Am I alone in not really enjoying most old ("classic") movies?

Cafe Society
1

I always hear about how fabulous these old classic movies* are supposed to be, and there is a certain amount of film-snobbery that I’ve seen about old films as well…

…but I just generally tend to not like them much. The acting style is just so cheeseball to me in most old movies that I have a hard time getting into the movie. I can’t get past the way it’s presented and lose myself in the story the way I can with more modern movies.

There are a few exceptions… I love Charlie Chaplin movies, generally speaking. I like the Wizard of Oz (for which the cheesy acting is well suited).

So anyway… am I the only one? It often seems like old movies are held in this really high regard by a lot of people and so I feel rather alone and uncultured admitting that I don’t care for them.

*or really, anything before the 60s-70s, though some eras are worse than others…

2

Nope. While there are certain older movies I love, ones like The Haunting and Bunny Lake Is Missing, I’d have trouble making a long list of movies that where both made before I was born and that I like.

3

Just out of curiosity, which ‘old classic movies’ do you not like?

I’m going to resist jumping down your throat and defend the old classics as Highest Art of the Arts because there have been great films and true stinkers in every era. There are few new ideas in moviedom; most stories have already been done previously (and better IMO), can be modernized and remade, but can be traced back to the original. (It’s like one Christmas some friends were listening to a CD of classic country songs by some young female - the CD was OK, but Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Patsy Cline did the originals, very well, long before the modern young singer was even born.) There is a whole extensive field of film history, and there is so much there to study! Now the shiny, fast moving special effects, with toys and monsters and comic book people are the popular thing. Nothing wrong with that, maybe someday in the future, if movies are still being made, people will look back and laugh at Iron Man or Transformers. Roger Ebert has written several doorstop sized books about the movies, bad movies, good movies, and the Great Films and why they’re important.

My thoughts are rambling all over here, I’m just trying to say something before the “me too!”/“you’re nuts!” opinions come flooding in.

4

You are not alone. I very rarely enjoy older movies, especially pre-1960’s. The exceptions are usually movies where outdated acting styles and production values, gigantic plot holes, etc. don’t affect the enjoyment. Two such pictures that come to mind are “King Kong” ('33) and “Harvey” ('50); in fact, Harvey is one of my ten all-time favorite movies, and by far the oldest one on the list.

Edit- My wife, on the other hand, loves the old flicks. Different strokes.
.

5

A lot of them seem to be overacted and all of them have “What’s the big idea, see?” at least once. Some of them, like Rear Window or Casablanca, are good though.

6

Is it a question of accepting the different acting style of some older movies? Sometimes it’s more obvious that the actors are acting, especially in movies adapted from stage plays, like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where the scenery isn’t quite chewed but there’s a bit of nibbling. But you can still enjoy the performances, once you accept them for what they are – heightened drama, colorful, bigger than life.

Then there are movies like The Magnificent Ambersons, with a more natural style of acting but with a story will seem dated. When’s the last time you saw a movie where a widow refused to marry the man she loved because her spoiled adult son didn’t like him? Or where a kiss meant commitment? Where a woman cared what society thought?

I think if you can accept the different styles of acting and directing, you might come to enjoy these old movies for what they are. It helps to be familiar with the source material too, when it was written, etc. I didn’t like old movies until I got old myself. Same with books. Try to figure out what the director/writer is trying to do and decide for yourself whether he succeeded.

Or just wait until you get old, see if it works then. :slight_smile:

7

I like a lot of them - the ones that actually ended up being considered “classics” - Wizard of Oz, most Jimmy Stewart movies, most Hitchcock movies, etc.

But my parents watch 2-3 old movies a day, every day (they’re retired), from the 30’s to the 60’s. I can’t make it through more than half of one without falling alseep. They are so sloooow and you’re right, the acting does seem quite cheezy.

8

I have exactly the opposite taste in movies. To me, movies got progressively better until the 40s, then they got progressively worse. And it has nothing to do with snobbery. For one thing, I prefer the more dramatic style of acting to the more “natural.” If I want to hear people talking like average people talk, I’ll save my money and just hang out at the mall.

And as far as outdated mores and morals are concerned . . . one of my favorite movies is *Brief Encounter. *Everything in the movie - the plot, the characters, the dialog - is totally out of sync with today’s values . . . and yet those same elements are so superbly crafted . . . it’s amazing how these elements would change, only a couple of decades after the movie’s release.

9

I’ve rarely seen the appeal, myself. Though like some others in the thread I do like the Wizard of Oz and Charlie Chaplin too, there are too many older movies that just don’t do anything for me.

10

But there are probably a lot of newer movies that don’t do anything for you either. :slight_smile:

11

Why are movies from “some eras” worse than movies from other eras? This is just poppycock. Balderdash!

Movies can stand on their own no matter when they were made.

Be specific.

12

Can’t agree with the OP at all. And to characterize acting like this (as but one of many examples) as “cheeseball” kinda sorta baffles me.

13

One more example of non-cheeseball, pre-1960 acting. There are many fine films made before the sixties. Keep digging. I’m sure you’ll find at least a few you can get behind.

