Hey movies are relevant to the times they were made in-thats what makes then interesting. You cannot dismiss the “B” scifi movies of the 1950’s-yes, they were churned out with mediocre actors…but you do get an understanding of the paranoia that gripped the USA in the 1950’s. How can we understand the fear of an “a-Bomb” attack today? Noboy really worries about this anymore. Teenage girls DID get preggo in the 1950’s-only nobody discussed it. Yopung lovers getting into trouble? That’s the Romeo and Juliet story all over. Wht movies i find fascinating-the 1950’s “juvenile delinquint” type flics-where nice young white middle calss teenagers get sucked into the gang life of crime.
Which one? The 1932 version or the 1983 version?
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One I loathe in the same vein, though, because it is just too hokey-dated: The Lost Weekend.
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Concur with bells on. It’s a two-hour ad for AA, because (I guess) people didn’t know about AA back then. It wouldn’t even be good whittled down to a 30-minute episode of One Day at a Time. Only reason I watched it was because I was once trying to watch all the movies ever referenced in Remington Steele. This one broke me of that.
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The Lost Weekend is certainly a product of its time but there some things to be aware of when it came out in 1945. It was one of the first American films to deal with alcoholism as a disease and not in a judgmental and prohibitionist “Ten Nights in a Barroom” fashion that tried to blame everything on the drinker’s weak character. (You are somewhat right about it being like an ad for AA since the organization had only been around for ten years and was still fairly new on the scene.) However, the film also ended up establishing a few trends that have resulted in it looking dated and hokey today. For one thing, it was one of the first in a series of “message” pictures of the late 1940s and 50s that tried to tackle such controversial issues as racism, anti-Semitism, drug abuse, mental illness, and teenage delinquency. Most of these movies might’ve been relevant when they were released but now come across as compromised, clichéd, preachy, and heavy-handed. In addition, The Lost Weekend was an early example of actor known for comedic or lightweight roles (here, Ray Milland) taking on a serious part (here, an alcoholic writer) in a serious film in order to prove he had the chops to be a serious actor and winning an Oscar. Since then, so many actors and actresses have tried to stretch themselves artistically (and-- hopefully–at least get nominated) playing characters with drug or alcohol problems or are mentally or physically disabled that it’s become long-standing joke. In my opinion, **The Lost Weekend **is not a bad movie and is actually much better than later of its type. However, I wouldn’t put in among Billy Wilder’s top five films.
Agreed. Took a history class once called “The History of the City Through Film”, because the prof had the same thoughts you had about the window into that time. (Great phrase.)
He also loved movies.
Just tried to rewatch Caddyshack, because I had enjoyed rewatching Groundhog Day so much. Groundhog Day ages very well; Caddyshack does not. The pacing, the disconnected plot, the Rodney Dangerfield style of humor, all not funny. Too bad Caddyshack had the good song and** GH** didn’t.
Speaking of Billy Wilder, One, Two, Three is too dated to be anything other than a funny little curiosity now. James Cagney, so it’s worth watching, but the “brainwashing” by playing “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” to Horst Bucholz, and the cold war thing taken to extreme ridiculousnesss make it hard to relate.
Supposed to be a comedy, of course, but still, once was enough for that one.
This makes me sad. Haven’t seen Caddyshack in decades, but if I came across it, I’d watch it. Now I’ll just expect to be disappointed.
The thing that spoils old movies for me is realizing that almost everyone involved in them is dead and rotting in their graves. It gives me the creeps, which is unfortunate because I really used to love watching old film-noir classics.
I thought I was the only one who thought about that. Creeps me out, too.
And don’t lets get started on books. Sure, there are some good old books (like from the 1930s and 1940s), but it’s creepy as hell.
Plus I think Sherlock Holmes might be dead by now, too. Even Mr. White got shot at the end of Reservoir Dogs, so he’s dead too.
Why? It’s just as good a comedy as it ever was.
