how romantic...

By Sam Felder on February 19, 2003 10:32 PM | | Comments (0)

I am a sucker for 19th century romance. As strange as it may seem, I fear that this is intimately connected to my fascination with Nietzsche and WWI but never mind that.

After a long day at the office (that was fun to say), I retired to my flat to watch The Importance of Being Ernest staring the wonderful Rupert Everett. Apparently he has something of a cult following (beware of pop-up windows when clicking); I just think he has a great chin.

What a light piece of fluff. These English period pieces all use the same lighting and lenses to produce an effect that we immediately recognize as from before the Great War. When films hit the war things get dirtier, always foggy if you notice, and then WWII is either the same as WWI (as it was in many respects) or it has a sunny Pacific surreality. Beyond that we haven't established cliched images as of yet. Of course I am leaving out the glut of 1950's period pieces that have been so recently popular. They seem to have something of an overpowering sunniness as they struggle to cut through the veneer of 50's respectability to the meat of racial, class, and sexual tension just waiting to become our stereotype of the 1960's.

For the sheer purpose of rambling let me say that my parents always remind me that the 50's were the time in which all of the movements of the 60's had their birth. The 50's were a dynamic time populated by people other than upper middle class housefraus and their braindead husbands.

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Sam Felder is a web designer and occasional writer in Los Angeles, CA.

Born in Washington, DC, Sam and his family moved to Peoria, IL, where he grew up and went to school. He returned to DC in 2003 and left for the west coast in late 2005.

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