No, not terribly dated, wonderfully dated! They’re like time machines.
I guess that’s a matter of perspective. A lot of old movies that are horrifyingly racist and misogynist, in ways that people would be outraged by today. I’m not particularly interested in reliving the glories of segregation. It’s fine to say they’re a comment on the time when they were made, and I could view them in that light and understand them, but I still wouldn’t enjoy them - and I largely watch movies for entertainment value.
The ‘overdone’ comment from the 20 year old is funny, of course, because she lacks the perspective to realize that these things weren’t overdone 50 years ago. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s seen that plot, this twist, and those characters 50 times. She probably would enjoy the films if they still had the capacity to surprise that they did when they were made, but her movie watching history renders them dull to her. ‘John Houston came up with this idea, so it’s not overdone in this film’ is an intellectual reaction, something you have to reach for. It’s not instinctive, and not inherent in simply watching and enjoying a film.
That’s how I feel. I’m not sure what it is, but I think I get as much entertainment out of the sets and the way people talk as I do the story etc. because they are over a half century old. YMMV of course.
I would recommend Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, *Suddenly Last Summer * and *The Big Sleep * for old movie initiates.
I think one of the reasons us “old folks” (I’m 44) are more open to movies from different eras is that we grew up at a time when our entertainment options were a lot more limited. The movies we got to watch were limited to what was being shown at that moment on a handful of network affiliates and local independent channels. Sure, a lot of those movies were crap. But we became accustomed to old movies because that’s what was on.
I admit to having prejudices against certain types of movies. Until pretty recently I had only seen a couple of silent films. I’m still not a big fan of westerns. But I don’t choose movies based on their age. I just think it’s silly.
And to make a conscious choice to avoid all black & white movies? Unthinkable to me. What about “A Hard Day’s Night”? “Psycho”? “The Day the Earth Stood Still”? “To Kill A Mockingbird”?
Bravo! Well said, kingpengvin, I completely agree.
While it does not bother me that much, the main objection my wife has to old films is the delivery, pre-Method. Especially the films of the 30s and 40s where the dialog is spewed forth at machine-gun rate. As she points out, nobody talked like that in real life, so why in reel life?
I still like a great many of them. I finally got around to watching M not so long ago, as it’s on most of the “best” lists. I was astonished at the technical excellence of the cinematography and the lighting. While Lorre was the same as he ever was afterward, the script was daring for that time and it was an amazing production for back then.
I Love M… It surprised me to see a police procedural film that felt realistic from the 1930s. (Yeah it has its highly wonderful German Expressionist scenes but the actual detective work has the same feel as todays Law and Order)
Blasphemy!
Actually, yeah, chunks of DA8 are pretty unwatchable. In situations like that I tend to focus on individual performances. I’ll watch DA8 for Lean Harlowe and Marie Dressler and Billie Burke and try to ignore Barrymore.
Blasphemy!
John Barrymore is terrific in that movie, as is everyone else: he is a brilliant, yummy slice of ham, served to a turn.
Though, true, he is no Lean Harlowe . . .
My dad is an old movie freak (he soooo wants to meet Eve). Every so often the extended family gets together for a movie party. Even some of the “under 12” group is diggin’ the black and white flicks.
The oldies probably had the same percentage of shitty movies as the new stuff does. I forget the exact figure, but thousands of movies are released each year and in my opinion, 5% are worth watching.
One of the best parts of watching old movies is seeing good use of lighting to create mood. It just isn’t that effective in color.
I think the biggest hinderance to the appreciation of old movies is that a vast majority of people don’t see them where they are meant to be seen–in a theater, with a group of people. Some films (old and new) make the transition to TV just fine, but even the widest plasma screen and surround system cannot replicate the experience of seeing and enjoying a movie with a huge crowd of people in a large theater in the dark. I know people who have dismissed Buster Keaton or W.C. Fields or Harold Lloyd until I took them to a theater to see them. The difference is night and day.
And for the tedious argument that old films are too “slow”, that’s just an artifact of a culture that’s become increasingly impatient with everything that doesn’t deliver immediate gratification. Sitting in a theater means making a commitment; there’s none of this “I watched for 30 minutes and turned the DVD off” bullshit. You accept the film on its own terms and whether you like it or not, at least you can say you’ve fulfilled that contract. I know I can think of plenty of films that I saw first on TV and was indifferent or only mildly enthusiastic about. But when I went to see them on a big screen, it was revelatory–the images were familiar, but the movie was transformed into something much grander (emotionally, not just visually) than I would have expected from seeing it the first time around.
Essentially, I am of the opinion (largely outmoded, I’ll agree), that I have never really “seen” a film until I’ve seen it in a theater. I can like or dislike films and harbor opinions and attitudes, but I’m in no position to hold judgment against a film or dismiss it wholesale until I’ve seen it in the venue it was intended. The effects of light and composition are changed dramatically when watching it at home (even in the right aspect ratio) so there are always things you’re going to miss. Always. Cinema is a grand artistic medium and TV simply diminshes it–some films more than others, but all films none-the-less.
I know that to see these films on the big screen is difficult (or impossible) for many people, and I’d rather see them investigate these films in whatever mode available than to have missed out on something beautiful or memorable or tremendous. But almost everyone I know who dismisses old films have seen them on TV, in passing, with commercials, etc. That they don’t like them is their loss, but in those circumstances, to claim that they “saw” them in a way to fully appreciate them is specious at best.