Exactly this. I have very serious doubts if the DePalma version was ever intended to be a serious crime movie. C’mon, all that dialogue to Michelle Pfeiffer (IIRC) “You’re a tiger, beautiful woman,” and so forth. “First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women!” “I retire!”
It’s just a funny movie – and criminally boring to watch.
Hawks’s Scarface holds up rather well, but I think it was always intended as a solid, straightforward gangsta film, in Hawks’s straightforward, professionalist manner.
Do not despair, ZenBeam (great name!). Maybe it will hold up for you, even though it didn’t for me.
Star Trek Original Motion Picture (1979). Moviegoers were shown an updated Star Trek with a refurbished U.S.S. Enterprise, tres chic pajama uniforms, the latest sci-fi special effects and a plot based on the Voyager space probes. The general public was fascinated by Voyagers 1 and 2, launched in 1977. In retrospect, the plot, a mishmash rehash of TOS episodes Doomsday Machine, The Changeling and Metamorphosis, is disappointing with an anticlimactic ending. I watch it every now and then because it’s not all bad, but the next Star Trek movies are much better.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d go ahead and make it canon that when Ilia/Decker joined and transcended to whatever came next for them was step 1 in creating the Borg Queen.
Just watched The Breakfast Club the other day for the first time and it took me some time to figure out that Molly Ringwald was supposed to be in the posh popular clique. I was like ‘why are there two hipster girls’?
The movie did strike me as overly teenage whiny but maybe that says more about my aging than it does about the movie’s aging. Surely back in the 1980s, non-teenagers would have shrugged too at all that angst?
One thing that took me out of it too, that I think/hope would be less common today, was the casting. The average age of the Club was 23 or something; at least three of the five are clearly not high-school age. How hard can it be to find people that are teenagers or at least look like them?
ETA: not too far off - it was 21 years and a few months.
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The ages of everyone in the principle cast at the time of filming are: Judd Nelson (26), Molly Ringwald (17), Emilio Estevez (23), Anthony Michael Hall (17) and Ally Sheedy (23).
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One thing that took me out of it too, that I think/hope would be less common today, was the casting. The average age of the Club was 23 or something; at least three of the five are clearly not high-school age. How hard can it be to find people that are teenagers or at least look like them?
ETA: not too far off - it was 21 years and a few months.
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I doubt it. The current incarnation of “90210” seems to have a bunch of early and mid 20s playing teenagers. There may be labor laws involved in using people under 18.
Because I love stirring up controversy…the original Star Wars trilogy.
This, in itself, isn’t a bad thing, to me it becomes bad when people who grew up with it can’t believe it doesn’t resonate the same way with kids today. I was 12 when The Phantom Menace came out. A little older than the target audience, but I still feel closer to the second trilogy than the first. It isn’t that I don’t like the original trilogy, but the dated visuals definitely signaled a ‘this is for old people!’ thinking.
Plus, since Star Wars was one of the first of its kind, I had already been exposed to a lot of sci-fi and there wasn’t that magical first time feel to it.
That makes no sense - two of the five in the Breakfast Club were under 18, so it’s clearly possible. Shit, there’s tons of movies out there with actors far younger even than that.
Labor laws absolutely make working with actors under 18 more difficult. Of course it’s possible to cast minors, but most productions would rather avoid the problem entirely by hiring older actors. This kind of casting is still perfectly common in movies, but you’ll see it even more in television, where shooting schedules are tight and long work days are a must (even more so than in movies, where the days are already long). For example, during the first season of Glee, the actors who were playing high school sophomores and juniors? The youngest one was 19, and most of them were in their early to mid-20s.
The other problem is that acting is a craft that requires time and practice to hone, and most teenagers simply aren’t going to have the experience to put in a convincing performance. You can cast age appropriate, and risk having a cast full of wooden or wildly over-acting performers, or you can cast older, and get someone who can do a good job, even if they’re clearly too old for the part.