Thanks, Walloon and Eve. I love watching movies and I’m trying to learn a lot more about the art.
My parents like old movies, so do I.
However, I’ve moved into liking silent movies…them not so much.
I recommended Sunrise and they couldn’t finish it.
sigh
FTR, I’m 25 and have always liked the old movies.
(My great-great-grandmother would play the piano at showings during the silent film era. I just think that’s neat!)
It’s not only young people who will express a disdain for black and white. On one of my mom and dad’s visits, when they were looking through my DVD collection, they both said something along the lines of “Why do you buy these old black and white movies?”
The movies they were specifically referring to were All About Eve and Sunset Blvd.
I suspect this is because they came of age in the '50s, when TV was beginning to threaten the movie theaters, and they were sold the idea that really good movies were not the b&w ones that fit on a TV screen, but could only be seen in glorious Technicolor, Cinemascope, and stereophonic sound.
Looking over my DVD/video collection, I would say I’ve got a decent representation of every decade from the 1930s to date, plus a couple of silents.
We are more sophisticated in our expectation of high production values. A plastic flying saucer on wires was fine for audiences 50 years ago but today we’ve come to expect almost photorealistic effects.
And it’s to be expected that after years of MTV editing style, we find the pacing of many old movies slow and boring.
Gawd! I still think of that as recent! How old is “old”?
“Old” movies for me are from the 40’s or before. Of course, I grew up with old movies on television. When we first had television in the early 50’s, aside from half-hour dramas made for TV, most of what was on was variety (vaudeville in a can) and old movies. It didn’t matter whether the films were shot in B&W or not (most of them were) because there was no color TV until about 1960. Everything we saw was in black and white.
There were some pretty corny films, I agree, but I still regard *Gone With The Wind * as a great film (released in 1939). The original version of *Born Yesterday * with Judy Holiday, Broderick Crawford and William Holden I think was superior in every way to the fairly recent version with Melanie Griffith, John Goodman and Don Johnson. The only thing it lacked was color film. There was plenty of color in the movie itself.
I think the re-making of old and in some cases classic films is too bad. I’ve never seen a remake that was better than the original, or even as good. So it’s “new.” So what? There have been at least two remakes of Mutiny On The Bounty, but while they offered color and improved special effects, they didn’t have Charles Laughton’s venomous Captain Bligh. A recent remake of *Moby Dick * starring Patrick Stewart was excellent . . . if you had not seen the (1960’s ?) version with Gregory Peck. That was such a good film it seemed a waste to re-shoot it, no matter how good the recent actors were.
And King Kong. I watched the most recent remake of King Kong a few months ago, then got a copy of the 1930’s original and watched it at home . . . for about the twentieth time. It is still better paced if not better acted. The new one had some great special effects, but the original still ain’t bad. And it doesn’t last more than three freaking hours!
The whole topic is subjective, of course, but I think if you don’t watch old movies you are missing out. It’s like refusing to read Steinbeck because he’s dead.
I love the ‘time machine’ aspect, too. In It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert’s character’s father drives up in an antique automobile, and you have to remind yourself, “That’s not an antique automobile, that’s what a very rich man drove at that time!” It’s a mind-blower.
This made me laugh out loud. . . and I’m reading it in a library!
I work in a video store. I’m the resident “old movie” guy. Nonetheless, I rarely choose an old movie to play in-the-store. Modern movies are mostly about the gotcha moment; they play well as background because they lunge for your attention every few seconds. Most of the older movies that have passed the test of time as great movies reward closer attention; today’s audiences are spoiled by movies that do most of the work for them. This expectation of audience attention is what some people refer, mistakenly, as “boring.”
Fifteen years ago, I told a friend that I didn’t like old movies. I thought, technology improves over time, right? I wouldn’t want old medication, right? Things get better over time. What’s different about movies? I mean, I liked movies, but mostly didn’t seek out older movies. Then this paper’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a snarky article in response to the AFI’s “stultifyingly vacuous” list of 100 Greatest American Movies, in which he offered an alternate 100. I started checking them off my list. When I began, I had only seen 17. Today, I’ve seen all but 12 titles that have not ever been released in any form. Along the way, I saw some life-changing masterpieces that just *happened * to be old. Nowadays, if I have two movies I have to watch tonight because my TiVo is swallowing its tail, I’ll choose the black and white over the color, and any movie made in the 1930s over any other period. My lifetime topten list currently includes three silent films.
My point? Mainly, that it’s a matter of ignorance vs. education. Spend some time with some great old movies, and eventually you’ll figure out why they’ve lasted.
(A thought: aren’t the people who are more likely to look down on old movies in favor of new, pretty much the same people who might tend to look down on modern art in favor of the old masters? Just a thought.)
Do we have to be limited to two points of view in discussing how the world is changed - "You kids today . . . " versus “That’s boring, grampa!” Please. That’s silly.
