Films for Homes

[poetman]

I would love some suggestions for old films--or even modern period pieces--that have great shots inside vintage homes. I was watching some "Miracle on 34th Street," and the inside of the apartment was beautiful. I would love to read some other suggestions from fellow loungers.

Happy Holidays!

 

[The Wolf]

Another Christmas movie, "The Bishop's Wife" has some lovely interiors.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[sweetfrancaise]

Ooh, good topic. Try Holiday--I never get tired of looking at the interior shots in that film!

 

[carter]

I agree, this is an excellent topic. It depends on what decade or era you are interested in. Here are a few suggestions.

I've always loved the interior shots in Mrs. Minniver with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon.

The interiors in The Sky's the Limit with Fred Astaire and Joan Leslie are scrumptious. This film is hard to find.

The interiors in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House with Cary Grant and Mryna Loy.

The interiors in My Favorite Wife with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.

[Not a home but] The Diner Interior at the beginning of The Killers with Burt Lancaster is spot on.

fftopic:
I kept rolling the recording of the last episode of Journey Man (2007 - TV) back last evening because I was very interested in the interior partitioning of their home. I really like this stuff. Must be my theatre background. [huh]

 

[Brian Sheridan]

I'm not sure if you are asking for Homes decorated for the holidays but if you are looking for outstanding interiors from Golden Age films, buy yourself these books:

Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies (Architecture and Film, 2) (Paperback) by Donald Albrecht

Screen Deco (Architecture and Film, 3.) (Paperback)
by Howard Mandelbaum (Author), Eric Myers (Author)

Forties Screen Style: A Celebration of High Pastiche in Hollywood (Architecture and Film, 4) (Paperback)
by Howard Mandelbaum (Author), Eric Myers (Author)

 

[Quigley Brown]

Watch Magnificent Ambersons & Meet Me in St. Louis to see some great Victorian homes.

 

[Lady Day]

Grand Hotel

LD
(the hotel doors in that film are A M A Z I N G).

 

[dhermann1]

I was watching a DVD of After the Thin Man the other day, and taking extensive notes on the interior of Nick and Nora's home. Very Art Deco/Art Moderne of 1936.

 

[postercollect]

Christmas In Connecticut

I watched this movie last night and loved the country home, spacious with enviable features, including a gorgeous fireplace.

 

[AmateisGal]

I watched this movie last night and loved the country home, spacious with enviable features, including a gorgeous fireplace.

I'll second this! Beautiful shots of the country home - kitchen, bedrooms, living areas, etc.

 

[poetman]

Thanks for the replies. I should clarify, I don't mean holiday decorated interiors, but just Art Deco (30-40's homes).

Thanks All! I get a real thrill from watching films that have great interior spaces. PBS showed a Sherlock Holmes episode on Master Piece theater a while back, and the interiors of that 19th century home were breath taking! I'm still trying to find a cop of that!

 

[Fletch]

You really, really need to see Les mystères du château du dé, an incredible surrealist two-reeler made by Man Ray in 1929, filmed in a classic International Style villa designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens.

The first link will take you to an online video of the film.
The second has still pictures of the villa. It's still there in the French countryside.

 

[hepkitten]

Two of my favorites for interior settings: Radio Days, with its lovely recreation of an average '40s urban home, and Call Northside 777.

 

[MAGNAVERDE]

For biggest, shiniest, white-enamel-&-nickel kitchen ever, watch My Man Godfrey.

Also, check out Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise from 1932, one of the funniest (and most amoral) films ever made. Every character but one is up to something or other, but they're all goodlooking, beautifully--and in the case of the lovely Kay Thompson, beautifuuwy--dressed & funny as all get out, and all the thievery happens in the impossibly glamorous homes & offices of the super-rich. Best of all, it all ends happily, proving that crime does, indeed, pay. Obviously, this was pre-Code.

 

[MAGNAVERDE]

errata...

The above post is an excellent demonstration of what happens when one tries to write and carry on a telephone conversation at the same time. Or, at least, it's what happens when I try to do both simultaneously. Obviously, I was speaking not of Kay Thompson, but of the of the lovely Kay Fwancis. I'm not even sure who Kay Thompson is.

Two more movies with great 193Os interiors: notice the all-white hotel interiors in The Gay Divorcee, starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and some really swell Venetian blinds. And there's the underrated Bogart & Bacall film called Dark Passage, much of which takes place in a beauty of a Moderne apartment building in San Francisco. For once, it's not just a set, but a real building that's still there in the 13OO block of Montgomery Street.

 

[Josephine]

I Like Father of the Bride (the original) for nice house shots, and Bringing Up Baby, if I'm remembering the movie correctly. I also remember one movie, where the male character (and I'm thinking older male, like Spencer Tracy) was grumpy and they had people over, and when the guests went to leave, the one irritating woman said, speaking to the wife, "I feel badly for you", and the male character went off on how feeling badly meant you couldn't feel well with your hands and he made grabby motions at her at face height. ANYWAY, I think that movie, if anyone can help me remember which it was, also had great interior shots.

 

[imoldfashioned]

I'm a sucker for what I call the "crossed curtain" houses in late 1930's films--the homey, "country" houses that usually have crossed, sheer white curtains with ruffles somewhere in the place.

I love Carole Lombard's house in In Name Only (1939) and Norma Shearer's "country house" in The Women (1939) is great too (there's an especially nice stove in the kitchen if my memory serves). Also, Fred MacMurray's mother's house in Remember the Night (1940) is lovely.