Datedness in movies

I don’t know. I recently saw “My Best Friend’s Wedding” form 1997 and all was fine until almost the last scene when Julia pulls out this MONSTROUS cell phone that looks like to should have a cord running to its own suitcase. It’s literally fucking huge and looks like she’s taking into a wireless router. Really pulls you out of the movie.

My niece and I were watching Yellowjackets (not a movie, a series on Showtime) and my niece said "where are their phones?". Part of the series takes place in the 90's and I told her that was before most people had a cell phone and before smart phones. Anyway, now a movie is dated when they are using a regular phone instead of a cell phone.

Increasingly I find myself liking either period prices or way off in the future sci-fi, because technology has changed so rapidly in the last 30 years that every time I see an old film and hear a dial-up modem, it triggers my PTSD of living through the 90s.

[quote] period prices

Pre-inflation?

[quote]Or maybe I'm just getting old and everything runs together in my advanced age?

You're old and having too much free time on your hands in your solitary enclosure.

So many films pre 2001 plots would fall apart if modern technology and social media existed. That's why I like old movies.

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[quote] Schindler's List owns this thread. For real.

It's that insufferable little cunt in red.

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Cell phones are the bane of many screenwriters' existence. They have to figure out a way to get around cell phones in modern stories so the damn story doesn't end in five minutes. A lot of older movies would be totally ruined with cell phones.

Every Netflix European crime series is almost 75% of people on cell phones. It’s gets old fast.

So many scenes in modern movies and TV shows revolve around people using cell phones - making calls, texting, taking pictures, etc. It's accurate, but it doesn't make for an interesting scene.

If the production is true to its period, there is no such thing as datedness.

R10 yet on sitcoms people still drop by peoples houses unannounced as their main way of communication. I guess that will never change.

A good script will override all of that. Do the Right Thing remains as relevant, potent and impactful as it was in 1989.

I long for the days of no cell phones. One of the worst things to happen to humankind (yes, I know, MARY!!!).

It's you, OP. As we get older, we lose our sense of what is and isn't current. Sorry, but it's true.

I think it depends on the film, OP.

I recently watched Blood Simple, and, if I didn't know the actors, part of me could almost believe it was a movie filmed in 2020 made to look like it took place in 1984.

There are other films like this, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

R15 I don't think cell phones were a mistake. It was the stupid cameras they attached to them that created all the problems. So much pointless DRAMA thanks to cameras everywhere.

OP, do you wake up in the morning, and after nanny changes your nappy and you're feeling fresh and ready to inflict your mental illness on those of us who don't suffer from your host of advanced personality disorders, refer to a list you've made about the inane topics you're spamming sites with that day? Or do you just spontaneously make up your mind as the peristalsis that is your brain directs you? This is a rhetorical question and requires no reply.

I don’t think silence of the lambs is at all dated.

I don't think movies "date."

Older movies are a reflection of their era's technologies and value system.

I want a movie filmed and set in the 1990s to look and feel like that time period.

So if I go back to an old movie, I'm not going to be jolted by seeing someone pulling out a big ass cell phone or dialing a phone with a pencil.

In fact, I [bold]expect[/bold] to see that.

What's weird is when a movie set in the past tries to feel "contemporary."

I'm going to use a popular old movie to make my point.

I was kid when Grease came out. While the movie was set in the early 1960s, the music had a 1970s interpretation of '60s music.

I was familiar with music from 15-20 years earlier because, quirky me, I used to listen to an oldies station (NYC's WCBS-FM) back then, and to me there was nothing authentic-sounding about the music in Grease. So Grease always felt more like the '70s than the '60s.

(I don't know if I'm making sense. Blame it on the early hour.)

I find with period pieces, women's hair is the biggest tell of when the film was made, rather than when it takes place. (I'm thinking specifically of the mom's hair in Christmas Story. But there are dozens of other examples.)

As far as fashions go, I'm starting to notice how dated something from the early 2000s looks now, more so than I did a few years ago. This One Tree Hill cast pic from 2003 is a good example. But something from 2013 like Breaking Bad, either the characters or the actors at an awards show from that year, doesn't look dated at all.

People used to complain so much about how much time the main characters on The X-Files were on their phones, but when I rewatched it a few years ago you didn't even notice. It's much worse these days. Writers just need to come up with ways to get people into the same room, but they don't, for some reason.

I've noticed that filmmakers and television shows like to set their pieces in the time before cellphones were everywhere. The shows that heavily use texting are really annoying, and they should use close captioning to make it more readable.

I could never get anyone to watch foreign films, because they'd whine about having to read; how times have changed!

R22, my favorite example of this is Michelle Pfeiffer's hair in AGE OF INNOCENCE.

Great example r26

There are a lot of women with curly hair and bangs in Renoir portraits, though. I didn't see Pfeiffer's hair as being particularly egregious.

Things started looking all the same once the internet really got going. Before, people cultivated unique looks and trends in relative isolation.

Curly bangs were actually a thing in the 1880s, but not like that! They had to use heated up iron rods to do the curling; there wasn't yet such a thing as a perm.

R22 I'm usually driven nuts by women's hair in period movies. Long, straight and parted in the middle in 1962 - I think there are a few of those in American Graffiti. You seldom see the truly ugly tight, permed, but authentic Mamie Eisenhower/Jane Wyman 'dos. Either the movie hairdressers don't get it, or the actresses don't want to wear it. Also, men's hair is seldom properly short and pomaded.

One of the reasons I love "Chinatown," they got all those details right.

It doesn't matter how hard anyone tries, hair these days is not going to look like hair from the 80s or earlier, simply because we don't have the same hair products as back then. You can approximate a Toni perm or a Dippity-Do scrunch or a wave and a set, but it will never quite look the same.

