone in another post guessed Peppy Miller's career was based on Joan Crawford's, which I think could be true, but in my opinion it would have been more interesting if it was based on Myrna Loy's. (She was first cast as the "exotic," in a racist way, then she became the glamorous sophisticate of the talkies. I think it would have suited Bejo's acting style, and Loy was also a dancer.)
>everybody already knows people and institutions were racist in those days
You'd be surprised how many people don't know it. A film scholar who teaches at my local (famous) university told his class once that there was no racism is early Hollywood. This is a person who's written film history books. (I won't name him because it was a while ago, and maybe he's learned since then.)
For those who care, here's a little tour of relevant early-1930's fashions:
Here's Ginger Rogers in "Flying Down to Rio," 1934:
dance gowns were usually long: http://www.danzacla.altervista.org/onthestage/Fred%20Astaire%20and%20Ginger%20Rogers%20in%20Flying%20Down%20to%20Rio.jpg
and for a daytime look: http://tinyurl.com/74o3tk3
Here she is in a day dress in "Gold Diggers of 1933": http://knotsandbaubles.typepad.com/feathers/images/2007/12/18/ginger_rogers_golddiggers_5.jpg)
Since Stan_Kubricks_Mentor mentioned, in a later post, "Trouble in Paradise" (one of my favorite movies, btw), let's do a little look-see:
http://www.altfg.com/Stars/t/trouble-in-paradise-francis-hopkins-marshall.jpg
http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Francis,%20Kay/Annex/Annex%20-%20Francis,%20Kay%20%28Trouble%20in%20Paradise%29_01.jpg
http://pixhost.me/avaxhome/2008-01-23/TIP2.jpg
The shots above don't cover the whole of early-1930's fashion, but the shapes are typical of the era.
This next shot from "TiP" is interesting, as it shows a crowd of people, probably of different income levels (and probably extras wearing their own clothes). You can see the typical long, narrow-at-hips, flared-at-bottom 1930s skirt on a woman toward the front (center left), and a much more 20's-ish, loose dress at the far left, thus proving S_K_M's point that there was some overlap, though the dress has a longer skirt than in the late 20s. But notice none of the movie stars in the shots above are wearing the looser style of dress: http://tinyurl.com/bth5geu
To me, the lines of the long skirts in the crowd shot above (even the looser dress to the left) don't match the outfit Bejo wears here, in one of the last scenes of the movie (and therefore set in the early 30's):
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/02/24/arts/24OSCAR1_SPAN/24OSCAR1-articleLarge.jpg
Here's the famous dance dress (crappy shot, but the only one I can find that shows the length, and the looseness of the skirt): http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/b2MKKJAuijE/0.jpg
I think these dresses evoke the period, but don't follow it accurately, an artistic choice the designer perhaps made to allow Bejo to dance easily, or because he thought it was more flattering to her. (If anyone has an early-30s source that looks like these dresses, I'd be interested to see them.)
Let's all sing (from "TiP"), "Colet...Colet...Colet and Company!"
reply
share
LoreleiLee
12 years ago
I do agree that the heroine didn't really fit the time period as well as she could have and although this didn't inhibit my enjoyment of the film at all and it is nitpicking, it would have enhanced my appreciation if they had got the costumes and mannerisms more period appropriate.
With regards to her mannerisms, I also found her little 'yes' arm movement jarring and her posing for the camera when she first bumped into George seemed too modern - the hand on the hip and the exaggerated facial expressions seemed to be straight from a 1990s fashion shoot.
The costumes for 1932 were totally wrong. If we compare her clothes and styling to what her contemporaries (the top leading ladies of the time) would have been wearing, I think we can safely say she would have been considered to be way out of fashion. Whether or not some films of 1932 may have still featured '20s style fashion I can't say for sure as I haven't seen every single film made that year, but the ones I have seen which starred the kind of actresses whom Peppy Miller is based on, certainly had a marked difference in styling from the 1920s.
The flapper look was out by 1932 and you would not see leading film stars of that era wearing short sequin flapper dresses and cloche hats. 1932 was the year of Letty Lynton and the legendary Adrian gown created for Joan Crawford which was so influential they made 500,000 copies of it at Macy's which sold out. The dress was long, white cotton organdy, with wide shoulders and huge ruffled sleeves and very far removed from any look of the '20s. Also in Letty Lynton, Crawford wears a long satin bias cut dress which is so redolent and identifiable as a dress of the 1930s.
In 1933, only a year after the end of The Artist, Joan Crawford starred in Dancing Lady and there was not a flapper dress to be seen on any of the chorus girls or on Joan herself - in fact we see Joan dancing with Astaire in a similar white dress to her famous Letty Lynton number. 1933 also saw the release of that archetypal '30s musical, 42nd Street, and again the dancers are in wide legged trousers or high waisted shorts - a very 1930s look.
In Private Lives (1931), we see Norma Shearer dressed very much in the elegant style of the 1930s, in wide legged trousers and silk blouses and a long gold bias cut evening gown with a wide, fur trimmed, neckline.
Jean Harlow in Platinum Blonde (1931) and Red Dust (1932) is seen in bias cut day dresses which fall below the knee, with the beret style hats on an angle. In Red Dust we see her in a clingy, bias cut satin night dress and a cross over satin gown with high heeled satin peep toe sandals - she's certainly not wearing the small heeled Mary Jane shoes of the 1920s.
Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins in Trouble in Paradise (which has been mentioned) were also seen in the longer, more form fitting, bias cut dresses and suits of the 1930s.
I just can't find any evidence that a leading film star would have been wearing a short flapper dress in 1932. All the major leading ladies of that time, unless I can find photographic/filmed evidence, were sporting the styles of the 1930s: the more feminine form fitting dresses, the long satin and lame bias cut evening dresses and the round toe or peep toe shoe with a higher heel and without a strap across the foot. The hats were either berets worn on an angle or wide brimmed straw hats which also tended to be worn on an angle.
It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but I think it's wrong to argue that the film makers got it right with her 1930s costumes when there is so much evidence to the contrary.
A girl with brains ought to do something with them besides think
reply
share