Stumbling Upon Old Movies

Cafe Society
21

Casablanca is the greatest movie of all times. It’s got romance! It’s got humor! It’s got suspense! It’s got Nazis! What’s not to love?

Haven’t watched it in a few years. For some reason, my wife has never been able to stay awake through the entire movie (I know, not a ringing endorsement). If you’re used to IN YOUR FACE movies of the last 30 years or so, yeah, you might not like it. The humor can be subtle. Not a lot of action. That being said, it does an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC job of setting the mood. “Of all the gin-joints in all the world, she has to walk into mine” - you get the depression in Rick. The scene with the music battle - you’re stirred by the playing of La Marseilles. Lots of witty rejoinders from Claude Raines, but if you’re expecting John McLane-level one-liners before the explosion, you ain’t gonna get it.

22

Oh, and my recommendation for an old movie:

Harvey (1950)

Staring Jimmy Stewart and a 6’8" invisible rabbit.

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be’ - she always called me Elwood - ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

OK, I will.

23

Fantastic little film.

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“I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.”

25

Not necessarily French but much of the cast (including those playing the Germans) were Europeans of various nationalities. I believe I learned that from Roger Ebert’s commentary track to the Blu-ray version.

26

I just watched it last weekend for like the 50th time. It’s still a hoot. Elisha Cook, Jr., is perfect.

Then I discovered the Rifftrax guys (ex-MST3K) have a version, so it’s gonna be 51 soon.

Oh, God, no, please! :wink:

27

I was late to the game with The Big Lebowski. I’d known of its existence, and many of the oft-quoted lines, and I also knew that it was right up my alley. But somehow, I’ve never seen it until about a year ago.

Anyway, I think it’s brilliant, and I now rank it as my second-favorite comedy.

mmm

28

When I was a kid, my mom used to watch a lot of old movies. I couldn’t see the appeal. I thought I didn’t like old movies; turns out that I do, I just don’t like the same ones my mom does.

I recommend:

My Man Godfrey William Powell as a down-on-his-luck socialite who becomes butler to a crazy New York family. Carole Lombard is radiant as the daughter who falls for him. Has the funniest closing line in movie history (and yes, I’ve seen Some Like it Hot).

The Big Sleep Humphrey Bogart as the cool, tough private eye, who’s always one step ahead of everyone; which is good because I still don’t know who did what to whom. It doesn’t matter. Bogart, Bacall, and the writing are all so good that the movie doesn’t need the whole “this is what happened” ending that you get in most detective films.

Le Trou A black-and-white film that I stumbled across while channel surfing in Europe. I think it was in French with German subtitles. Couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but it’s a prison-break movie, so all the hiding and tunneling scenes still worked. I’ve seen it with English subtitles since then, and there were levels of personal and social messages that I missed the first time around. Don’t know for sure, but this may have started the whole genre of prison-break films.

29

I see what you did there :wink:

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I’m a big fan of the least remembered of the Big 3 silent era comics, Harold Lloyd, The King of Daredevil Comedy. He excels in playing the classic underdog. I wasn’t familiar with his films until a few years ago, but I enjoy all that I’ve seen—the humor is addictive and timeless unless you were born without a funny bone.

Lloyd performed most of his own stunts. One time he mistook a live bomb for a movie prop and blew off his right thumb and forefinger. He wore a prosthetic in subsequent films, that largely went unnoticed.

The “clock scene” in 1923’s Safety Last is of course his most iconic:

But, most of his films are equally humorous and can be found on YouTube, including this funny clip from Hot Water:

31

You’ve got to be kidding me. :flushed:

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Neither did Raymond Chandler, apparently:

Famously Hawks even gathered his screenwriters, who included William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, together to unpack the dense narrative web of Chandler’s novel before finally just wiring the author to ask what does it even mean?! The way Chandler tells it in his papers, the filmmakers asked him who exactly killed Owen Taylor, a chauffer whom audiences never met until he pops up as the second inexplicable murder victim in 10 minutes.
“They sent me a wire,” Chandler wrote. “Asking me, and dammit I didn’t know either!”