I didn't care much for her performance but I thought the hair they went with on Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn was nice, because they just did a natural wave, pinned back on one side with a vintage clip sometimes. They also had that lipstick-and-nothing-else look that women went for in the 1940s, which was pretty brave, because it looks terrible even though it was casual fashion back then.

R32, I feel like people's hair was drier-looking in the past, especially in the 70s.

Now when they do movies set in the 70s, everyone's hair looks so lush and glossy and healthy. It doesn't fit.

To my mind, Fanny and Alexander (one of my favorite films) succeeds as a period piece because although it was filmed in the early 1980s, that fact seems ... hardly noticeable.

Nina Arianda's hair in Being the Ricardos is unforgivable. Not only did they make no effort to style her like Viv, no woman in the early 1950s had hair quite like this:

Agree r35, sometimes it looked like an 80s perm, it was so distracting and wrong.

R35 That's right up there with Melinda Dillon's afro circa 1940.

Dreadful r37!

What movies feel the LEAST dated?

Working Girl owns this thread.

Crossing Delancey gets honourable mention.

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The fashion gives everything away.

Working Girl is still awesome.

The discussion re: getting a period piece's look and feel right always makes me think of King of the Hill (1993). This was set in my parents' childhood era, and my dad's experience seemed closer to the main character's, while my mom's was closer to the Katharine Heigl character's. Based on a memoir of AE Hotchner.

Westerns in the 70s were bad.

r41, The Matrix is not dated; you are just cynical. I suspect some people are saying that because of thousand copy cat and its influence of introducing philosphy in scifi.

R35 that’s absolutely true - the products weren’t as good, plus they didn’t have things like professional flat irons and keratin treatments that get rid of all the frizz.

All the Demi Moore types we talk about who wear their hair like that today, it’s thanks to all the above innovations.

I think the opposite from OP, I feel like movies post-‘94 are extremely dated, due to technology. The internet began to flourish & you could tell the year based on how the computers & monitors looked.

Then when cellphones became ubiquitous, seeing them in movies also tends to “date” the film. Are they using flip phones or smartphones? What size & style?

I recently watched Sopranos for the first time, & found everything about it to be so of its time. Breaking Bad too somewhat.

Fuck you r41. The Matrix is sacred and I refuse to listen to anyone bad-mouth it. The only dated part of that movie is when they go full Columbine on those fat, paper reading, middle-aged security guards. Years of mass shootings have made that scene less fun. I was 12 when Reloaded came out so I was one of those dorks impressed by the philosophy.

It seems like some people have a weird interpretation of datedness. Old technology in old films is not dated to me. Something dated is more the aura of the film, or the ideology it represents.

I hate it when screenwriters lazily use today’s style of speaking in period films. IIRC there’s a scene in “The Power of the Dog” where someone asks Benedict Cumberbatch if he wants something and he replies, “I’m good”. I am quite certain cowboys in 1922 Montana were not saying “I’m good”.

R51 He should have said " No. I have sufficient".

r47 before making that post, I got curious and looked at an early 1950s yearbook from a public university.

The women's styles were either 1) shorter than Arianda's and/or 2) had parts of the hair that remained straight (often near the crown). Generally, too, the curls were a bit looser.

Alia Shawkat's hair, while not perfect, was much more believable.

Not to derail the thread, but I hated how everyone in Being the Ricardos was so dressed up during the table read scene. More likely, Viv and Lucille would have been dressed casually, with little to no makeup, and with their hair in scarves.

if you watch the tv series columbo they always centered the crim around some new fangled technology and although it dates the series the writing and the acting are wonderful so it doesn't detract from the view. when movies today have popup bubble chat screens showing texting conversations you have to read it gets shut off.

[quote]when movies today have popup bubble chat screens showing texting conversations you have to read it gets shut off.

Wow this is peak eldergay!

Working Girl feels "dated" not just because it's so goddamned 80s, but because the whole sexist/misogyny thing wouldn't even be tolerated today (and today is STILL very sexist and misogynist, but dear god, it was off the charts back then).

There are some movies where the casual racism & sexism is just CRINGE.

Where was the sexism in Working Girl?

For me, it’s the above-mentioned, but also, the teeth, especially in American movies. Since 2003 or so, teeth are rarely fucked up and even more rarely anything but pearl white, unless they’re a prop (Napoleon Dynamite) or someone foul and hideous, (a villian or ogre).

R58, are you fucking KIDDING me?

While we're at it, where was the racism in Birth of a Nation???

R58 thinks the limo scene was "just business".

R2 That's a good thought! wonder if, for many, the sense of not being reachable now seems scary.

Cheap, ubiquitous home security/surveillance cameras must be a bit of a bane to movies and TV shows, too. You may not have a Ring doorbell or Blink cameras all over your house, but your neighbors do. SOMEone's camera saw something. I try to put that stuff out of my mind, but as with the unlikelihood of no one having a cellphone, it's a little distracting.

True, r64. Just a few days ago a relative and I were talking about how many crimes from years ago that remain unsolved would've been solved in five minutes if all the modern Ring/Blink etc. cameras that are everywhere now had been around. There are also traffic light cameras all over the place now.

R65.

I love seeing the authentic 70s hair in the original Carrie. Amy Irving’s frizz! So hard to replicate that in a period film today without it looking wiggy.

R48 what did you find dated in Breaking Bad? I'm genuinely curious.

The clothing, the home interiors, the technology, the slang. Not dated in a pejorative sense, just that those things really placed the movie in the era it was filmed, unlike some movies that are harder to pin down. Again, not a bad thing at all.