Birth of a Nation is a repulsive, violently racist film and is rightly reviled as such. To this day, it still holds the power to provoke powerful reactions among viewers. This ability is evidence that it has held up over the years.
Some movies that IMHO, have not aged well, i. e. highly regarded when released, but have lost power over time:
Platoon, The Time Machine, High Noon, Snow White, Gone With the Wind, Halloween, Kramer vs. Kramer.
Some movies that IMHO, have aged very well: any Astaire/Rogers musical, MGM musicals of the 40’s and 50’s, John Ford westerns, Shane, The Adventures of Robin Hood,Captain Blood, Gentleman Jim, Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton movies, Superman and Superman II, Apocalypse Now, The Wizard of Oz.
Certain genres seem to be more resistant than others to the effects of aging. Westerns and other movies that were period peices at the time they were made, biographies, sports movies, and musicals.
Topical dramas don’t hold up well unless the issue they deal with is still one that is front-and-center. War movies from before the 70’s tended to try to make war glamorous and exciting, and thus tend to look antiquated now. Any movie that depended on emerging technology over convincing performances and a compelling story hold up poorly.
Yes and no. There are obvious trends in what we think of as authentic “Western” clothing. In the thirties and forties, it was ten-gallon hats, chaps and tassels. In the fifties and early sixties, all the characters in Westerns wore leather vests or fringe jackets, too-tight pants and small hats. In the late sixties and seventies, everyone started dressing like Clint Eastwood- dirty long coats, beaten-up hats and long hair.
I will agree that period pieces age the best if the director has an eye for historical detail.
I don’t think we are in complete disagreement here. I did not say that period pieces as a class are resistant to aging, just that they are more resistant than contemporary dramas and technology driven films.
I will concede, however, that westerns aren’t as resistant to aging as the other genres I mentioned, namely biographies, sports movies, and musicals.
The great musicals in particular seem to be most nearly immune to aging. This was, perhaps, because the film musical was born as a nearly mature art form in the 30’s, having grown and evolved on Broadway for decades, and reached its peak in the 40’s and 50’s. Swing Time is still about as good a movie musical as has ever been put on film. And the last good traditional movie musical, Grease, holds up nearly as well.
And before someone tries to cite Xanadu, it was so bad it killed the movie musical for good. To be an exception, it would have to have been considered good in the first place.
Good point. Another example: Peeping Tom. Scandalous in its year, and a breakthrough for psychologically connecting the audience with a badly disturbed antihero through then-revolutionary use of subjective framing.
Now, these techniques have become so run-of-the-mill (not to mention the lurid early-60’s production design) that the film looks to modern eyes like a curiosity instead of the groundbreaking piece of art that it was.
The Most Dangerous Game, based on a short story by Richard Connell, is a recent discovery of mine that fits your thread. I bought it to show to my students in college and found out that it is incredibly corny and overdone, even by 1930s standards. Good for a few laughs, though.
