Films with an “old money” aesthetic
Mediterranean villas, crumpled linen, turquoise pools and palace balls: a selection of films we watch as much for their light and their houses as for their story.
The term has taken over social media to the point of becoming somewhat hackneyed. Yet the “old money” aesthetic describes something precise: the quiet elegance of families long established in comfort, who have nothing to prove. No logos, few colours, noble materials, houses patinated by time. Cinema filmed it long before it had a name, and some films have become veritable handbooks.
Purple Noon, by René Clément (1960)
Alain Delon, the Bay of Naples, white cotton shirts worn open at the neck, a sailing boat, lunches on the terrace. Tom Ripley, the impostor, learns to live like an heir, and the film teaches us alongside him. It is surely cinema’s finest lesson in summer elegance.
The Leopard, by Luchino Visconti (1963)
Nineteenth-century Sicily, a princely family watching its world disappear, and a ball lasting nearly forty-five minutes that remains one of the most sumptuous scenes ever filmed. Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon. Palme d’Or at Cannes. It teaches us that true aristocracy is recognised by the way it accepts losing.
Contempt, by Jean-Luc Godard (1963)
Capri, the Villa Malaparte perched on its rock, an unreal blue Mediterranean, Brigitte Bardot in a dress and bathrobe, and Georges Delerue’s score. A film about a marriage wearing thin, and about cinema itself, in which every shot could be framed.
La Piscine, by Jacques Deray (1969)
A villa near Saint-Tropez, a swimming pool, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon on holiday, the arrival of a friend and his daughter, and tension rising through the scorching days. Romy Schneider’s outfits in this film have been cited by designers for more than fifty years.
To Catch a Thief, by Alfred Hitchcock (1955)
Cary Grant as a retired cat burglar on the Riviera, Grace Kelly as an American heiress. Corniche roads, hotels on the Croisette, a golden ball gown and a picnic in a convertible. The lightest and most elegant of Hitchcock’s films.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Anthony Minghella (1999)
The same story as Purple Noon, forty years later, with Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. The Italy of the late 1950s is dreamt down to the smallest details: knitted polos, loafers, sunglasses, Vespas and jazz in the clubs of Rome.
Call Me by Your Name, by Luca Guadagnino (2017)
A summer in 1983 at a villa in northern Italy, a cultivated family, bicycles, apricots, swims in rivers and conversations about art. A more intellectual form of the “old money” aesthetic, where ease comes from culture rather than money.
What all these films have in common: they were mostly shot on location. The villas, palaces and coves really exist, and several can be visited or rented today. That is no doubt why they feel so real.
What unites them
Soft, natural colours, clothes worn rather than displayed, houses with a history, Mediterranean light, and that sense of ease that is never forced. None of these films shows wealth as an end in itself. They show a way of living, and that is why we keep returning to them.
True luxury, on screen as elsewhere, is never shown. It is sensed.