See, I have a suspicion that there’s more to people’s preferences regarding fast-paced media then just that us kids today have no attention span because we see too many of them whatchamacallit music videos on the MTV with all the drugs and naked ladies. One thing that I’ve noticed - and perhaps it’s not true; maybe it’s just my observation bias, but I suspect there’s more to it than that - I think people from my parents’ generation are simply slower at processing information. I’ve particularly noticed this when my parents or people their age use computers; when I’m looking at a window, it takes a fraction of a second for me to evaluate the image and determine what the important parts are, while my parents spend several times as long having to examine each item in the window. (My father is a computer programmer by trade; he’s certainly not unfamiliar with computers.) I’ve seen the same thing in other folks their age - it’s not just the aftereffects of their hippie years, because it seems to be true of everyone I know over forty. To a lesser extent, I’ve noticed that people that age seem to find it harder to notice all the details on a TV or movie image - something that happens briefly on one side of the screen might be quite obvious to me, while older people seem to miss it entirely (that phenomenon, though, I’ve only had the opportunity to observe in my parents.)
I’ve noticed that sort of thing in a lot of situations. I wonder if, far from just making us numb and desperate for the next stimulation, computers and fast-paced TV shows have actually enabled people who grew up with them to become more adept at quickly sorting through information presented visually, and immediately discarding the irrelevant parts. It’s only a suspicion, but it seems to me that scenes that people my age find interesting are overwhelming to folks my parents’ age. I wonder how much our experience of the world is different because of our exposure to video games and TV. (I know that one partial explanation that has been offered for the gradual rise in IQ scores over time is that young people are more adept at certain kinds of visual reasoning as a result of playing video games, so certainly other people have considered this sort of idea.)
If that’s the case, then a movie that is sedately-paced to my parents might be mind-numbingly slow to me - if I analyze each scene that much more quickly, then the next scene seems to take that much longer to appear. I wonder if anyone’s done analyses to see how the actual pacing, shot-by-shot, of recent films compares with old films. I wonder if films that are usually regarded as pretty slow-paced today might have been regarded as normal or fast-paced fifty years ago. That’s not a result of “shrinking attention spans”, just a change in the way we process information.
Incidentally, does anyone know about the comparative lengths of movies released over the years? It’s my impression, at least, that a lot more really long films are released nowadays. If that’s the case, it would certainly contradict assertions about shrinking attention spans.
As far as stylization and genre conventions, that too is in the eye of the beholder. You don’t roll your eyes at Shakespeare, or Kabuki, or whatever; you accept that it’s working within a particular identifiable style. John Ford’s western are a vast and deep as anything Shakespeare ever did, and they’re not even quite as stylized. But because today’s audiences are working from the currently fashionable “style” of painstaking verisimilitude, they dismiss rather than adjust.
Many of you forgive genre conventions is SF and mystery novels; you just get used to them. Or, you decide that you trust the author/artist, and willingly go along for the ride. This is suspension of disbelief, and a modern audience needs to be well practiced in it to take a film (or any work) from a period of different fashions of style on its own terms.
You see, the problem is that both “needs” are associated with children. Attraction to shiny objects, short attention spans.
None of my friends (save one) have the patience to watch the original Starsky and Hutch show - which was considered to be extremely action packed for its time. The plot lines are just too slow-moving for people raised during the wham-bam-blam action-movie heyday of the 80s and 90s. I don’t mind the slow pacing, but most of my friends get bored quickly when Soul and Glaser are on the screen.
How to phrase this so as NOT to piss off two Dopers who I respect immensely? A lot of it isn’t art. A lot of it is. It is unquestionable that the film industry is just that- an industry. A perusal of some books on film history from say, 1900-1930 will show you just how much of an industry it is.
Nothing has changed. Just as the filler, bottom-of-the-double bill shows that were cranked out like ground meat served their purpose in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s and 50’s, so today are many feature films shot only to go “straight to video” as we say in the business.
That’s okay. Not everything is brilliant dialogue, witty and subtle performances framed by astonishingly elegant lighting, amazing camerawork and beautiful music. A lot of B&W films are no more or less mediocre than a lot of the offerings today on cable or at Blockbuster. The difference is that back then, pre- t.v., cable and Blockbuster, the more banal and basic features were cranked out, printed and released. Double-features were very much the norm on weekends ( and, I suspect though have not researched it, on some weeknights if the community would support that kind of booking ). There would be the headliner picture- titles that have been mentioned in this thread and hundreds, hundreds of other wonderful pictures. Then, the bottom of the bill would run. Well, that’s okay too- everyone gets a start somewhere, from actors to writers.
My point is that nothing has changed. The outlets surely have but the bell curve of art to shit hasn’t. It never will. I’m a professional cinematograher and- unlike either Walloon and Eve- I can tell you that I myself have worked on a handful of straight-to-video feature films shot on the East Coast.
It doesn’t mean they are of no value, but trust me - plenty of them are not art.
