AuntiePam already mentioned it, but I’ll second The Hustler. It’s in an odd transitional era; the more raw acting style along with some old-school touches. The scene where Piper Laurie starts writing on the bathroom mirror with her lipstick always strikes me as a sort of stylistic shorthand, a signal to audiences of the time of what she’s about to do but which they couldn’t quite bring themselves to say.
What channel was that on? I watched that for the first time several years ago after being somewhat familiar with the remake. The original seemed from a different era, in a rather particular way. There’s that line in Sunset Blvd., “we didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” Whenever there is something dangerous or suspenseful in The Wages of Fear, we have to read it on the faces of the actors. By the time of Sorcerer, the style was to show us the situation that the characters were experiencing, not just their reaction to it. That may have as much to do with budget or new technical abilities, but it’s a very different way of creating tension on screen.
A rather obscure one that’s been shown on TCM a few times, Wild Boys of the Road. Made during the depression, it’s about young people who have for one reason or another been forced to leave their impoverished homes and set out on their own. Riding in boxcars like hoboes, it is grippingly realistic and terribly sad. A girl gets raped. I was in tears at the end of this movie, in spite of a tacked on ‘happy ending’. These were good kids and I can only hope they found jobs and got on their feet.
Not much of an effect; nothing in the code covered how emotional an actor can be in their role.
One difference is that today when someone gets emotional in a film, they are likely to be emotional – big acting, demonstrative emotions. In the earlier days, strong emotion was portrayed more subtly, often with quiet words and a quick closeup.
Take a look, for instance, in Bringing Up Baby. Though a comedy, there’s a shot where Katherine Hepburn portrays her immense disappointment when she discovers the Cary Grant character is married. It’s a close up (the first in the film, despite it’s about a third of the way through), and Hepburn shows her raw emotion with just her eyes and a pause before she speaks; it is a very emotional moment that is, in some ways, what makes the movie work, since it explains her motivation and gives the comedy the base in reality that allows it to continue.
Nowadays, that sort of raw emotion would be far less subtle.
I know it’s just past your deadline, but Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is filled with raw emotion; when Bette Davis breaks down in the end, it’s only of the most emotionally powerful moments in film.
Barbara Stanwyck confronts her father in Baby Face (1933):
“Yeah, I’m a tramp and who’s to blame? My father! A swell start you gave me! Nothing but men! Dirty, rotten men – and you’re lower than all of them!”
Sunrise (1927): George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor watch a wedding ceremony in a church, he begs her forgiveness, and the Movietone soundtrack plays “Oh Promise Me”.
The Crowd (1928): There are so many raw moments in this one that you really have to watch the movie to fully appreciate them. But the scene where James Murray contemplates suicide, asks his little boy whether he still believes in him, and the kid replies “Sure I do, Pop!” is really overwhelming.
The Power and the Glory (1933): Spencer Tracy confronts his wife Helen Vinson when he realizes that their child was actually fathered by…I won’t spoil it.
The Broadway Melody (1929): Bessie Love has a sobbing nervous breakdown when she hears that her longtime boyfriend is actually in love with her sister, Anita Page.
*Five Star Final *(1931): After a sensational newspaper exposé has tragic consequences, Edward G. Robinson tears apart his editor and refuses to write any more dirt. The line he utters when he tosses a phone through a glass door is memorable for the way the shattering glass substitutes for the last word.
The New York Hat (1912) also has some rawly emotional scenes.
Nice example, although Grant’s character was only engaged, not yet married, and to an apparently emotionless automaton, who felt not love for him but only respect for his work and his status. Hepburn would never have portrayed an actual home-wrecker.
Roddy