Figure 2.--The main character in English movie "The "Magnet" is mostly seem in his school uniform, even for after school play. |
You can also slect the movies available on HBC by using this alphabetical movie listing. At this time only a few movies have been analized by HBC for clothing information, but more pages are being added all the time.
The German movie " M " is a film classic. It was shot by the
great German director, Fritz Lang. He began making silent films in Berlin in
the 1920s and made his first speaking movie in 1931 with this very influential
film, titled simply "M". The title comes from a chalk mark on the murderer's
overcoat, put there by a citizen who discovers his guilt, the "M" of course
standing for murderer The story concerns a child molester and serial killer
(played by Peter Lorre) who is finally trapped, not by the police, but by a
group of people from the criminal underworld of a great city (by implication
Berlin). The film is always mentioned as being the genesis of what today is
referred to as "film noir". There are many street scenes showing the fashions of the early 1930s in Germany.
The children of a Japanese island village witness the changes brought by their country's defeat in World War II.
This beautifully acted film is a lovely but challenging comedy drama. It deals with a boy who prefers to dress and act as a girl. The young actor did a great job playing Ludavich. The film about a boy who wants to dress and be a girl. It adresses the question of difference and reactions to it. The boy's parents are at first perplexed and then ostrasized by neighbors. More pertinent to HBC is the large number of boys involve and their clothing is a good sampling of French boys clothing in 1997. Many boys wear long shorts, all with ankle socks. In one interesting scene the boy looks out the window to see two boys and how they play together. His parents have been incouraging him to act more like a boy. The two boys are dressed as American howboys and having a gun fight. Of course the movie seeks to make the point that male behavior can be distructive. Interesting that they neede to dress the two boys as Americans to make this point. The boy's two brothers have a traditional short back and sides hair cut and wear short and longpants. They are typical energetic little boys and have trouble understanding their gender confused little brother.
The mum is wonderful in this film and in the end the dad just excepts that maybe his son will one day be gender reassigned in to a girl or woman or let him be.
ET-type movie featuring a nice boy named Eric (Jade Calegory) who is new in the neighborhood. The film is a poor imitation of ET. The only (and I do mean
ONLY) worthwhile feature of this ET ripoff/product-placement fest, is that it features a main character with a physical disability, and no big deal is made of it; Eric (who's about 10 or 12) is a paraplegic (as is Jade Calegory, who played him); he leads two Federal agents on a chase down the freeway and through a large department store, in his then
state-of-the-art yellow sports wheelchair. As for clothes, everything's fairly typical of what I remember as late 80s summer clothing, except that Eric never wore shorts (possibly for reasons relating to his disability) and the girls seemed to have more colorful and plentiful accessories than I remember (this movie took place in California; the HBC reader who provided this review grew up in New England so that may explain that!)
British boys build a fort with a machine gun they take out of a downed German airplane during World War II.
A drifter in the modern west forms an attachment of a young runaway boy. Clay O'Brien.
The Chilean film "Machuca" is set during September 11, 1973, the day when Salvador Allende's socialist government in Chile was overthrown by General Pinochet's military coup. The coup provides the background events for the friendship of two schoolboys. The child characters are Gonzalo played by Matias Quer on the left and Pedro played by Arield Mateluna on the right. They hail from opposite sides of the tracks, Gonzalo from an upper-middle class family whilst Pedro lives in an illegal shantytown. They unite to fend off school bullies and a touching friendship develops.
One of those absurd post nuclear war disintegration of society movies. Some boys are involved.
A widow is murdered by two demented children who are using her late husband's room for their games.
Woman takes care of the children of prostitutes while they are working. One scene shows prostitutes visiting their children. .
Dickie Moore
Rather a melodramatic film with Launa Turner, but a few boys appear. A woman fakes her death so as not to embarrass her husband and small son. I didn't see the beginning, but the son was pictured in pajamas on a cruise ship when I tuned in. I don't know if he was pictured in shorts earlier. He was small, about 7 years or so. When he again appears it is as a young man. Some children are pictured later, it is a little difficult to follow her travels. I think it was in Copengage, Denmark. Some of the boys are in shorts even though it is the dead of winter. The first wears a British-style cap (or caps worn by well-dressed American boys in the 1940s-60s), which seems rather strange for Denmark. He wore a coat with shorts and dark knee socks. I'd say he is about 9 or 10. In that same scene she comes across a second, younger boy, also in shorts and knee socks and thinks at first he is her son. The boy also wears a peaked cap and a mathing cammelhair coat with black shorts and kneesocks.
Newly weds try to cope with the problem of parenting and interfering inlaws.
Rather tedious movie. The movie is about a young woman and man. Most of the beginning scenes deal with them as adults and then flash back to their childhood. You have to set through the girl's experiences until finally you get to the boy. There is a brief scene of his mother fussing over him in his first communion suit, but you can't see the pants--they are probably longs.
