I seem to recall a recent movie based on nontraditional sexual mores creating quite a stir. 
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
That everybody doesn’t get on the plane and fly out of Casablanca is, in part, an artifact of the Code, right?
[/QUOTE]
Nah, I think Captain Renault wanted Rick all to himself. The pointless Letters of Transit were just a red herring.
Stranger
I think **A Face in the Crowd ** was remarkably prescient in the ways it showed the then-new ways products, celebrities, and politicians could be packaged by the media (especially television) for public consumption. However, there is one aspect of the plot that would not fly today if this movie was ever remade: how “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith’s character) meets his downfall. At the end of the movie, Rhodes’ jilted ex-lover (Patricia Neal) leaves the audio on during the closing credits of his TV show so it picks up his insulting comments about his viewing audience being a bunch of suckers and idiots (a scene derived from the old radio urban legend about “Uncle Don’s” infamous send-off). The world is lot more jaded and cynical than it was in 1957 (the year this movie was made) so it’s unlikely Rhodes’ “good ol’ boy/man of the people” routine would ever have mass appeal or that his “not-meant-for-public-consumption” comments about his audience would prove so deeply offensive that it would kill his career. If anything, I think more people would start tuning in just to hear what outrageous thing he’d say next or for the chance to see him have a public meltdown on national television. (In fact, a present-day “Lonesome” Rhodes would be media savvy enough to fully exploit his “unpredictability” and “churlishness.”)
In today’s media environment, it’s extremely difficult for a well-known figure to do something that would guarantee instant oblivion like what Rhodes did. Rush Limbaugh can inveigh against drug users while gobbling down Oxycontins like m&m’s and Bill O’ Reilly can lecture children about proper behavior while settling a suit for sexual harassment without any loss in popularity with their core audiences. About the only way a media figure can fade from view is for the public to gradually get bored with his or her act and move on to whatever else catches their attention.
How 'bout “Wuthering Heights”?
In the modern version, Catherine marries whats-his-name and bangs Heathcliff every other day and Who Really Cares Anyway?
[QUOTE=tremorviolet]
Yeah, I didn’t catch that 'cause I was reading the post about the Ellery Queen episode immediately before I posted. Sorry if you wasted 15 seconds.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll let it go this time, but try not to let it happen again.
The Evidence is back on the air.
Just caught part of 1971’s The Seven Minutes, which centers in a trial about (in part) a shockingly obscene novel that, judging from the descriptions of the characters, would barely be a blip in the today’s chick-lit genre.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Only if he were caught with a dead girl or a live boy. (Who said that? 
)
[/QUOTE]
That would be Gov. Edwards of the great corrupt state of Louisiana.
Another one: 1988’s Rambo III, dedicated to “the gallant people of Afghanistan”.
I only remember this because I started a thread touching on it a while back. I was a jerk in that thread, so if you read it, keep in mind that wouldn’t work today, either.
[QUOTE=Otto]
I dunno, I still think a pol caught in flagrante would instantly become unelectable.
[/QUOTE]
But he wasn’t. There was no sexual relationship.
[QUOTE=Otto]
I’ll let it go this time, but try not to let it happen again.
[/qUOTE]
:rolleyes:
[QUOTE=tremorviolet]
It’s not a TV show but I was listening to an old timey radio show of Sherlock Holmes and the major clue was a phone call with a freaky, inhuman sounding voice. To modern listeners, it’s incredibly obvious it’s just a slowed down tape (which was the final deduction) but I guess listeners in the 20s and 30s probably hadn’t had much experience with tape recorders.
[/QUOTE]
Otto-asphyxiation aside, this was also a premise in Home Alone 2, allowing young Macaulay Culkin to slow down and deepen a recording of his voice and impersonate an adult over the phone. It was unconvincing.
Mildred Pierce was based on the premise that a young woman could enrich herself by seducing a rich kid, claiming she was pregnant, and making his family pay her a fat settlement to get out of his life and keep the whole thing quiet. Wouldn’t work today.
I don’t think that counts – that’s just the McGuffin (Alfred Hitchcock’s term), the thing the characters care about but is completely irrelevant to the plot. It could be replaced with “nuclear secrets” or “industrial diamonds” or “a secret formula” and the movie would be identical but for that one change.