I see hundreds of films every year, and at least 75% of them (old and new, domestic and foreign, shorts, documentaries, etc.) are in a theater. For a medium I love (and committed my life and profession to), I can’t imagine it any other way.
That’s the beauty of TCM. My dad has recorded thousands of movies. It’s not the big screen, but you’ll never see 99% of the oldies on big screen anywhere. It nice to know they can be seen commercial free.
I think it’s facile and unfair to dismiss people who don’t like old movies with the "oh, you’re so used to the stupid modern movies where the plot is given away in the trailer and you don’t have to think and it’s all whiz bang cuts and special effects and explosions and fight scenes and ‘bogus dude’ ", to glom together several things I’ve read in this thread. Good modern movies, and there are plenty, aren’t guilty of any of those things. Or if they are, they do those things consciously and deliberately to gain benefit from them (for instance, the frenetic cutting in Moulin Rouge, love it or hate it, is certainly not just a hack director copying what he thinks the kids these days like, but a conscious artistic choice.)
Of movies made before 1965 on the IMDB top 100, I’ve seen: Casablanca, Citzen Kane, Psycho, North by Northwest, The Great Escape, Lawrence of Arabia and The Wizard of Oz. And, quite honestly, none of those are movies I enjoyed nearly as much as (to pick 6 other IMDB top 100 films) The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Raiders of the Lost Ark, City of God, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Amadeus. It’s not even close. And I watched (for instance) Lawrence of Arabia really expecting and hoping to love it and be blown away. And I enjoyed it. But that was all. A fine movie. But a towering classic for the ages? I just didn’t get that.
The S.O. and I decided to watch some of the classics when we joined netflix. We set up our list so that we always have one classic at home. I am so glad I’ve gotten to see some of them, and some of them just left me cold. Casablanca? Loved it. The Big Sleep? Couldn’t understand a goddam thing about what was going on. The Maltese Falcon? Not bad. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? Loved it. (We do watch more than just old Bogart movies, I swear.)
But still, there are many older films that just don’t do it for me. I’m not afraid to try though. Although I’ll admit there’s times when we don’t watch the “classic” we’ve rented for weeks and weeks. But when I was 20, there’s no way I would have watched these. So who knows what this girl will end up doing.
Don’t set the bar too high. I’d put Gone with the Wind in the same category as Forrest Gump or Titanic - they were all very good (I liked all three) but they weren’t “great” in the same sense that Casablanca or The Godfather or The Silence of the Lambs were.
My personal demarcation between “old” movies and “new” movies is “On the Waterfront.” Just from my viewing experience, most movies before Marlon Brando featured “stage” acting, and most movies after had more naturalistic acting. I know this is a gross simplification, and I’m willing to be educated otherwise. In older movies, I generally have to overlook the acting styles to enjoy the movie (one exception: The Thin Man movies). Because of my personal tastes, I tend to equate “stage” acting with “bad” acting in movies.
I’m 50 years old, by the way, if that makes a difference. (Christ, I just turned 50!)
Good! Watch some Jimmy Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Lillian Gish, Spencer Tracy. Brando, in my opinion, was as big a ham as John Barrymore ever was, and just as mannered.
Perhaps it is because you didn’t see it the way it is supposed to be seen, on a huge screen in a theatre.
Home theatres are great but some movies lose their power when shrunk to living room size.
Lawrence of Arabia is meant to be watched on 70MM. When you see a huge desert that covers your field of view and lost in it are the small figures riding in that vastness it becomes quite powerful.
Other things that get lost without the Theatre experience are the reactions of the audience.
I love the Marx Brothers but found in certain films there are these huge pauses during Grouchos jokes. Turns out they tested teh the material on teh stage and times the reaction of the audiences. We tend to laught harder and longer in groups than by ourselves. Those pauses would not have been noticed by a crowd laughing and would feel like Groucho is belting them out one after the other.
I love many contemporary films too I don’t pick one over another I just like Good films! (BTW The 1970s and 80’s are considered old now) The Godfather is old fashioned and slow for most kids today. But they can’t help it, the movie isn’t as sophisticated as todays films.
As to the dialog being too ‘stylized’ in old movies, I don’t buy it. I’ve never met anybody in real life who talked like the characters in Pulp Fiction either.
Some Like it Hot didn’t do it for me either. The funniest closing line in movie history is actually from the 1936 version of My Man Godfrey.
I just saw that for the first time a few weeks ago. Absolutely brilliant.
I was the same way the first time I saw it, until about halfway through I realized I wasn’t supposed to understand everything. That’s life, isn’t it; you don’t always know who’s doing what to whom, and why. Once I got to that point, the movie kicked ass.
My mother loved old movies when I was a kid. That was the decade just before VCR’s, and Gone With the Wind used to still make the rounds of revival showings every few years. I didn’t get it. I figured it out eventually; I just had to find my own old movies to love.
There were naturalistic actors before Brando. See John Garfield, Louise Brooks, Montgomery Clift, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March.
I would reccommend Somebody Up There Likes Me, the story of Rocky Graziano, with Paul Newman, Robert Loggia and Steve McQueen in an obscure early role. Even if you don’t like boxing, you’ll probably enjoy this movie.