Nostalgia

So today I went to a small film festival in the local cinema, featuring 5 films; Albert Nobbs, which was kinda sad but good; A Dangerous Method, which was weird and kinda pointless; Intouchable, during which we chose to walk on the canals (that's no misspelling, the ice was that thick) in the sunshine, so I have no idea; Headhunters, which is Scandinavian, brilliant, funny, grotesque, and features Jaime Lannister (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're lost anyway); and Shame, which started about 20 minutes ago and I really wanted to see, but after more than 6 hours in a cinema we really needed to get out, and this was the only movie actually playing in theatres right now, so we will see it another time.
Now the first two films were both set around 1910, the first in a Dublin hotel, where Albert Nobbs works as a butler, the second in Vienna and Zurich with Freud and Jung. I have to say, I really love that period, the post-Victorian pre-war period when life seemed so much simpler and people did not know what would hit them just a few years down the line. I must be nostalgic for a period I never experienced, I thought, just as I am nostalgic for the whole hippie period (although with Occupy, we might just get one ourselves). But then I started thinking; we are all nostalgic for that period of about 100 years ago, aren't we? Downton Abbey, the Sherlock Holmes movies (soon more about these), all those documentaries about the period, they're even re-releasing Titanic! All highly popular, and I'm probably forgetting a few here, as I am not that media-aware (didn't start watching DA until about 4 weeks ago, so that went over my head for about a year). So I am not the only one longing and liking this period, most of us are.
(Or some people high up in the movie/tv industry want us to be, but that's a bit too BigBrothery for me. Do you know the feeling, when you really like something, and you start seeing it everywhere and start liking it more and more until you realise that it's just in fashion, and that's why your liking it? The exact reason why everybody was suddenly wearing tilting bangs. There's a brilliant scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep explains to Anne Hathaway that the colour of the sweater she's wearing has been picked out by some group of high ranking fashion people two years before, or something. Anyway...)
So why this longing? I mean, I do get it, life just seemed simpler, people were either good or bad, rich or poor, lounging in armchairs thinking up psychoanalytics or working from 6 to 10 with hardly any pay. No hobbies, no time for deep thoughts or depressions, no time to get fat or wonder whether there is going to be an Elfstedentocht or what is happening in Syria or whatever, just simply; life. Or maybe we're just longing for a pre-war, pre-crisis period (this might also be the reason for the Titanic re-release, fits in perfectly with the horrid fashion revival; pre-crisis stuff) when you just stuffed your savings under the mattress and dreamt about going off to America, which was then still a welcoming place and a chance to start your life again. But people were still dying from diseases we've long beaten and women didn't have the vote and really, it's no fun working 16 hours a day. Although those are probably not the first things that come to mind, it's more the happy, energetic, positive atmosphere.
Just some thoughts. I realise that labelling so many of my posts as "random thoughts" makes them seem less random, but they really are. I just noticed this fixation, and I want to know why. Anybody have any idea?