That strikes me as inherently different from, say, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER: they’d just have traded cellphone numbers before the rendez-vous.
[sub]( Obviously, I’m posting here as “poster” not as moderator, so my judgement call on what counts or doesn’t has no official status any more than anyone else’s.)[/sub]
[QUOTE=C K Dexter Haven]
I don’t think that counts – that’s just the McGuffin (Alfred Hitchcock’s term), the thing the characters care about but is completely irrelevant to the plot. It could be replaced with “nuclear secrets” or “industrial diamonds” or “a secret formula” and the movie would be identical but for that one change.
[/QUOTE]
Not quite; it’s Lime’s dilution of the penicillin which creates the moral conflict resulting in his change of heart about cooperating with authorities; well, that and the fact that he wants to get on with Alida Valli (and what red-blooded male woudn’t?)
An essential theme of the movie is how cheap life has become the postwar era; Major Calloway reduces Martin’s concerns about Lime’s (faked) death to the same level as the “cheap dime novels” he authors; The Russian banters with Calloway about Anna’s return to Russian custody (and inevitable imprisonment in a gulag); Lime justifies his insideous actions in terms of profit: “Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.” Everybody (except for Martins) is pretty hopeless and insouciant, indifferent to discrepencies in the death of Lime. So it’s not quite just a swappable McGuffin; microfilm, diamonds, a briefcase, et cetera wouldn’t have the same impact within the film as tainted medicine which cripples or kills the victims.
The recent (and quite good) film The Constant Gardener (and its source novel) borrows heavily from Graham Greene’s story in many ways, so I daresay the themes and story of The Third Man is still timely, even if the particulars are not.
Dude, did you [post=7559071]lose something[/post]?
Stranger
[QUOTE=wm–]
How about every movie made before cell phones become commonplace in which characters miss each other at a meeting place, need to tell someone something but can’t reach them, need to call the police but can’t find a pay phone, etc.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, but that still happens in real life, as the loser who ruined my wife’s and I’s date last Wednesday couldn’t perform the simple task of transporting a thirteen year-old babysitter 1.54 miles because
a. He forgot the paper on which the address was written
b. The family has but one cell phone, which they (the husband and wife) switch off at need. Of course, Mr. Husband didn’t have the phone
Now, of course, it’s not a comedic situation, just a situation to show how useless some people are at even the most basic of tasks.
… he sez bitterly 
Don’t forget all the hitting.
My favorite example occurs in the Gary Cooper “Mr Deeds…” movie, in which supposedly normal men start swinging at the first hint of an implication they resent. It’s like watching a whole society of psychopaths.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Dude, did you [post=7559071]lose something[/post]?
[/QUOTE]
No, but if you took what I said at face value I think you might have.
[QUOTE=Otto]
The Evidence is back on the air.
[/QUOTE]
Not really. They’re burning through the remaining episodes already produced, but it is most definitely cancelled.
[QUOTE=Rodgers01]
Just about any old movie that relies on sexual mores for a plot hinge wouldn’t work in today’s anything goes mentality.
[/QUOTE]
I saw a perfect example today: Mr. Belvedere Goes to College. A subplot involves a young woman (played by Shirley Temple) who works for the college newspaper. She has to hide the fact that she has a young son. She’s a war widow, ring, marriage license and all, but it’s still illicit for a single mother to be attending college.
[QUOTE=Rodgers01]
Just about any old movie that relies on sexual mores for a plot hinge wouldn’t work in today’s anything goes mentality.
[/QUOTE]
E.g., Prudence and the Pill. Not quite that old, it dates from 1968 – nearly the cusp of the Sexual Revolution. A teenage girl can’t get birth-control pills, so she swipes her mother’s and replaces them with aspirin, with predictable results for her mother. A husband estranged from his wife, inspired by this, schemes to tamper with his wife’s pills so she’ll get pregnant by her lover, providing him with evidence of her adultury (he’s got a mistress of his own, BTW), and positioning him to sue for divorce on terms favorable to himself.
Nowadays, adultery is almost irrelevant to the economic aspects of divorce settlements, and we beg teenagers to use contraception!