Movies Set In the First Decade of the Twentieth Century: 1900-1909

Lagaan (2001). Bollywood movie actually set in 1893, but it shows the cultural mileau of India under British rule. Warning: it’s long, with subtitles, but well worth the time.

Finding Neverland stars Johnny Depp as playwright James Barrie. I wrote about my initial impressions of the movie here. I would like to see the move again, and I think it might make a better impression the second time around.

Miss Potter (2006). Fictionalized biography of authoress Beatrix Potter.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Musical set in St. Louis, Missouri during the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904.

Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Another classic musical set in Tsarist Russia in 1905.

How Green Was My Valley. Based on a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, this film features a Welsh family and the mining community in which they live around the turn of the century. the movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1941.

Yankee Doodle Dandy. Biopic about American songwriter and composer George M. Cohan, starring James Cagney as Cohan. The song “Yankee Doodle Boy” was Cohan’s signature piece as a composer and as a song-and-dance man himself who performed his own work. The film came out in 1942, and production began on it just a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. So the movie was purposefully patriotic to the max in order to lift the spirits of an American audience headed into war.

The Winslow Boy. We just watched this movie, set in Britain and based on a true story, yesterday. Well, I watched, and the urchins fell asleep. It’s not an exciting or fast-moving plot-driven picture. However, the script and the setting are intriguing. The story is about an upper middle class family who sacrifice everything—their savings, the daughter’s upcoming marriage, the older son’s career—to defend the honor of the younger son who is accused of stealing a five shilling postal order and is expelled from military school. The boy, Ronnie, says he didn’t do it, and the family honor is at stake. Such a different world, different values. You can read more about the movie, the play by Terrence Rattigan, and the historical incident that Rattigan mined for his play at Wikipedia.

My twentieth century history students are supposed to choose one of these movies set in the first decade of the century to watch and then write a reflection paper (kind of like a blog post, at least like my blog posts) about the movie. Which one would you suggest to them if they asked your advice? Do you have any other suggestions for movies set in this time period?

4 thoughts on “Movies Set In the First Decade of the Twentieth Century: 1900-1909

  1. I loved Miss Potter, of course. :-). The only other one if these that I’ve seen is Meet Me in St. Louis which is fun but also a musical, which (of course) makes it frou-frouey and not appealing to just anyone (meaning many males, like my dh). I think I tried to watch How Green Was My Valley once (and maybe even to read the book), but I didn’t persevere. Oh, and I’ve seen Finding Neverland, which I thought was rather odd, though whether that was because of Barrie or Depp, I can’t say.

  2. I enjoyed the music in Lagaan so much I have it in my music library.

    I’ve seen most of these and I’d recommend anything that’s older or made elsewhere (like Lagaan) so they’re not distracted by well known recent actors.

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