My one and only issue with The Killing is s random and shocking use of the N word which ruins the film for me. I understand the context and motivation, but its just painful to watch.
I wouldn’t call myself a classic movie buff, but I do enjoy many pre-1960 films.
A favorite of mine that hasn’t been mentioned yet is Burt Lancaster’s action/comedy swashbuckler The Crimson Pirate.
Anything involving Hitch, Welles, Fritz Lang, Max Ophuls, Tod Browning, Marx Bros or Preston Sturges is splunge by me, with The Testament of Dr. Mabuse being a standout in particular. I’ll take in the odd Busby Berkeley confection. Snippets of Riefenstahl I find morbidly fascinating. Also Red Headed Woman.
Outrage is one of the Ida Lupino-drected films that took on a taboo subject for its time (rape), actually making the actress one of the more progressive filmmakers at the time.
If you scroll down to “Director, producer, and writer”, there’s a good write-up on that part of her career.
Well, off (or near) the top of my head:
Skyscraper Souls (1932)
The Crusades (1935)
Strange Cargo (1940)
The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
Son of Fury (1942)
White Cargo (1942)
Confidential Agent (1945)
Canyon Passage (1946)
Three Strangers (1946)
Nightmare Alley (1947)
Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948)
Rope of Sand (1949)
Reign of Terror (1949)
A Lady without Passport (1950)
Gun Crazy (1950)
Night and the City (1950)
The Man from Planet X (1951)
Rancho Notorious (1952)
The Big Combo (1955)
Night of the Hunter (1955)
Death in the Garden (1956)
Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958)
*The Fabulous Baron Munchhausen * (1962)
The Stolen Airship (1967) -
It may well be possible to love older media without hating newer media.
In fact, it might be possible to love the best of all eras, and get a much wider range of media to love.
Which is why I love silent films, such as Häxan and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, which have influenced modern art and, in some cases, have even been remade.
- The Astaire/Rogers musicals
- The Shop Around the Corner
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
That’s just off the top of my head.
Gaslight is one of my favorites
thatbpguy - if you wanna be truly unsettled, check out Peeping Tom. Superbly made, in colour, from 1960.
Put it at the top of your list - an absolute must see.
We have many “moldy figs” of the cinema world in our membership. (Moldy fig was a 1940s bebop term for jazz fans who preferred the “traditional” New Orleans jazz style)
Don’t miss ANY Charles Laughton film, especially Island of Lost Souls (1933) and Witness for the Prosecution (1959).
Don’t miss ANY Lon Chaney (senior!) film, especially The Penalty (1920) and The Unknown (1927).
Footnotes:
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In the former, he is a mad scientist on an isolated island who turns wild beasts into quasi-humans via EXTREMELY PAINFUL surgery and gets to say “The natives are restless tonight” for the first time; in the latter, he is a brilliant defense attorney in one of Agatha Christie’s best mystery plots.
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In the former, he has no legs; in the latter, he has no arms. In real life, Chaney had both legs and arms.
Carnival of Souls is good for getting all creeped out at and sorta depressed.
Luis Bunuel’s Los Olvidadosis a grim, bleak look at violence among the impoverished youth in Mexico City’s slums.
Peeping Tom. It’s often called the British version of Psycho. It was so profoundly disturbing that it effectively ruined the director’s career. Every time I’ve ever shown it for film groups, they have been surprised and impressed.
Never really got that one. Perhaps I am not patient enough. Odd, considering that *Cabinet of Dr. Caligari *is one of my favorites.
I have not watched the end of that film.
TCM is a regular channel in our house.
I always liked the blind lady living below him, listening for him, with that skeeved-out look on her face.
Oh and dad’s home movies.:eek:
(and the camera op’s pov of that “camera accessory”)
In more than one thread I’ve waxed obsequious over this.
Another suspenseful flick with some downright creepy scenes.
Disappointing how it was a critical and box office failure in 1955, prompting the actor Charles Laughton to never direct another film. Now it’s more or less a critically revered film.
Right now I’m watching The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland for the umpty-zillionth time. That wonderful song “Stella by Starlight” comes from it.
Others that I’ve watched over and over are Rebecca and The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original, of course)
I watch lots of TCM as well, and I could name many old films I enjoy, but the one that comes to mind at the moment has a quote in it I was just thinking about the other day.
When Women Meet, 1933, Bridget Drake (Alice Brady) - “I tell you this is an awfully hard age for a good woman to live in - I mean a woman who wants to have any fun. The old instincts of right and wrong merely hold you back. You’re neither one thing nor the other. You’re neither happy and bad, nor good and contented. You’re just discontentedly decent.”
Have things really changed all that much?
I love it when an old movie reaches right out and beans you over the head with the knowledge and assurance that humans have struggled over time with very similar problems.
The Caine Mutiny
The Enemy Below
The Day the Earth Stood Still
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is really great.
The Best Years of Our Lives is very good too. Hoagy Carmichael has a cameo and it features the only Oscar winner to ever sell his Oscar later on when times were tight, Harold Russell.
I’m going to go ahead and second or fourth or eighth “The Third Man”. I saw it for the first time a few months ago and it really is fantastic. It illustrates how movie makers can do so much with so little, especially in comparison to today’s action-packed and CGI-laden explosion-fests.
I used to consider myself something of a movie buff, but I hadn’t gone to the theater or even seen a movie I really liked in years. But I got FilmStruck recently and I really enjoy it. I don’t know if culture is passing me by or what, but new movies just don’t do it for me anymore. Thank Og for the internet.