The 1920's In Film: Will the 2020's Roar?
Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box
Now that we may be nearing the end of Lockdown, will the 2020's mirror the decadent 1920's? The 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. When it finally waned, the Roaring '20s exploded with wild Jazz Age exuberance. Women metamorphosed into flappers who bobbed their hair, drank, flirted, and danced against glamorous Art Deco backdrops. One of these "new women" was the American actress and dancer Louise Brooks who starred in the acclaimed German silent film Pandora's Box directed by G.W. Pabst. In the 1928 movie, Brooks plays Lulu, a beautiful young showgirl who brazenly seduces men and finally falls victim to Jack the Ripper.
Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse: Singing in the Rain
If a foreign melodrama is not to your taste, perhaps try the 1952 American musical romantic comedy Singing in the Rain. Set in Hollywood during the late 1920s, it was directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. The movie depicts the transition between silent films and the new technology of "talkies" that both made and broke actors and actresses. Kelly stars, along with Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, and Cyd Charisse, dancing and singing through what are now considered cinematic classics, the most emblematic being the title song with Kelly swinging gleefully from a lamppost in the rain. We may all be dancing from lamposts once Lockdown eases.
Polly Walker in Enchanted April
For total escapism, it is hard to beat the 1992 film Enchanted April. Four disparate British women leave cold, gray England for a holiday in an Italian Castello on the sunny Mediterranean. Set in the 1920s, Polly Walker plays the wealthy flapper Lady Caroline Dester, tired of shallow London society. Joan Plowright is Mrs. Fisher, a widow who clings to memories of her Victorian youth. Miranda Richardson plays Rose Arbuthnot, and Josie Lawrence is Lottie Wilkins, both unhappy housewives. Rose is pious, married to a man who writes books she disapproves of, and Lottie's husband is a stingy lawyer. The quartet becomes enchanted by the beauty of their surroundings, rediscovering hope and love. We all look forward to the day we can plan an Italian vacation again!
