Personally, it was very hard for me to get emotionally invested and mentally immersed into the world and characters of "Cavalcade." Each of the characters has paper thin motivation and arcs, seems more like a stereotype based on social class and gender, and there are no super jaw-dropping performances that reel you in either. The dialogue is very soap-y and melodramatic. It just is all very boring, and the nearly century old audio mixing and picture quality doesn't exactly help.
The concept is really interesting; showing the effects of a third of a century's events on a group of characters. It's a concept that would be executed much better later in the history of movies, but it's also kind of hard to fault the film as this is still very early on in the history of the medium. Unfortunately, major events such as the Boer War, the funeral of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, and World War I are all events that just happen off screen. So we never get to actually see any of the characters in the moment but rather just see them talking about their feelings about events and how it personally effects them in bedrooms and parlor rooms and such.
I also really disliked how the last years, from 1918 to New Year's Eve 1932, are sped through in the final fifteen minutes of the film, and how it all of the sudden has a change of theming towards the social change that occurred during those fifteen years (which we barely saw any of) in a very brief montage. It felt extremely rushed. In a real world context, it's interesting to see that many of the problems that they faced, such as a culture that is growing more apathetic and cynical and materialistic, is similar to today's world.
It is unfortunate that the call to action to have hope for the future and to snap out of that lethargic societal attitude was missed on audiences, and only six years after the film's release, the world was plunged into another war that was even bloodier and longer than any of the events that are depicted in this film. It adds a unique and interesting layer to watching this movie in the twenty-first century rather than the twentieth, as we are able to look back at the other two-thirds of that century and realize that things were just warming up in that inter-war period of the 1920s and 30s.
I wouldn't really recommend "Cavalcade", I think there are a lot better movies like "Forrest Gump" that take that whole "group of characters living out a paradigm period of history" concept to a higher level than this film. It is a curiosity as a Best Picture winner, but it is incredibly dated and has not stood the test of time so well.
The concept is really interesting; showing the effects of a third of a century's events on a group of characters. It's a concept that would be executed much better later in the history of movies, but it's also kind of hard to fault the film as this is still very early on in the history of the medium. Unfortunately, major events such as the Boer War, the funeral of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, and World War I are all events that just happen off screen. So we never get to actually see any of the characters in the moment but rather just see them talking about their feelings about events and how it personally effects them in bedrooms and parlor rooms and such.
I also really disliked how the last years, from 1918 to New Year's Eve 1932, are sped through in the final fifteen minutes of the film, and how it all of the sudden has a change of theming towards the social change that occurred during those fifteen years (which we barely saw any of) in a very brief montage. It felt extremely rushed. In a real world context, it's interesting to see that many of the problems that they faced, such as a culture that is growing more apathetic and cynical and materialistic, is similar to today's world.
It is unfortunate that the call to action to have hope for the future and to snap out of that lethargic societal attitude was missed on audiences, and only six years after the film's release, the world was plunged into another war that was even bloodier and longer than any of the events that are depicted in this film. It adds a unique and interesting layer to watching this movie in the twenty-first century rather than the twentieth, as we are able to look back at the other two-thirds of that century and realize that things were just warming up in that inter-war period of the 1920s and 30s.
I wouldn't really recommend "Cavalcade", I think there are a lot better movies like "Forrest Gump" that take that whole "group of characters living out a paradigm period of history" concept to a higher level than this film. It is a curiosity as a Best Picture winner, but it is incredibly dated and has not stood the test of time so well.