I (along with others) had believed that the first appearance of a mobile phone in the movies was Gordon Gekko's megabrick in Wall Street.
Not so! Via a continuing thread on the ITP list serv, I've learned that mobile (at least, automobile) phones were first spotted in Sabrina, of all movies, in 1954...as well as slightly less (or is it more?) unbelievably in Cleopatra Jones in 1973.
I could ramble on forever about the America we see changing through the films of 1954, then 1973, then 1987. But instead I'm going to ramble on about the continuing use of communications as a sign of social power - and the disappearance of the automobile. The post-war banker sits in the back seat; the 1970s international agent sits behind the wheel. And the 1980's stockbroker (note the change from patrician Linus Larrabee to parvenu Gordon Gekko, btw)...? He's not on the road at all. He's at the beach.
Clearly, the novelty of a cool ride disappeared after David Hasselhoff cornered the market. Instead, power appears as access to communications networks. Gordon Gekko is always buying and selling, always on the phone. The telephone is the medium by which information - or people - is bought and sold.
It's interesting to watch power travel turn into power talking. We know that Sabrina's Linus Larrabee is important because he is driven from Manhattan to Long Island by his chauffeur. The telephone is merely an accessory, like the chauffeur (and is it any coincidence that Linus finally marries the chauffeur's daughter?). Cleopatra Jones, international super agent, doesn't have a chauffeur. Instead, she has a tricked-out Corvette that doesn't muss her afro and packs some serious weaponry (and a phone). But the funny thing is, she's always driving around to meet people in person.
In Wall Street, the telephone isn't an accessory to power. Instead, through the transactions Gekko manipulates, it's a means. The fun of nourishing our inner Gekkos is that we're never more than three feet away from a handset and a potential tirade. Of course, the people on the other side are the flipside of that fun. We never have to see their faces while we're talking to them, after all. We can always just look at the beach.
(Oh, and on an entirely different note, this amazing archive has more information than you ever wanted or needed on the history of America's highway systems, including a fascinating account of the lead-up and resulting fall-out from the 1956 Interstate Highway Act)
Maybe power has more to do with mobility rather than the technology that is used to illustrate it? In all the cases, the users demonstrate importance/power through their ability to communicate while being mobile - that notorious pocket of space/time that used to be so isolated for many of us. That time that we are all too happy to share with familiar strangers or friends or a book (and now a cell phone).
In the earlier films, it was actually impossible to speak on the phone without the automobile while being locomoted from one location to the next. In Wall Street the very separation was the brand new thing and it was, then, power - as it was available only to the priveleged. Maybe that's why the beach too - the kingdom of romantic solitude invaded. The car, however, never disappeared. It just got smaller, faster, separated from communication, it can still hold its own in the power game I think.