I like films and TV series that are period pieces. I'm especially fond of the attention to detail that usually accompanies these shows. It's fascinating to see the breakfast cereals of the 1950s or hear expressions that were popular in the 1930s or even as far back as the 1830s.
I remember a film professor once saying that period pieces are as much about the present day as they are about the period in which they are set. In ancient Greece or Rome is the setting, it's fascinating to see the hairstyles or the clothing and determine if anything of current value has slipped through the creators or the art designers of the film.
So it was while watching the PBS series Hotel Portofino, something recently came to attention. This is a wonderful series set in Italy in the late 1920s and early 1930s about a beautiful hotel run by and largely for British folks. Of course in this post-WWI period, the rise of Mussolini is paramount as well as the general zeitgeist of the era.
In one scene I recently saw, a gentleman is asked how he manages to keep calm throughout a recent tumultuous episode. He responds using the phrase. "I keep my cool." Immediately, red lights started blinking in my head. Would that expression have been used in that time period? Now I know that very few people care about this but I was determined to find out.
My research traced the expression to the 1950s, where I would have guessed it belonged. That's because it was the era of 'cool" jazz, so it figures the term might have entered the popular vernacular. But there was mention of expressions like losing one's "cool reserve" or "cool head" that were in use earlier. Apparently, the term was shortened to just losing one's cool a couple of decades later. OK, what, if anything does this mean? Probably nothing, but I'm curious if they don't have people who give a critical reading of scripts for period pieces so they can pick up these inconsistencies. If not, I might just have created a new job for myself.
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