9 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK: Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Maybelline

  1. Loving the snark! Heavy make up is sooooo distracting in period films! I thought P&P 1995 and 2005 did a great job except for the Mr. Darcy walking across the field scene in 2005. Smoky eye overload! Cheeks contoured into the 21st century!

  2. So many facepalm moments; can’t help but notice that a lot of them feature Joan Collins. I’ve come to the conclusion that if something is a television film, it’s less likely to be accurate especially the hair and makeup. There was a brief golden moment in the mid-90s when the BBC seemed to do hair and makeup fairly accurately and inconspicuously, but I fear that moment has passed us by. I will say that to be fair to Jane Seymour in “The Scarlet Pimpernell,” her character was an actress who had just come off stage, and at that moment she’s in her dressing room and has only taken her costume off, but not the stage makeup. Say what you will about the character’s makeup in this film, but the costumes are to die for. Anything that was a major film production from the 1960s back, we can forget about the actors looking anything other than inhabitants of their real life time. I mean – that Lady Godiva with her wash & set curled back fringe – ugh!

  3. As long as the film industry has an obsession with youth and beauty in women, most lead actresses are going to be made-up even in period films. Even off-screen, makeup is almost required. I’ve read articles where the interviewer mentions the actress is not wearing much or any makeup–“but then, she doesn’t need it.” It’s considered almost daring for a female celebrity to appear in public without it.

    1. Makeup isn’t the problem – obviously modern makeup in historical flicks is! Of course actors are going to wear makeup onscreen. But just like wearing a historical costume, the makeup should look relevant to the historical period that’s being portrayed.

  4. As a rule FROCK FLICKS makes me feel young – contemplating periods so distant from our own will have that effect on a body – but being reminded that elements in the audience will quite reasonably miss the “Maybe she’s born with it …” reference because they’re too young to have seen it ‘in the wild’ makes me feel like Pericles looking at the modern Acropolis (Presumably wondering what the heck happened to his nice, shiny Parthenon*).

    *Put in a nutshell, “A whole lot of history, at least one explosion and a certain amount of souvenir hunting.”

  5. This was a great rundown, period by period, and a lot of fun!

    One tiny quibble, though– it’s maybe a bit much to expect even “a smidge of research” from LA TOUR DE NESLE (1968).

    Despite that French release title referencing the Alexandre Dumas play, it was a sexploitation flick known in Germany as THE TOWER OF FORBIDDEN LOVE and in the U.S. as TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS and in the U.K. as SHE LOST HER… YOU KNOW WHAT. (Germany was doing a bunch of “historical” sex films at this time, like the FRAU WIRTIN series set in Napoleonic times.)

  6. One more reason I love my favorite movie, Crimson Peak, is that they play around with diagetic makeup. The story is set in 1901, and you can see that in daytime/Out In Public scenes Lucille is clearly wearing a bit of lip and cheek rouge- contrasted with her nightwear look where it’s not present. Edith, our heroine, never seems to be wearing any at all except in her one formal scene. I’ve never seen a movie do that unless it’s the over-the-top doll myth of 17th-18th century makeup, and it’s fascinating to me.

Feel the love

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.