Two relics from the mists of the 20th century made me think about time, fashion, taste and cultural norms...
Silk Stockings 1957 musical in the classic musical style, with tremendous hoofing (no other word is right) from Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse - he's a Broadway song & dance man, she's a humourless Soviet cultural commissar, they meet in postwar Paris and fancy each other. Apart from some standard-issue 1950s American Red-baiting, and Cyd C being magically transformed into a lighthearted skittish ballerina by her first luxurious touch of French lingerie, the romance isn't too obnoxious. The dance sequences themselves are terrific - that woman was a Goddess. The rest is mostly filled in with Hollywood in-jokes about how musicals are declining, how the movie industry is dying, how "swim queen" movie stars now have to find new fans, how audiences just move on to the next fad etc etc ... watching Fred Astaire trying to do a "rock n roll" number is just painful, and ironic too, and you get the feeling he knows it. There's some great support work from Zero Mostel and others as a trio of Russian roué artistes desperately trying not to get recalled to spend time in Siber-ee-eer-ee-eer-ia. For a bit of blatant Cold War propaganda full of sexist rubbish, I really really loved it.