Casablanca - If after watching that film, you don’t enjoy old black and white films, I doubt you will every enjoy them.
Hehe, no, I’d refuse to look at anything painted AFTER 1950. ;p
It makes me sad to think that there are people who will let the kinds of things mentioned in this thread interfere with them enjoying a good movie on its own terms. Some of these things amount to refusing to read some of the best books ever published because they’re only available as paperbacks, or refusing to listen to the most beautiful music ever composed because you can only get it in stereo on CD, not in a DTS-HD Master Audio version.
You should try to learn to appreciate a movie for what it is, not for what it isn’t. If I were forced to limit myself to watching movies from only one decade, I would choose the 1930s.
I generally avoid B&W movies, because the acting really does annoy me. (The special effects - or lack thereof - generally don’t bother me one way or another though.)
But really, I’m more of a book person anyway; I don’t watch a lot of modern movies either. When I do, I’m more likely to be taken in by something with lots of CGI, because if I’m watching a movie it’s because I’ve planned to turn my brain off for a couple of hours and just enjoy the pretties. (Having said that, a bad script drives me nuts.)
I know what you are trying to say, but it was WAY before the 1980’s. Kubrick, Scorcese, Copola, De Palma? Going back prior to the 60s and 70s, John Ford’s westerns aren’t 'mired in stage tradition.
Actually, to be fair, John Ford’s movies–and he’s one of the 3 or 4 greatest directors who ever lived–were pretty stylized and stagey. But his audiences didn’t go the movies for reality; they expected to escape it. (FWIW, there are few modern directors as non-realist as DePalma, from your examples.)
As far as when movies began to try to reproduce real life, instead of escape from it, most people consider that to have begun with the Italian Neo-Realists, who made movies in the bombed out rubble of postwar Italy, using real people as actors. (Being as how the Italian studio system was in ruins too.)
Again, if you appreciate a movie for what it is rather than for how it differs from your arbitrary expectations. If you can “accept” an animated movie, surely you can adjust your realism filters to “accept” a pre-neorealist movie.
It’s arguably easier to do today (especially if the scene is CGI, like the camera moving around the ship in Titanic), but if you think the camera didn’t move around in the old days, you haven’t seen films like Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, or an awful lot of Alfred Hitchcock. Or the opening scene in Pinocchio (Yeah, I know it’s animation. So was Titanic)
I brainstormed my favorite movies of all time and without meaning to, in a list of twenty movies, I had at least one movie from every decade from the 1930’s to the 2000’s. I love old movies, but I also love new movies. I just love movies. I can’t grok not liking a particular group of movies. FTR, I just turned 30 years old.
Check out Murnau’s *Sunrise *and The Last Laugh. Murnau is often cited as the inventor of the moving camera; the tracks and cables and pulleys he and his cameraman devised for these movies are pretty astonishing, even by today’s standards. Let alone when you think about the clumsy technology of the day.
I tend to agree with the OP. Old movies are way to dramatic. I hate drama. The writers are always trying to be literary geniuses with metaphors, so the great mistery turns out to be a sled or something. The humor can be good. I loved Dr. Strangelove. I love many of the B&W sitcoms. There are exceptions, but most of these movies are really time sensitive.
I love CGI, but if the plot revolves around it I will hate it. The original Terminator is the only one worth seeing IMO. The Matrix was cool but the sequels sucked. Specifically the third one. I don’t have too much trouble with the enhance Star Wars movies except where the plot was changed. Han shot first.
I’m having a hard time thinking Lobsang wouldn’t like Young Frankenstein or any of the Monty Python movies.
I don’t think that recommending a list of 17 or more old movies is going to get Lobsang to change his mind. As others have said, there’s old crap and new crap, old gems and new gems. There are also old and new overrated movies.
Someone upthread recommended Olivier’s version of Hamlet. I remember tuning in to that film, and watching the blurb about how it was made during the war and how they didn’t have much of a budget but it turned out great anyway. I had recently taken part in a pretty intense five-week Shakespeare program, and I was stoked to see what Olivier would do with such legendary material. Then the movie started. By the middle of the first scene I hated it and by the middle of the second scene I had turned it off. The actors were just doing such a terrible job, blandly reciting their lines and completely missing the point of doing a Shakespeare play. If Lobsang were to watch this film, his opinion would be reinforced.
There are occasional exceptions, but I generally don’t care for much before at least the 70’s. The ridiculous, affected acting is part of it but an even bigger obstacle for me is the Hayes Code straight jacket those films were made under. Everything is so sanitized that it made for very limited dramatic, thematic, even comedic colors.
Another thing I notice that bothers me when I watch old movies is the oppressive sexism.
Ditto.
I’ve never seen Frankenstein.
I do like the Monty Python movies, particularly life of Brian. There are always exceptions to every rule.
What happens is a generic ‘old movie’ comes on TV and I’m immediately channel-hopping. And it gets worse the older the movie gets. An 80s movie I’ll watch. A 70s move might have a chance. a 60s movie is probably going to get turned over. And a 50s movie is almost certainly going to get turned over.
I’m a fan of James Bond, and yet I don’t like the Connery films because they’re old. I only like the Roger Moore films because I grew up with them being on TV a bloody lot.
Let’s do this one at a time, rather than a list.
Find a way to see Kiss Me Deadly, 1955, then report back for further instructions.
It has nothing to do with realism. It has everything to do with dynamism. Sometimes people just don’t like watching people make put on jerky movements and talk really fast and halt to make a point.
The movies you’re objecting to weren’t made for you, and your post-neorealist expectations. They were enormously popular to the audiences of their day. Try to put yourself in that mindset; for some movies it’s well worth the effort. Of course, some people can’t–or won’t–read Shakespeare, or Dickens, or even Steinbeck, for pretty much the same reasons: it’s not written in their present-day argot. Whose loss? Not Shakespeare’s.
Well I do watch those films. I’m just saying what I prefer. The argument about realism is one thing, but I am not talking about being able to accept unrealistic movements, stylized and such, but there is certain boxy and jerky motions I don’t watch. Pedantic lectures are unnecessary though I know they are filmy mainstream culture and that’s just how filmy’s speak. 