Films that made you feel nostalgia for an era you never experienced.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

For me, "American Graffiti" evoked powerful feelings of nostalgia for a time and place that I didn't experience. Maybe nostalgia is not the proper term for it, but that's what it felt like.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The Great Gatsby

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Good one!

[democracyindanger]

3. Bird

The film that started my love affair with jazz.

[BlueJazz]

4. The film "The thirteenth floor"

Everything seemed so cool in the 1934-1939 era...

[Ruffhowse]

5. 20,000 Years B.C.

Raquel Welch in a leather bikini, mmmmmmmmmmm. I can get nostalgic over that. :bounce:

[JohnKleeb]

6. umm any epic WWII movie

Just seems like an amazing time and an amazing duty to have.

[Ruffhowse]

7. L.A. Confidential and Chinatown

Great look of LA immediately post-war. I think that was the era.

[SaveElmer]

8. It's a Wonderful Life

Love that movie

[Ready4Change]

9. The Great Waldo Pepper.

.

[Swede]

10. Dazed and Confused.

Oh wait a minute---nevermind.

[electricmonk]

30. Haha, I was going to say

What the hell. Yeah that was my life. Well one part Dazed and Confused one part Fast Times at Ridgemont High and a dash of Suburbia thrown in.

But to answer the original question I would say The Big Sleep, the original version set in the mid 30's.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

11. Look at Harrison Ford in that pic!

He was just a baby!

[JohnKleeb]

12. Goodfellas and Godfather

I wish I were in the mob yo ;).

[barb162]

13. "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice"

and all those movies about 1800s England.

[miss_kitty]

14. the great films of the thirties

42nd Street, Stage Door, Bill of Divorcement, Holiday, Dinner at Eight, Sylvia Scarlett, hell i could go on and on The Thin Man Series, Astaire/Rogers films anything with Cary Grant (swoon)
pretty much that richie rich, lotsa liquor, big doors, incredible housing, gorgeous dresses, jewelry and party party party...

[DemBones DemBones]

17. Yes! Lots of witty repartee, too.

Glamour is the one word to sum it up, I guess.

[VOX]

24. The Thin Man series -- William Powell and Myrna Loy...

Class, class, class -- He wore a necktie to go horseback riding!

[Richardo]

36. Thin Man series: My absolute 30's favorites...

Powell and Loy and the greatest "married couple" repartee in screen history. And Myrna...rowr!! :loveya:

[Poiuyt]

15. The Music Man

Sipping lemonade on the front porch on a quiet summer evening

[DemBones DemBones]

16. Films of the Forties because life was

simpler. (The war was the right thing to do, families could live on the man's income, it was not yet obvious how humans were screwing up the environment so you didn't have to feel guilty about the car you drove or how many kids you had. )

Life was also more elegant The clothes were great and people still dressed up to go downtown (and there WERE downtowns) or to take a train. Women wore great hats and so did men -- adults rarely went out of the house without a hat. (I love hats and gloves, wore them lots in the early Sixties, when women still did; still wear them sometimes.)

People traveled by train. I did experience this in the Fifties and Sixties. Train travel had elegance and a sense of adventure that air travel has never had (except in first class.) You got to see a lot of scenery from a train, people talked to strangers on trains more than on planes, you ate in a dining car with white tablcloths, cloth napkins, real china plates and cups -- and good food! And the fold-out beds and lavatories in train compartments were just plain cool. Train stations were cool, too. One thing I really enjoy in Europe is great train service. In the U.S., I haven't taken a train since 1966, unless you count the Metro in D.C. or MARTA in Atlanta.

Cars back then were big funky things with all sorts of style elements so driving was pretty adventurous, too, especially traveling pre-interstates, pre-fast foods, pre-chain hotels/ motels. It was an adventure to find a hotel you liked, a restaurant you liked, and there were more roadside attractions, many of them gloriously tacky.

BURMA SHAVE!