14

More specific? Well ok, for a start, the only reason I finished Casablanca was because I was viewing it with a good friend.

15

Fifteen years ago or so, when a friend tried to get me to watch an old movie, I patiently explained to her why new movies are always better than old movies. The technology improves over time, right? Things like that always get better as they get newer.

The I came across this article, in this newspaper, and for some reason lost to the mists of time I started checking off the list. When I started, I’d seen 12 of the titles, and my favorite director was Steven Spielberg. By the time I’d seen 75 or so of the 100, if you’d’ve asked me what my favorite movie decade was, I’d’ve said the 1930s.

It’s simply a matter of familiarity.

The problem is, there are so many thousands and thousands of movies, that by the time you’d watched enough of them to become more familiar with the older styles, you’d’ve waded through a lot of garbage: the standard ratio of bad movies to good–roughly 9:1–is not a new phenomenon. That’s what’s great about lists like Rosenbaum’s: it allows you to accumulate familiarity while watching nothing but really great movies. You can watch enough old films to familiarize yourself, without having to slog through any shit. There’s not a stinker on the list, and a surprisingly high ratio of true masterpieces.

When you’ve watched enough of these movies, you’ll find the things that bother you now about old movies are things you no longer notice. They’re fashions, styles that come in and out. You’re just more familiar with today’s fashions of moviemaking, for obvious reasons. But today’s movies are no less stylized than old movies; you’re just comfortable with the styles. You no longer notice them, because they’re familiar.

But they’re there. Examples: people say they can’t stand musicals, because that’s SO not the way real life is. But they can watch an animated film. You can’t get much more stylized an unrealistic than animation, but since we’ve grown up watching them we look past that, or even relish it–like I do some of the more abstract old musicals. Another example: people complain about old technicolor movies, how unrealistic the colors are. But then those same people will watch the latest Ridley Scott or Michael Mann movie, where every shot is forced through blue or brown filters. FAR less realistic, but we accept it. Again, it’s just what seems comfortable to us through familiarity.

If you do decide to give it a try, watch some of these older masterpieces to see if you can gain enough familiarity to begin to see past the more noticeable differences between fashions and styles of moviemaking, you’ll discover some real masterpieces. After watching almost all of the movies on that list (minus a small handful that are not even available cough cough illegally cough), three of the movies on my lifetime topten list are silent films, ferchrissakes. Almost all of the movies on my list are pre-1960.

It may sound like homework, but it really is a gift you give yourself.

16

There’s no hope for you. Other than getting older. :slight_smile:

17

You are not alone.

Here’s why I can’t appreciate old movies:
~The acting is bad. Granted they were finding their stride but people then seemed to need to yell every observation or directive. Chill Winston.
Also, when an actor is speaking his lines everyone else in the cast just stops and watches them act. Ugh.
~Too much fucking exposition! Yes, there are badly written movies today but having the actors explain the movie to me as it’s unfolding is insulting. Bogart hated exposition scenes as well, was once quoted as saying (something like)“Every time I have to give exposition I hope there are two Rhinos in the background fucking so the scene is interesting somehow”.

18

I’m trying to get into older movies myself. I can first make a resounding recommendation of North by Northwest. I heard it looked great on BluRay, rented in on Netflix, then rebooted my computer at 3:30 in the morning to add every other Hitchcock flick I could find. I just got The Maltese Falcon today.

I’ve never liked It’s a Wonderful Life either though. Jesus George…chill out.

19

That’s because Casablanca–despite the gravitas it holds among many otherwise well-mannered people–isn’t actually a very good movie. It has some snapping dialog and some entertaining secondary characters, but also plotholes the size of a German Panzer division, legendarily wooden acting between its leads, and a resolution that makes not sense on the face of it (though if you take the Mamet-esque view that Ilsa is actually manipulating all of the men to her own ends it all falls into place).

I would be hard pressed, however, to throw anything made in the last ten or twenty years against Rear Window, The Apartment, or The Third Man. I daresay it has been a very long time since someone has made a film as purely engrossing as The Great Escape. I think Akira Kurosawa has had the final word on the Sengoku period adaptations of Shakespeare (and indeed, perhaps Shakespeare in general), and no one has since mastered the art of the wartime epic as David Lean.

In short, there are plenty of great older films that have stood the test of time as interesting and engaging on their own merits even absent of the cultural context in which they were made, and very few films today–even popular and successful films–that will be seen as classics twenty years from now. Indeed, what has made films enduring classics of the past–vivid characterization, intricate storytelling, convention-bending–relegates the same types of films to independent “artsy” films today.

Stranger

20

FTR, I don’t like Casablanca, either.

Here are a few older movies that I find still enjoyable today:
I’ve seen very few modern comedies that are better than the original version of To Be or Not To Be.
A Letter to Three Wives is a guilty pleasure (the Linda Darnell/Paul Douglas segment, in particular)
It’s kind of sappy, but my husband and I enjoy I Remember Mama.
We watched Mrs. Miniver a few years ago, and my kids liked it enough to rent it again on their own.
Sullivan’s Travels was very funny and helped to inspire O Brother Where Art Thou.