33

I’m not sure what you mean by stumbling on old movies. If you’re asking about my discovering obscure but great old movies that I didn’t watch because I wasn’t even born then or was too young to watch older movies, I would have trouble coming up with them. If you’re asking about films considered classics that I missed from the same period, it’s easy to come up with them. I watched few films until just after I graduated from college. Here’s a list of some classics that I didn’t watch until then and now like a lot:

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, U.S., dir. Michael Curtiz)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, U.S., dir. Lewis Milestone)
Amarcord (1974, Italy, dir. Federico Fellini)
Army of Shadows (1969, France/Italy, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville)
Camille (1937, U.S., dir. George Cukor)
Casablanca (1942, U.S., dir. Michael Curtiz)
Citizen Kane (1941, U.S., dir. Orson Welles)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, U.K., dir. Stanley Kubrick)
Duck Soup (1933, U.S., dir. Leo McCarey)
Freaks (1932, U.S., dir. Tod Browning)
The Great Dictator (1940, U.S., dir. Charles Chaplin)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, U.S., dir. Frank Capra)
King Kong (1933, U.S., dir. Merian C. Cooper)
La Jetée (1962, France, dir. Chris Marker)
La Strada (1954, Italy, dir. Federico Fellini)
M (1931, Germany, dir. Fritz Lang)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, U.S., dir. John Huston)
Modern Times (1936, U.S., dir. Charles Chaplin)
Psycho (1960, U.S., dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Ride the High Country (1962, U.S., dir. Sam Peckinpah)
The Searchers (1956, U.S., dir. John Ford)
Seven Samurai (1954, Japan, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, U.S., dir. Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)
The Third Man (1949, U.K., dir. Carol Reed)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, U.S., dir. John Huston)
Vertigo (1958, U.S., dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
The Wild Bunch (1969, U.S., dir. Sam Peckinpah)

34

I should have been more precise. By “old” I mean in your life time but good movies that are old enough (@10-30 years) that there should be no way you haven’t seen them before now, especially in the golden age of communication in which we now live.

35

Oops, that disqualifies Harold Lloyd then. I’m getting up in years, but not quite 100.

36

Yeah, I kind of figured that out for myself. LOL

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O.K., eight of the ones I list were released during my lifetime. Again, it’s not surprising that I didn’t see them until long after they were released despite that. I grew up on a farm. We had a TV, but they didn’t show very many older films back then, and I didn’t have time to watch older movies anyway. I couldn’t walk to a movie theater like people living in towns. Our family didn’t have the money to go to movies all together except for a half dozen or so times a year. All of the films I list came out before I graduated from college, but I didn’t see them until I became a big movie buff after graduating from college. Looking through my list of my favorite films again, I noticed several more that came out during the time I was an undergraduate. I no longer remember whether I watched them when they came out or years later when I was a movie buff trying to fill in all the classic movies I’d never seen.

38

Modern Girls (1986) Stumbled into this one from a Depeche Mode video for catchy synthpop song But Not Tonight. Found the movie on Tubi and watched the whole thing. It wasn’t a great movie, but it was a really neat slice of life, made me nostalgic for 20-something clubbing life in 1980’s LA even though I’ve never been there. So very 80s.

39

A few days ago I happened upon Destination Moon (1950) on TCM. I had never even heard of it before, much less seen it, and the little snippet I caught made it seem so laughable that I recorded it for later viewing.

But when I came back to watch the whole thing I was quite surprised to learn that, despite some staggering implausibilties (e.g., they decide to take off earlier than planned, on 17 hours’ notice, with an essentially untrained crew), it was the first Hollywood feature to deal with space travel in a serious, scientific fashion.

And it was based on a story, and co-written, by Robert Heinlein, a fact that TCM host Ben Mankiewicz inexplicably didn’t even mention.

It was an odd mix of accurate physics and engineering with ludicrous (from a post-Apollo POV) implausibilties, but it was light years beyond anything seen before, like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. And it won an Oscar for Best Special Effects, thanks to in part to great matte paintings by Chesley Bonestell.

Unfortunately, it’s no longer available at TCM, but if it ever comes back, it’s definitely worth watching.

40

I meant to mention that it includes a scene in which one astronaut rescues another who has floated off the outside of the ship by using an oxygen tank as a reaction engine.

ISTM that a similar rescue occurs in an Isaac Asimov story. Can any of our resident SF fans confirm this? Did Heinlein use it (also)? They are the two SF writers whose work I read most, but that was 40-50 years ago.