Just so we are being honest, and clear. Black and white does not automatically equal art. It just means that at the time, that is how films were being shot. When does it equal art? When it is a conscious choice AND the choice pays off.
I am not sure that any DVD or LaserDisk can do justice to either Young Frankenstein or Manhattan, but if they are screened in your city and the prints are fresh, or at least in reasonable shape, hike on over and take a look at more modern-day black and white.
Pure art. 
Then again, if a good film print of M is screened, my god- go see it. How utterly frightening. And perfect.
Cartooniverse
Not necessarily. The incessant need to cut rapidly within scenes, as in Moulin Rouge!, even when it works against the mood of the scene (e.g., Satine’s death) is every bit as much the symptom of shrinking attention spans. It’s like when you’re watching a little child and you have to jingle your keys, and make funny faces and loud noises in desparate attempts to keep its attention.
:rolleyes: Yes, thank you for that. Now, do you actually know the answer to the question I asked?
I will admit that, having finally seen Casablanca for the first time, I couldn’t take the classic “hill of beans” speech seriously…my first thought was:
“…But this is our hill…and these are our beans…”
-Lt Frank Drebin
Yes, I do, and I’ve answered this question more than once on these boards.
The average running times of Best Picture Academy Award nominees:
1935: 110 minutes
1945: 118 minutes
1955: 110 minutes
1965: 153 minutes
1975: 145 minutes
1985: 133 minutes
1995: 130 minutes
2005: 137 minutes
Re: Slower pace.
An old bull and a young bull were standing on a hill, when they spied a herd of heifers. The young bull says, ‘Hey, let’s run down and screw one of those cows!’ The old bull says, ‘No, let’s walk down and screw them all.’
A movie is like food. You can get something fast and wolf it down. Instant gratification, and possibly a sugar rush. But a good meal is meant to be savoured. One can enjoy an action-packed film with dazzling images and fast cuts; or one can enjoy the interplay of the actors and a well-written script. Both can be enjoyable, but many people seem to have lost the ability to savour.
Re: Old vs. young.
It seems to me that the larger percentage of people who won’t watch an old or B&W film are younger. But I haven’t taken a survey. FWIW my sister, who won’t watch B&W films, is in her mid-50s.
Re: Classic crap.
Some posters have pointed out that many, if not the majority, of old films weren’t really all that good. But there are many, many of which have been mentioned here, that have withstood the test of time. We tend to see the good old films more often than the bad ones.
In August my g/f and I went to Movies In The Park (or whatever they called it). We saw The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, From Here To Eternity, Forbidden Planet, and Bringing Up Baby. (Actually, we walked out of the last one because of all of the technical glitches with the DVD player, and because some rude people came late and blocked our view.) I’ve seen Sierra Madre a few times. Not really one of my favourites, but not bad. I often buy films I like, and I don’t have this one. My g/f didn’t care for it. She enjoyed From Here To Eternity very much. Me? Eh. I’ve seen it before, and I’ve seen better. She liked Forbidden Planet. Now there’s a classic of the genre! Bringing Up Baby may be her favourite film. I liked what I saw of it.
So even amongst the ‘classics’, some people like them and some people don’t. But I’ll at least give some films a go, while others will dismiss them out of hand. But then, I grew up watching The Little Rascals and The Familiy Film Festival on TV. Having been exposed to old films early on, I’m more likely to watch them.
I’d like to second Archive Guy’s excellent comments about the importance of seeing films in theaters. If you ever have a chance to see any classic film in a theater, whether you’ve seen it before or not, go to the theater. This almost certainly explains Max the Vool’s indifference to Lawrence of Arabia (as kingpengvin pointed out).
I’d like to mention an aspect of cinema that is essentially lost: nitrate prints. Even if you go see Casablanca or Grand Hotel in a theater (much better than watching on TV), you will still not be getting the complete experience. The print you will see (assuming you’re not in a digital theater :eek: ) will be safety film, not nitrate stock, as most films were pre-1951 or so.
So what, you may ask. B&W is B&W, isn’t it?
As anyone who has ever seen nitrate will tell you, no it isn’t! I’ve seen a handful of nitrate prints, and there’s a beautiful, silvery shimmering quality to a nitrate image that is just missing from ordinary safety film. At the risk of overhyping it, it’s just magical.
Unfortunately, nitrate had an unfortunate tendency to burst into flame (hence the need to replace it with “safety film”) and to deteriorate as it aged. A by-product of the aging process: little puddles of nitroglycerine!
So the number of nitrate prints in good condition is vanishingly small, and the special requirements for projecting them are quite onerous:
I saw a few nitrate prints at the AFI in Washington, DC, theater when it was still located in the Kennedy Center. As you may have divined, the experience was quite memorable.
Of course, within the next few years, we’ll be mourning the death of analog film as digital cinema becomes widespread. Just another reason for us old fogeys to say “Sic transit gloria mundi.”