looking foxy tonight, man

Just one more note about her: though it's set in the near future, there is a certain style about the film, especially in the clothing, that makes it seem more like the 1950s. And, that got me to thinking about the costumes in Groundhog Day. Now, this isn't a film you'd necessarily think about having costumes. But, since the film is set on the same day over and over, I'm sure the costume department may have had several of each of Phil's shirts and ties, and Rita's blouse and vest and maybe even something like Doris' waitress outfit. A lot of the stuff with extras outside, like the Ned Ryerson bit, would have been filmed each version all in one day so costumes for the extras wouldn't have mattered much.

Still, notable extras, like the ones I've called Pimp and Pimp's Boyfriend (also Earmuffs and Outdoor Yellow Hat Guy), also show up at Gobbler's Knob in the same outfits, so there was some consistency even with sequences that were not filmed on the same day… or maybe the Gobbler's Knob stuff was filmed along with the Ryerson bit each of those days that they repeated stuff; that would save time and money with the extras.

Lead characters, though—they'd need either multiple copies of stuff or some good time spent on caring for the singular items. Phil's coat, for example--there seems to have been only one; Harold Ramis mentions more than once in the commentary track how he kept that coat after production was completed.

But, I don't want to talk specifically about costumes but the general style in the film. It can be boiled down pretty simply what I want to say. The costumes, for the most part are somewhat timeless, not pinning the film in 1993 (Larry's jeans might be a little bit 1980s, but he's Larry, maybe he just wears weird jeans). Separate from costumes, while there are numerous examples of 80s style hairdos in the film, especially among the extras, the leads hair is pretty much what their hair has always been. Murray seems to have always had that same curly hair with the receding hairline, though recently it's gone gray. MacDowell and Elliott have always had the same hair as well.

Still, there are some definite examples of 80s style…

Otherwise, the look of this film is timeless (with a dash of 1950s).

And, well…

Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: to label everyone and everything in this film (and of course memorize the labels because I won’t be able to record them anywhere)