Yeah, I wonder about that as well. Audiences are sophisticated about what’s allowed in the courtroom? I seriously doubt that. I just saw Bernie the other day (good movie, by the way), and even from my little mock-trial experience I knew Matthew McConaghey’s cross-examination of Jack Black was … not the way it went in real life.
I rewatched The Verdict a few months ago. It’s somewhat dated, but still a gripping movie. And Newman got robbed of the Oscar (curse you, Ben Kingsley!).
It’s not unwatchable, and I quite enjoyed it actually as a character study, but I was watching The Conversation the other night with Gene Hackman and just kept thinking about how all of his fancy equipment he used could probably be handled by a single smartphone app today.
Also, there’s a pretty jarring “fag” joke about mid-way through that pulls you out of the movie for a bit, but at the time I’m sure it was a killer joke.
One of the better episodes of the TV show Angel dealt with a girl passing as white in the 1950s, and the trouble she got into when people found out her race, and that was just a little over a decade ago. I don’t think this particular issue is hard for modern audiences to understand. Most people understand that society used to be really, really racist, and its not hard to see why someone in that era would want to hide their origin, or to intuit the sort of fear and self loathing that might entail.
A Man And A Woman seems now to be trying too hard and to be too overly-60s for me to enjoy. Oh they’re getting a room? Big whoop. Oh she’s une movie directeure and he’s un racecar driver? Who cares.
I agree. I am an attorney and I love The Verdict. I think anyone who is focused on all the procedural flaws and other unrealistic aspects of the film is really missing the point.
I watched The French Connection for the first time a couple of years ago, and it really seems, ahem, of its era.
I don’t really consider a film “dated” merely because it reminds us of its time. Unlike Flyer, it doesn’t really bother me if a character cites prices or salaries that would be unusual today; to the contrary I’m more annoyed by tedious circumlocutions like “a full day’s wages”–obviously inserted by the writer to avoid an apparent dating.
What does make a film “dated” is when it assumes a social condition that is little remembered or understood today. CalMeacham mentioned Imitation of Life, which is an excellent example of this; fair or not, most viewers today are unaware of the mulatto stigma and the dangers of “passing”, which are pretty much silently assumed throughout this picture. All that’s left are Douglas Sirk’s melodramatics, which brings me to a second way movies can seem dated: They make use of acting or directing techniques which are no longer in vogue, especially ones which have been parodied for so long that most viewers are familiar only with the parodies. Hollywood Melodrama falls squarely in that category, and without the redeeming qualities of subversive irony. this particular Sirk film doesn’t even rise to the level of camp.
I have to agree. It’s been awhile since I watched (several months) so I can’t be precise, but it seemed that important scenes were left out, and the ending was too abrupt. Maybe the problem was in the editing. I think original audiences were so impressed with the FX, like you say, that they ignored the storytelling/directing/continuity flaws.
Also, maybe audiences of the 30’s and 40’s weren’t as nitpicky as we are. 
Rewatched Anatomy of a Murder on TCM yesterday. I’ve seen it several times and it holds up well. My husband never watches old movies, especially if they’re in black and white and there are no boobs or explosions, and it held his attention.
I saw Rebel as a teen, and even then didn’t think those kids were realistic. It was popular because of James Dean. I don’t think the old farts who were making movies about rebellious teenagers in the 50’s ever got it right.
Not so much a particular movie, but a ton of movies that air on TCM have some variation of the plot “Two men vie for the same woman.”
Ah, the “glacial majesty” of 70’s Science fiction. “Look what we can do with forced perspective and matte paintings!” “Yes, it’s very impressive, considering what you had to work with.”
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”.
Wow. Stinkeroo.
When it came out, I loved it. I bought a copy of it just recently, took it to work to watch, kicked back, and planned on an hour or two of pleasant amusement.
I’d have been more amused if I had just done my work.
Oh, I think people vunderstand the situation – but those old movies assumed that you also felt the awful pain of being almost, but not really, white, and what an awful torment that was. People today aren’t going to sympathize with that at all.
You recall correctly. I think it holds up extremely well, with one flaw (and it’s a flaw that was apparent even when it was released): the bad guys are going through an awful lot of trouble for a stash of drugs that any street-corner pusher would be carrying in his pocket. C’mon, make it worth our while. Stuff the teddy bear with…I dunno…unobtainium.
Birth of a Nation. A cinematic groundbreaker in its day. Nowadays, people watch it only for historical interest, not because they want to watch a good movie.
The 80s actioners are really showing their age. Only Die Hard has aged perfectly, and the first two Lethal Weapons films to a lesser extent. Fist fight and gunfight choreography has just progressed so much that most of those action movies look like they’re a half-speed walkthru before filming.
There’s a lot of good stuff in older film, and quite a few movies I genuinely like. (“The Third Man,” for example, is amazing - in fact, I think I’ll watch it again with dinner tonight.) That said, it’s easy to find older movies where women are treated in ways that are so bizarre they pull me right out of the film. And I don’t mean that in a politically-correct, how-dare-they sort of sense - I get that “the past is a foreign country.” But some of the ways women are treated as, well, children you happen to be able to bang, are just so alien that they’re distracting.
Rosemary’s Baby is a good example of this. Classic horror, right? But Rosemary herself is such a child-woman that it’s hard to find her likeable (and in an innocent-in-peril horror, that’s a problem), and the extent to which she’s under the thumb of her husband and doctors just makes one wonder, “Sheesh, why aren’t you walking out the door?” It’s like watching a horror movie made by space aliens - I can recognize the craftmanship, but the emotional notes just don’t work.
I honestly think that if James Dean had lived to old age Rebel Without A Cause would be mostly remembered as that stupid teenager movie he did when he was just starting out.
By a similar token, Alexander Nevsky. Historically interesting, Prokofiev’s score is still amazing, and a few shots are still genuinely stunning - but the film itself is sufficiently cheesy that I’d like to set up an MST3K-style thing with some friends to screen it. (It doesn’t help that the film is Stalin-era Soviet propaganda, which adds some uncomfortableness to certain scenes. When Nevsky orders his troops to fence off the ice with their sleds to preclude retreat, one can’t help recalling Stalin’s practice of using military police and machine-guns for much the same end.)
I hope so. It rang perfectly true to me at the time so I can only hope things got better.
Oh, Og… Last Tango in Paris was completely unwatchable when I tried to view it again this year.
J.