[delete_bush]

21. You're so right about the 30's-40's

It's impossible today to travel anywhere without coming upon the same looking malls with the same franchise/chain stores. Just think, at one time there was only one Saks Fifth Avenue!

My best childhood travel memories are of the restaurants and motels that either didn't work out or were gems in the rough. Now there's too much information available not to make an informed choice, which sounds good but takes the unknown and thus the excitement out of the equation.

I've always thought that the A-bomb ended the era when man still had mastery over machine, and that there is some sense of self that is affected by this.

Technology advances at a rate impossible to keep up with, moving us ever further away from a sense of being connected to each other and terra firma. We've all become mini multi-national corporations in a way, communicating and shopping across borders while ignoring those close to us.

[last_texas_dem]

18. Almost Famous

Detroit Rock City (why, I'm not sure! haha), the Woodstock documentary, the Freaks and Geeks TV series...

I've got a pretty good range of time here; I think I'm just a nostalgia freak in general!

[Dookus]

19. Vertigo

makes me want to live in San Francisco in the late '50s.

[DemWitch]

20. Pearl Harbor

I realize that WWll was a terrible, horrible time, but it was also a time of complete unity in this country. We had an outside enemy and no matter our differences, they took a back seat to the "war effort". Not only that but when we were asked to scarifice here at home, we did. We rationed fuel, food, grew Victory gardens, held metal, paper and rubber drives. We were working towards something. It was horrible, but we were in it together.

Unlike today when we are asked to shop. Sad.

[Nightowl_2004]

22. Along those lines, The HBO Mini-Series...

Band of Brothers. The love that those men shared for each other through some of the toughest battles of WW2 was inspirational. I am blessed to personally know a Band of Brother (Malarkey, he lives literally just down the street from me!!!! A truly amazing man!)

Does that count as a "movie"?

[Magrittes Pipe]

23. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Joan of Arc was a babe!

[mrboba1]

33. AWESOME!

Bogus....

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

25. Nice post! The number one flick that does that for me is Gangs of New York

I have a deep love of NY history

[Magrittes Pipe]

28. You are nostalgic for the Civil War draft riots?

You are one wack mofo.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

31. You forgot squalor and disease

Never forget squalor and disease

[terrya]

26. For me..."Ragtime"

The film was so evocative. Milos Foreman, the director, created a world (1908) that was so nostalgic. The look of the film, and Randy Newman's great, great score, helped me feel so nostalgic about an era I never experienced.

[SarahB]

27. Grease

In grade school, I wanted to be part of the 50's.

[auburngrad82]

29. Quest for Fire

Camping out with a nekkid Rae Dawn Chong...

Yeah...

[Surf Cowboy]

32. The Natural, A River Runs Through It, and Bagger Vance

The Redford Retro-Trifecta!!!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

34. Every time one of those gets me nostalgic I start thinking of

Diseases that were untreatable.
Cars without seatbelts.
No consumer protection.
Racism.
Living under a dictatorship (Brazil until 1985, fell free to substitute McCarthyism)

Etc, etc, etc...

But wait. Yes, there is an age I am nostalgic of. The 90's. :cry:

[eyesroll]

35. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Who knew? :shrug:

[Throckmorton]

37. Radio Days

"Stop it, you'll hurt the boy"

[Gothic Sponge]

38. It's a Wonderful Life

[skygazer]

39. Casablanca

I love the clothes, I love Rick's place. All the men wore hats and jackets. The club was great, the music was cool. Besides, even though it was in a lot of ways a horrible time with WWII going on, it was also an exciting time.

[tigereye]

40. 20s- 30s era "Mystery" series on PBS

love the wit and the clothes.

[lapislzi]

41. I would love to think I was brave and noble

and fighting the good fight while wearing evening clothes. And that I could give up the love of my life because it was the Right Thing to Do and become the tragic first lady of Czechoslovakia.

[skygazer]

42. That's one of the things I always loved about that movie

The message of sacrifice, that there really are things more important than our own personal issues. Now people are so wrapped up in their own happiness, they often don't think about the larger picture.