History Vs. Hollywood

Titanic is too late to be the "Gilded Age". The Gilded Age is latter 19th century after the Civil War. Twain coined the phrase in 1873.

I can only think of films that start in the correct era and continue on to outside of it such as Unsinkable Molly Brown or Showboat.
The gilded age(1865-1901) for Americans movies covers mostly the westerns, musicals and classic monster flicks while European films are all about late Victorian literature and colonial empires. Oscar Wilde, Jules Vern adaptations perhaps. It is the era of robber barons and beginnings of labour unions so there must be something out there.
Maybe a Judy Garland piece. Or a lite comedy like [/I]The Assassination Bureau[I]

Judy Garland! Meet Me In St. Louis is close--but still a little too late. 1904.

Many Westerns, as pointed out above, would be in this time frame, like Unforgiven (1881). But I think when people talk about the Gilded Age they mean the period of industrialization and widening income inequality in the East, not the hardscrabble West.

I think the problem is most people expand the era out into the Edwardian period so they can associate films like My Fair Lady withit based on the costumes more than anything.

WWI is a more obvious dividing line than the deaths of Victoria and Edward.

Well, the Gilded Age doesn't stretch out to 1912. It just doesn't. Plus, the "Gilded Age" is an American term referring to a particular time in American history.

There's The Elephant Man...but that's English too. Ditto a billion Jack the Ripper or Sherlock Holmes movies.

Searching IMDb just revealed a great one! Namely, Orson Welles and The Magnificent Ambersons. Guess you'd have to count Citizen Kane too for its scenes of Kane's youth and early career in newspapers.

There's that awful Kate and Leopold movie as well, with Meg Ryan.

If Scorsese and DiCaprio ever get around to making The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, that would be perfect.

It's also a much more arbitrary end date when social conditions didn't change all that much in 1901, but made a noticeable switch thanks to the war. And the Gilded Age term is more of an Americanization of Victorian than anything, like how we call it soccer.

Historians are content to extend "19th century" to 1914 even though it's 14 years after.

Biopics of historical figures would be best bet though I have a nagging memory of a flick where the lead character winds up at Dr.Kellogg's sanatorium with much talk of bowel movements and other body function obsessions of the period.

Road to Wellville there's barely some utility that it looks at sexuality of the day.

Yankee Doodle Dandy also fits here. It tells the story of Cohan from his birth in 1878 up until he receives the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1936.

Life With Father takes place in NYC during the Gilded Age, 1890s I think. Great movie, stars William Powell, Irene Dunne, and 15 year old Elizabeth Taylor.

Isn't Age of Innocence set in there?

Too bad The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing is a couple of years too late(1906).

I think things started changing quite a bit around 1901 in America. We'd become an imperial power with the Spanish-American War and the very shady annexation of Hawaii. We started building the Panama Canal. Automobiles started to catch on in a big way (that being one of the main plot points of The Magnificent Ambersons above.) Ditto movies. Theodore Roosevelt's trustbusting was a decisive break with the unfettered capitalism that Twain was talking about.

Agreed that things didn't change in Europe all that much until the Great War, but "Gilded Age" is of course an American term describing an American epoch.

I'd go with The Magnificent Ambersons and The Age of Innocence as a double feature.

Anyway, so much care went into chronicling the events on that night of who did what and who said what and who was last seen where. And Cameron paid nearly obsessive attention to those facts and extrapolations. Granted there was plenty of conjecture, like identifying Murrdoch as the reported officer who shot himself and passengers. As well as the natural urge not to speak ill of the dead, etiquette of the day and no one wanting to admit to some of the more heinous acts of that evening, but being important to present in thei history.

Lightoller in particular gave varying accounts of his gunplay during the sinking, while he deserves praise for his heroism and his actions could very well be understandable given the circumstances as well as his subsequent silence on those subjects, it's impossible not to be peeved about how he sanitised his own history throughout his life.

Where it frustrates me is Cammeron got some of the things so perfect, but you get lost in the schmaltz.

The more deserving Best Picture nominee that year LA Confidential had the fictional story set against a historical backdrop in common with Titanic. It's story was more tonally correct, while having a looser tie to history.

IIRC the movie is pretty accurate in its depiction of events, minus the whole layering on of a fictional story, of course. And that most of what is depicted at least has some basis in legend--IOW, Murdoch might not actually have shot anybody, but someone once said that he did.

I tend not to care about the details in Titanic. I mean I didn't go to the movie to learn real history. I went to see a story. In that respect it works really well as a movie. It gets enough true (and includes details that may or may not be true) to work spectacularly. I admit that I first saw it at 12 and just fell in love with it all but I went through a period of thinking it was not good at all and have come back around liking it a great deal. I think it did deserve to be Best Picture of that year. I like it more than all the others.

I have problems with the Titanic story, but I like to look at the pretty dresses and the period detail.

I like it too. The Titanic itself had a big role in my family coming to America, so the movie is something I've always enjoyed watching when it's on.

I do realize Titanic officially does not take place in the Gilded Age, but it still evidences the disparities between the upper and lower classes. I reference it because I can be sure all the students have seen a part of it and it can give them a sense of knowledge. The annexation of Hawaii and Span-American war also took place during the official Gilded Age as both happened before 1901. While there were political changes by the progressives, social changes lagged behind.

On the subject of progressives, I wish there was a better movie version of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire than the made for tv version with Tom Bosley and Stephanie Zimbalist.

Well if it's class issues you are after the real life scandal that is behind The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing fits the bill. Sex, murder, social climbing, revenge, rivalry, old money, new money and so on but I have no idea how close to the real events the film is only that it has a young Joan Collins in it.

Which was meticulously accurate, so you can enjoy it guilt free.

Cammeron hit him with a tripple whammy, attributing the likely shootings and likely suicide to him and having him accept the fictional bribe.

One thing I never really have seen presented in any Titanic films or documentaries is that the ship had a capacity of 3,500 passengers and crew, so the disaster could have been worse.

Mine too! Well, sort of. My great-grandmother and her family were on the Carpathia on its next voyage from Europe after the crew assisted with the Titanic rescue.

Titanic will always have a special place in my heart for causing my father (of all people!) to call me immediately after seeing it to inform me that Victor Newman was in it.

I watched The Age of Innocence several times recently (what? Nothing better was on and I enjoyed playing spot-the-actor). My abject hatred for Edith Wharton continues unabated, but the exquisite amount of attention to detail is something else.