After Rosemary’s Baby I never thought I’d see another gorgeous opening sequence with a slow pan across Manhattan as these big superimposed pink credits roll in a gilded typeface. The Best of Everything, however did it 9 years earlier and it relied on the vibrant CinemaScope format for a more sophisticated approach. The drama was about to begin and I was already in love with the film’s texture. Alfred Newman’s score helped set the mood as well.
Caroline (Hope Lange), Gregg (Suzy Parker) and April (Diane Baker) are three girls working at a paperback publishing firm in Madison Avenue, each with different work ethics, ambitions and goals but all of them in a desperate need to get married and get out. The mindset of these characters may be seem distant from today’s society, but their relationship with men (who are always preying on them and using sex for their own benefit and pleasure) sure is not.
Mad Men was influenced by this film’s aesthetic (Fabian Publishing offices are even strikingly similar to Sterling Cooper’s) and its representation of working women in the 1950s. In fact Don Draper reads Rona Jaffe’s book, the novel it was based on in S1’s ‘Babylon’. You can see why these gender stereotypes matter in the 60’s New York Matthew Weiner portrays in his show and which themes he directly picks up from Jaffe’s material. I’m happy I finally got to watch it!
After Rosemary’s Baby I never thought I’d see another gorgeous opening sequence with a slow pan across Manhattan as these big superimposed pink credits roll in a gilded typeface. The Best of Everything, however did it 9 years earlier and it relied on the vibrant CinemaScope format for a more sophisticated approach. The drama was about to begin and I was already in love with the film’s texture. Alfred Newman’s score helped set the mood as well.
Caroline (Hope Lange), Gregg (Suzy Parker) and April (Diane Baker) are three girls working at a paperback publishing firm in Madison Avenue, each with different work ethics, ambitions and goals but all of them in a desperate need to get married and get out. The mindset of these characters may be seem distant from today’s society, but their relationship with men (who are always preying on them and using sex for their own benefit and pleasure) sure is not.
Mad Men was influenced by this film’s aesthetic (Fabian Publishing offices are even strikingly similar to Sterling Cooper’s) and its representation of working women in the 1950s. In fact Don Draper reads Rona Jaffe’s book, the novel it was based on in S1’s ‘Babylon’. You can see why these gender stereotypes matter in the 60’s New York Matthew Weiner portrays in his show and which themes he directly picks up from Jaffe’s material. I’m happy I finally got to watch it!
