What Year Does 'Driving Miss Daisy' Take Place?

Question

Even knowing it's a historical drama, pinpointing the exact decade remains tricky. Did the main timeline begin in 1948 or later? The changing eras are subtle.

pics gram · Answer

Miss Daisy first begins driving lessons in 1948, and we watch as the years unfold to roughly the early 1970s. The specific time frame in which this ‘event’ of their lives is set is skillfully used to reveal the evolution of the central relationship in the play. That the two characters are locked into a somewhat unusual set of circumstances, and develop a relationship over time in this restricted context, is akin to how the main character of ‘Marrying a Disabled CEO in My Sister’s Place’ found herself married to a reclusive and extremely intelligent CEO of a company in which her sibling is placed, and slowly but often angrily comes to terms with the circumstances of her life with this man.

Holden · Answer

The movie follows the developments of Miss Daisy from 1948 to 1973. At first she is opposed to everything Hoke can do for her, her stiff and Southern pride is even greater than that of the segregation on the buses driving by. But slowly in the years following, Miss Daisy develops. By 1963 she even lets Hoke drive her to Martin Luther King’s famous speech. The movie is a great production with all the utensils of the past decades. You can even see the rotary phones of the 50s and 60s on the counter. The women are wearing their typical pillbox hats and Hoke is changing his clothes from year to year. It’s a subtle movie that wants to show how in the end the personal connection is stronger than the bigger surroundings.

Zander · Answer

'Driving Miss Daisy' covers several decades of history but the core of the story is in the late 1940s to the 1960s in the South of the United States during the civil rights era. In 1948, after a serious car crash, wealthy Jewish widow Miss Daisy arrange for her to be driven around by flower delivery driver Hoke Colburn. As the film progresses, through the sit-ins, growing awareness of MLK, and the change that occurs in the South during the 1960s, the relationship between Miss Daisy and Hoke evolves in ways that are surprising and poignant. In 1963 Hoke drives Miss Daisy to MLK’s famous speech, and the film carries on until the early 1970s when, due to old age, Miss Daisy and Hoke are no longer her employer and she no longer his.

The movie works on two levels: it charts the transformation of a bitter old woman over twenty-five years, a shift as slow as the social change underway in Georgia at the time, and it frames that transformation in a time capsule of social change. The costumes, the cars, the music move through the decades with accuracy, from swing to Motown, from big hats to small ones, from big old Caddies to smaller ones. But it is a time capsule opened by a warm friendship that defies its era.

Braxton · Answer

The setting of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ is Atlanta, Georgia from 1948 to the early 1970s. As the time passes, the viewers can experience prosperity after WWII, opposing to the strict Jim Crow laws, and the emerging civil rights movement. As opposed to Miss Daisy’s stubbornness and old-fashioned way of life, her chauffeur Hoke is patient, understanding and represents a new generation of black people in the South. The bomb attack on Miss Daisy’s synagogue is reminiscent of real life Klan attacks, while the famous “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King is another milestone in their lives. The cars and clothes Miss Daisy and her friends are wearing are silently indicating the years passing by under the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. In the end, the deep affection of the two main characters conquers decades of hate trying to divide them.

Stella · Answer

'Driving Miss Daisy' takes place from 1948 into the 1970s. After Miss Daisy's car crash she is seen in her old age in a nursing home. Hoke, too, grows old from middle aged to old age, and their friendship develops into one of the longest of his life, through the time of integration of the South. Several real events of the period are included in the film, such as the 1958 bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation. Sets and costumes, and also cars, help to determine the time in which the film is set. Old fedoras are exchanged for new station wagons. The movie is a quiet chronicle of change.

viviana matta · Answer

1948 was the start of the movie I just rewatched. Clear as a bell in the first title card. The play was written by Alfred Uhry as a memory play, based on his own experiences with his grandmother and her driver in the South after the war. The scene where Daisy’s son Boolie buys her a new Cadillac in 1966 is particularly notable to me because in that scene Hoke has to show her how to use the power windows. Funny in some ways but also poignant as technology is advancing but personal relationships are not. The final scenes in the nursing home in 1973 were very real to me in terms of ending that era of their lives.

Isa Gonzalez · Answer

As the play is a historical drama, pinpointing the year is paramount. The car crash that kick-starts everything occurs in 1948 and we catch up with Daisy in the nursing home in 1973. The vast expanse of the 25 years between are comprised of chosen moments from their relationship, allowing the writer and now the film adapter to nix the tedious and only include the most pivotal of instances. Thus each jump in time is met with a tender, poignant, swooning moment which illustrates just how far they’ve traveled since the last recap. As such, the play is essentially a litany of moments, specific, chosen and purposive, which comprise the 25 years or so that pass between the crash and the nursing home.

Ana Rosa Coutigno Lopez · Answer

Note that the film’s title cards provide a guide to the years in which the story is set. The first, ‘1948’, is especially noteworthy because it was a year or so before the civil rights movement began to get attention nationally. Hence it provides a ‘before’ against which can be measured the dislocation of the main characters. The 50s were a time of slowly building change, and the early 60s were the time of the Birmingham bombing, a catastrophic event that shocked Daisy into realizing that Hoke’s world was under attack. The subsequent title cards – 1966, for example, with Hoke now more prosperous than ever before – and 1973, when the two friends’ story finally comes to an end – provide a selectively edited history lesson as witnessed by two engaging characters.

Chuy Reyes · Answer

I meant that the years 1948-1973 can be simple referred to but I think it is so much more interesting to ask why those years were chosen as opposed to say starting with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. To me 1948 sets up the ‘before’ picture of very deep seeming but calm segregation and that is Daisy’s worldview before the movement gains much momentum and as the years progress and history is reported to her by car radio she is forced to confront her ‘default setting’ as it were. 1973 is chosen as the end of the era because it is far enough into the new era of desegregation to see some of the long term changes that took place but it is not so far away that there is not still a strong memory of the ‘old ways’.

Viona Jaengeruaije · Answer

I love movies set over long periods of time that transcend decades. This starts in 1948 and you get to see a complete transformations of fashion, cars, music and even the speech of the late 40s. As the decades unfold you get subtle transformations in production design to reflect change of the 50s and 60s but by 1973 everything feels very modern and relaxed. You actually feel the passing of years not just through factoid listed, but through all the production design, including the wallpaper. You see the time in all the exterior street scenes and most of all the aging of the leads. That is what makes this movie so transporting and immersive – a real trip back in time.

catbucky1234 · Answer

I also always noticed that the story ended in 1973 instead of one of the more round years of 1970 or 1975. Perhaps that is the year that the real life person that inspired the story passed away. This gives a sense of reality to the story that would not be achieved by ending on an arbitrary year. And starting the story in 1948 was brilliant. By this time, life would have returned to normal for the families of Daisy and her employees, but the old social hierarchy would still be very much in place. It would take the arrival of Hoke to begin the slow process of tearing down the decades old social order of Daisy’s household.

What Year Does 'Driving Miss Daisy' Take Place?

11 Answers

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