![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've watched a lot more content about vintage lingerie on YouTube since the last time I tried to watch any Marple mysteries.
That newest series of productions, with Geraldine McEwan and then Julia Mackenzie - they really spared no expense on the visual design, and they got really good actors, which helps cover up for about half the scripts being mediocre to abysmal. But it's really rather remarkable to see how much money they poured into it without using a single 1950s brassiere. I mean, the difference in silhouette is unmistakable, isn't it?
Of course they have been the victims of modern productions feeling they can't go outside certain boundary lines of, like, the minimum allowable amount of sexiness, which also account for all the women going out with their hair down and uncovered in historical stuff, and all the female characters who wake up with perfect hair and makeup and wear bras under their pajamas and nightdresses.
But it's funnier, for several reasons, at least to me, with the 1950s. I mean, in the 1950s there was LOTS of lingerie, which is right up the alley of Minimum Allowable Sexiness, but because it was pointy it's not allowed!
And then there's the fact that most of the novels aren't actually set in the 1950s to begin with.
Obviously, the choice to set Poirot universally in the 1930s was a stroke of genius. It gave that show a signature look, which, with the high production values at least later in the show, made it always fun to watch. I suppose on the face of it the idea of doing the same thing with Marple and simply picking a new decade seemed like a good idea. But apart from the lower quality of the scripts in the Marple series, they really don't do nearly as good a job with the wardrobe.
I mean the characters in Marple, at least to my level of expertise - hobbyist but it's not my favorite era, nitpicky but not an expert - all seem to wear things that totally would have been worn by someone in the 1950s, but they often don't seem to be wearing the right things for their characters, and there's a suspicious lack of certain kinds of things - believably shabby, or old, or dull-colored.
And then there's the hair. Just an overwhelming majority of women in the 1950s went out with their hair up, or done, and short hair was INCREDIBLY popular. And this isn't weird esoteric knowledge. There's oceans of television and film from the entire modern western world filmed in the 1950s, lots of it in color! There are oceans of photographic evidence of the clothing and heads of real women, too. Short hair was extremely popular, and women with long hair usually had it done up - if not set at a salon, then often in an approximation of that same sort of style. There were so few women going around with long hair worn loose (or in ponytails, or half ponytails) in the 1950s that you might have a hard time believing it, if you're a modern person whose mental image of the 50s has been influenced by the modern "pinup" and "rockabilly" and "vintage" subcultures/lifestyles/dress movements. But if you're a professional visual designer getting paid money to visually oversee a period film, you damned well should have a better idea of what it actually looked like.
That newest series of productions, with Geraldine McEwan and then Julia Mackenzie - they really spared no expense on the visual design, and they got really good actors, which helps cover up for about half the scripts being mediocre to abysmal. But it's really rather remarkable to see how much money they poured into it without using a single 1950s brassiere. I mean, the difference in silhouette is unmistakable, isn't it?
Of course they have been the victims of modern productions feeling they can't go outside certain boundary lines of, like, the minimum allowable amount of sexiness, which also account for all the women going out with their hair down and uncovered in historical stuff, and all the female characters who wake up with perfect hair and makeup and wear bras under their pajamas and nightdresses.
But it's funnier, for several reasons, at least to me, with the 1950s. I mean, in the 1950s there was LOTS of lingerie, which is right up the alley of Minimum Allowable Sexiness, but because it was pointy it's not allowed!
And then there's the fact that most of the novels aren't actually set in the 1950s to begin with.
Obviously, the choice to set Poirot universally in the 1930s was a stroke of genius. It gave that show a signature look, which, with the high production values at least later in the show, made it always fun to watch. I suppose on the face of it the idea of doing the same thing with Marple and simply picking a new decade seemed like a good idea. But apart from the lower quality of the scripts in the Marple series, they really don't do nearly as good a job with the wardrobe.
I mean the characters in Marple, at least to my level of expertise - hobbyist but it's not my favorite era, nitpicky but not an expert - all seem to wear things that totally would have been worn by someone in the 1950s, but they often don't seem to be wearing the right things for their characters, and there's a suspicious lack of certain kinds of things - believably shabby, or old, or dull-colored.
And then there's the hair. Just an overwhelming majority of women in the 1950s went out with their hair up, or done, and short hair was INCREDIBLY popular. And this isn't weird esoteric knowledge. There's oceans of television and film from the entire modern western world filmed in the 1950s, lots of it in color! There are oceans of photographic evidence of the clothing and heads of real women, too. Short hair was extremely popular, and women with long hair usually had it done up - if not set at a salon, then often in an approximation of that same sort of style. There were so few women going around with long hair worn loose (or in ponytails, or half ponytails) in the 1950s that you might have a hard time believing it, if you're a modern person whose mental image of the 50s has been influenced by the modern "pinup" and "rockabilly" and "vintage" subcultures/lifestyles/dress movements. But if you're a professional visual designer getting paid money to visually oversee a period film, you damned well should have a better idea of what it actually looked like.
