Nostalgic Americans in Film

Aerothorn on 16/3/2010 at 23:58

So here's a weird film request: I'm looking for movies that prominently feature/focus on Americans traveling abroad who are nostalgic for their home country/culture. It's for a crazy research paper. As an idea of what I'm talking about, some films that would fall under this umbrella:

Local Hero (1983)
Barcelona (1994)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Army of Darkness (1992. No, I'm not kidding, this is totally in the paper).

Any others that are particularly worth watching? The basic idea is that I'm trying to address various questions about how this phenomena is portrayed in film and if it corresponds to reality.

Harvester on 17/3/2010 at 00:07

I can't think of any examples right now, but you might want to take a look at various war movies, for characters longing to 'get out of this hellhole' and get back to America.

Pardoner on 17/3/2010 at 00:17

Yeah, the Vietnam War movies (Apocalypse Now, etc.) and Iraq War movies (Hurt Locker, maybe even the Messenger?) should have a few lines worth quoting to that effect.

Although, Hurt Locker's characters have a more complicated relationship to America and their tours of duty. There's at least a couple characters who are ambiguous about returning. Might make good conclusion fodder.

Also you could always cast Kilgore's absurd love of catching waves and desire to reproduce this in Vietnam(even amid napalm drops) as an act of nostalgia.

Ulukai on 17/3/2010 at 00:24

National Lampoon's European Vacation. Clark gets all teary-eyed and nostalgic for Germany.

Clark Griswold: There it is, kids, my motherland.
Rusty Griswold: Dad, Grandma's from Chicago.
Clark Griswold: Shut up, Russ.

Also featuring Actual Boobs. This is great when you're 14 and the Internet hasn't been invented yet. Erm, anyway. Carry on.

Rug Burn Junky on 17/3/2010 at 00:31

How you didn't begin and end with Casablanca is beyond me, nostalgia is at the very core of its being.

If I'm going to go with the classics, The Third Man should be on the list as well.

theBlackman on 17/3/2010 at 00:46

Two excellent choices RBJ. Not to forget the original Lassie come home.

Aerothorn on 17/3/2010 at 01:23

Important clarification I didn't mention: While it's possible I may throw in war movies, I'm probably going to avoid them as they basically comprise their own genre/massive academic universe. I'm more thinking American civilians abroad.

As for Casablanca, you're right that that's a very good fit - I guess the only reason I didn't think of it is that I'm skewing towards recent films (again, to limit the scope as much as anything - this is a 12-15 page paper that I will not be able to spend as much time on as I would like). But I'm still in the paper-proposal process (we have to turn in an annotated bibliography with the proposal, bizarrely enough, hence the request now), so I'm now prepared to rule out older films. The complication is that this is very much an American Studies course (on Americans Abroad, specifically), not a film one, so I need to have some sort of sociological grounding. I think? Lots of vagueness going on.

As far as Lassie Comes Home: Is this specific to Americans? A quick look at the synopsis makes it sound like its centered in Britain - are there a bunch of nostalgic Americans running around with Lassie?

P.S. Really been wanting to see The Third Man, might as well do it now!
p.p.s. And then maybe I can figure out how to tie in Pinky & The Brains "The Third Mouse"...

Fafhrd on 17/3/2010 at 02:11

'Everything is Illuminated' may fit your criteria, but it's been a while since I've seen it.

doctorfrog on 17/3/2010 at 03:59

Do these count:

* Wizard of Oz
* Return to Oz
* The Wiz
* Wizard of Oz (cartoon version)
* Labyrinth

I'm not trolling deliberately, I just started a list with far fewer items in it than I thought I had.

Aja on 17/3/2010 at 06:31

Cairo Time almost fits the bill; it's a lot like Lost in Translation but with a Canadian woman in Egypt. Her nationality doesn't factor into the story, so I figured it'd work—she could easily be an American (and I probably would've assumed she was were the movie not directed by a Canadian).