Billy Jacoby
A man tries to buy land and is refused, he then claims Lassie. Lassie helps to reaffirm a young boy's faith in humanity when she prevents several crises in a peaceful valley.
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A British boy about 11 years old or so cheats a younger boy out of his magnet. The youbger boy gets into trouble and the older boy is ashamed about his role in it. He thinks the police are after him. His father can't figure out why his son keeps wearing short pants. He thinks that perhaps the boy may be clinging to his childhood. The almost lyrical opening and closing sequences of this film have achieved legendary status. The older boys wears a typical outfits for the early 1950s, a short pants school unioform which he wears even after school. The younger boy appaers briefly in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, but I'm not sure quite why. This is one of many beautifully made British films during the post-World War II period. While wonderfully scripted and acted, unfortunately these films just could not compete with bop-o action of Holluwood films. William Fox
Like Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons was another Orson Wells masterpiece. A complete copy of Wells film, however, does not exist.
All that is left is the extensively cut version released by the studio. It is unfortunate that Ambersons, regarded by some as a work finer than even Kane, should
be a film of speculation. Some believe that had a complete copy of the film managed to exist today it would be The Magnificent Ambersons and not Citizen Kane which would be hailed as the greatest film ever made. This classic movie begins (about 1885) with some superb shots of the protagonist as a terribly spoiled boy. He wears lovely sausage curls and appears in both a Fauntleroy suit and a kilt. He is teased for his sissy clothes and gets into a fight. Two of the very best sissy outfits I have ever seen. Based on the Booth Tarkington novel about an eccentric Indiana family clinging to tradition during a time of social change.
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A teenager runs away from home after his stepfather cheats him out of a $10,000 inheritance. David Kyle
Mindful that the accuracy of historical films are suspect, The Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines is the story of a race for early aviators from London to Paris in the early 1900's. One competitor is Count Emilio Ponticelli. He has eight children of whom four are boys. Their ages appear to be about 4, 9, 12, and 15. I'm not sure what the 4-year old wears. The 9 year old wears a sailor tunic. It is longer than the usual tunics of the period. He wears a pom-pom beret and ankle strap shoes and white ankle socks. The 12 year old wears above the knee shorts with long black stockings and the 15 year old wears a Norfolk Jacket suit with below knee knickers.
A morality play pitting an idealistic Salvation Army worker against her farther who owns a munitions plant. Rather tedious film with some big names. There are some fleeting scenes with kids, all wearing shorts and knee socks.
Major Payne, a retired marine, becomes a ROTC commander at a Virginia prep school. The boys seem a bit younger than American prep age. The Major knows nothing about kids and uses unorthodox methods, such as putting them all into dresses. Areader recalls more details, but is not sure of the title. "This is a school story set in an American private school concerns a group of misfits and a black ex-soldier. He has the task of educating the kids to be caring and well motivated. There are lots of adventures as the boys do all they can to rebel
against the the teachers regime. The youngest boy is inspired by a story about 'The Little Train.' A scene has the teacher going into the boys bedroom after the
child has complained of spooks in a cupboard. The teacher takes his revolver and shoots into it. The teacher wins through and transforms the misfits into successful students."
Set around the singing of a 10-year old star (Bobby Breen) who plays Chip Winters. Chip goes to a summer camp located deep in the Maine woods. He makes friends with Johnny Selden, a failing composer played rather incongrously by Basil Rathbone. Selden has decided that a stay in the country might spark his creative juices. Chip decided that Johnny might be just what his widowed mother, also a singer, needs. Billy Lee plays one of the campers Pee Wee. Not a very imaginative film. You do know what is going to have after just the first few minutes. The film is purely a vehicle for Breen's singing.
A French farce about a man who wants a baby. He runs into an old lover with a 7-year old son, Eric.
A spoiled rich kid offers $10,000 to a street wise teenager to finish out his last year at a prep school (American type) for him. Amusing little film showing American teen fashions.
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The wonderful, sensitive Italian film, "Malena" (2000) is set in a small town in Sicily (Castelcuto) during World War II. The film begins in 1940.. The story concerns a beautiful woman, Malena Scordia, who moves with her young husband to Castelcuto, where her
father is a deaf Latin teacher. Her husband is almost immediately sent away as a soldier to fight in Musolini's Fascist army, leaving his ravishing young wife behind to be amorously admired by nearly all the men of the town including most of the adolescent boys. One of these boys, Renato Amoroso, is about 14 and still in short pants, which causes him considerable embarassment with his school mates and friends, the majority of whom have graduated to long trousers. Renato falls hopelessly in love with Malena and becomes obsessed with her every movement. He follows her everywhere, and in fact we experience Malena's tragic story through the eyes of her adolescent admirer, Renato.
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