Out of the Blue
Robert Mitchum and the hot and deadly Jane Greer…a noir way ahead of its time.
Yeah, Casablanca. A very close second would be Sunset Boulevard.
But if we’re collecting data for a follow-up Thread with a poll, the poll should also include:
[ul]
[li]Some Like It Hot[/li][li]Bride of Frankenstein[/li][li]Rashomon[/li][li]Singin’ in the Rain[/li][li]Citizen Kane[/li][li]The Third Man[/li][li]Touch of Evil[/li][li]Modern Times[/li][li]Top Hat[/li][li]Twentieth Century[/li][li]La Strada[/li][li]Metropolis[/li][li]White Heat[/li][li]The Philadelphia Story[/li][/ul]
I’d go for How Green Was My Valley. Probably my favourite John Ford film, and has without a doubt the best acting I’ve seen in a pre-Method film. It seems to be a rather ignored film these days, sadly.
I was thinking Inherit the Wind, but it came out in 1960. And *Oz *has already been mentioned many times. So I’m gonna go with Some Like It Hot, with *All About Eve *as runner-up.
Personal favorite? I’m m gonna go with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I don’t care what anybody says; I love that movie.
Yes, you’re right. My bad.
Arsenic and Old Lace. Lunatic farce, love story, crime, plot twists, plus Frank Capra and Cary Grant at their best.
Casablanca is the best Hollywood film before 1960 - which is not a knock against it, far from it. I think it’s one of the best Hollywood films ever made.
But there’s a ton of other countries out there, meaning a ton of different cultures and a ton of different ways of making films. And at 1960, that’s 70 years of film, from the silents to the talkies to the studio system to even the French New Wave - 1960 is too late for Jules and Jim, but 400 Blows came out in 1959 (and Hiroshima Mon Amour right before that…).
Even in America it’s not so easy. On the Waterfront was 1954, which is as good or better of a film than *Casablanca *- it’s an early modern film, but the acting and direction and everything still hold up as a gripping, powerful story. Again, depends on what you want from a film.
Even in Hollywood it’s not so easy. What about Max Ophuls, who sorta kinda pioneered moving camera work? Like Letter from an Unknown Woman? Or Hitchcock’s Notorious - it’s about Nazi’s too!
Not to mention, Kurosawa made a half a dozen films better than Casablanca before 1960 (in my opinion), but I can’t even pick between them. *Rashomon, Seven Samurai, *hell all of his early stuff. I think the best he ever did was *Ikiru *in 1952, which is gets better everytime you watch it, especially as you get older.
In France, it’s also impossible to decide, as those were some of the best years ever for French cinema, leading right up to the New Wave. You have probably the greatest prison escape film of all time in A Man Escaped, to the masterpiece of cinematic fantasy that is Beauty and the Beast, to the timeless dread of Wages of Fear, to fucking Children of Paradise (which I suspect is France’s Casablanca). There’s soooooo many masterpieces out there!
What about Italian Neo Realism? Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D. Or Fellini, like La Strada?
Then there’s all sorts of others. How do you compare something like Ozu’s Tokyo Story to Casablanca? Or that insane Russian film Letter Never Sent that was filmed in a forest fire?
Others…
Grand Illusion
M
Something by Bergman - Seventh Seal or Wild Strawberries?
Passion of Joan of Arc
City Life
Annnnnd I could go on, that barely scratches the surface. In 70 years of film, there’s a ton of candidates. It all depends on what makes a film “great” to you.
I think the Secret Life of Walter Mitty beats The Court Jester -
But for the greatest of all the 50/60s - I have to go with either War of the Worlds or The Day the Earth Stood Still.
I only recently realized at the end right before the furnace scene when the executor is talking to reporters, who the guy with the pipe is.
Alan Ladd
I’m torn between Citizen Kane and GWTW. Probably GWTW, although I personally enjoy watching 12 Angry Men and The Day the Earth Stood Still more.
Out of the Past (correction made in case someone looks and can’t find Out of the Blue).
It’d be my favorite noir film too. Jane Greer is so good.
City Lights
Quite the opposite:
Seems to me the sleeveless undershirt was popular among men of that period, as opposed to T-shirts, but I can’t say for sure:
I think the point is about undershirts on men being popular with women.
In terms of spectacle, either Wizard of Oz or Ben-Hur. But I think Vertigo was a better movie than either.
And this is the problem, what criteria do you use to determine the* greatness *of a movie? And even then, a great movie is not just determined from the sum of its parts.
Huh??? 
Oz, CG still can’t make a tornado so real. I love Casablanca but if you watch it too closely you start to see the narrative is paced by people ordering drinks, and no one ever finishes a drink except Bogey when he destroys that 5th, and all that ordering and not drinking starts to bother me. Great thing about Ben Hur and all those old movies is their lush color,Technicolor and CinemaScope beat hell out of 3D and digital computer modern whatever.
Let’s not forget the lighting and not finishing of cigarettes.