The White Flannel Film and Similar Genres

In 1996, Andrea Shaw wrote Seen That, Now What?: The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Video You Really Want to Watch, a movie guide arranged by genre, mood, and theme, and occasionally by actor and director.

There are eleven main groupings: Action, Comedy, Drama, Documentaries, Foreign Films, Horror, Kids, Musicals, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Thrillers, and Westerns. Each is further subdivided into more specific genres, such as "white flannel," which is highlighted on the back of the book, and almost synonymous with "Merchant-Ivory film". ("White flannel" derives from the white flannel trousers men would wear to teas, garden parties, and so on. See Emily Post: "If some semi-formal occasion comes up, such as a country tea, the time-worn conservative blue coat with white flannel trousers is perennially good.") As Shaw writes, "As in other costume dramas, the period details are celebrations of all that was brilliant and luxurious, with the camera sweeping over British, Indian, or African countryscapes and exquisite turn-of-the-century interiors. But all this lush upholstery doesn't cover up the intelligent, thoughtful stories--usually based on Lawrence, Forster, and Waugh novels--played by stellar British actors" (pp. 218-219). On page 255, Shaw adds, "Messrs. Merchant and Ivory and company continue to crank out these handsome literate films of pre-World War II Britain and her subjects that combine photogenic nostalgia for a gracious way of life now gone, and an often humorous examination of its foibles." Wikipedia describes the typical "Merchant-Ivory film" as "a period piece set in the early 20th century, usually in Edwardian England, featuring lavish sets and top British actors portraying genteel characters who suffer from disillusion and tragic entanglements."



Of course, settings range from the late Victorian era to the late 1930s, and from Africa (Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes) to Boston (The Bostonians). (Remember, as Wikipedia says, " [i]n all art forms, genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries. Genres are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.") James Ivory was the quintessential white flannel director and his comedy of manners A Room With a View (1986) the quintessential white flannel/Merchant-Ivory film.

Similar to white flannel are certain Japanese costume dramas which share its time frame, such as Kon Ichikawa's Makioka Sisters (1983), in which four sisters in Osaka witness the slow decline of their family's fortune. Shaw also notes French versions of Merchant-Ivory: "Marcel Pagnol's novels and memoirs that take place in southern France are often the basis for these nostalgic stories..." (p. 313). Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1987) and Yves Robert's My Father's Glory (1991) are prime specimens of the genre. Each had a sequel, Manon of the Spring (1987) and My Mother's Castle (1991), respectively.

Hawaii's film industry is far from mature, but as it grows, I would like to see adaptations of what I call the kama`aina style genre: lush, elegiac stories of Hawaii's haole and Hawaiian elites in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. John Dominis Holt is the quintessential author here. (Not only do I intend to read his works but also the article by Sheldon Hershinow, titled, "John Dominis Holt: Hawaiian-American Traditionalist" [MELUS, 7:2, Summer, 1980, pp. 61-72].) To get an idea of what a kama`aina style movie would look like, I recommend Picture Bride.