The whole “natural dialogue” thing began with Spielberg and his ilk back in the ‘70s. It didn’t take long for it to catch on. I remember watching Streisand’s A Star Is Born in the cinema and not being able to understand a word being said because everyone was mumbling and stepping over each others’ lines. To this day, I hate, hate, **hate **that movie! :mad:
The “old time acting” is still very much alive. Take a look at any of the popular dramas on TV nowadays to see actors spewing the socio-political commentary of the writers in perfect, logically-coherent dialogue. Nobody really talks like that.
Now, stop and think about filmgoers in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. They wanted entertainment that lifted them out of their own plane of existence. They didn’t want the humdrum that they already had. Screwball comedies and drama about the upper classes were a big pull. Naturally, the people in the upper classes were better educated and spoke/acted differently. In fact, westerns and gangster movies would go out of their way to differentiate lower class characters by giving them more natural lines and speech patterns.
Then we hit the 50s. Method acting and New Wave changed all this. We had movies like “The Bicycle Thief” that showed filmgoers a more naturalistic view of the world. Interesting people didn’t have to speak like they had just finished four years at Harvard or Oxford.
Summary: Enjoy them all. Just because you like Cubism doesn’t mean you can’t also appreciate the Impressionists.