Yesterday Mrs. Bullitt and I watched the classic movie, The Sting (1973). It’s a movie that has held up well through the years. Still entertaining, still fun. And a very good soundtrack.
And we also realized that, hey, this movie was released FIFTY YEARS ago! Wow. (This must be how old[er] people talk)
How’d you like The Sting? Have you seen it recently? If not, I recommend it. And what other movies have held up well through the decades?
It is a great movie. Well written, well paced, well acted and well directed. It has a great score. I recommend it highly.
It has held up well, benefitting from being an excellent period piece.
I have not seen it in 50 years. I’m overdue for a rewatch. My takeaway as a 10 year old was, “That’s the guy from My Favorite Martian!
Ray Walston has done some fantastic work since MFM – Silver Streak, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and his portrayal of Glen Bateman in The Stand (1994) was Emmy caliber acting.
Yeah, The Sting is one of the best.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid still works for me; it’s like sitting down with a good book.
One of my all-time favorites. I re-watch it once or twice a year, and I’ve read one of the books it was based on (or stole from, I don’t remember…).
The Scott Joplin music was an interesting choice because it was anachronistic. Ragtime was popular more toward the turn of the century, not the 1930s when The Sting takes place. Yet it fits really well, and spurred a revival of ragtime in the 70s. One of my cousins was a concert pianist at the time and I remember him playing The Entertainer in his shows because of this film.
I really enjoy showing The Sting to people who have not seen it:
They get very upset at Robert Redford “cooperating” with the FBI, not realizing that the “feds” are actually people in on the con. I love that we don’t find that out until the very last moments of the movie.
Sticking with Paul Newman, The Verdict is still an amazing movie. From 1982, so over 40 years.
Director George Roy Hill said he would have no trouble using a Dixie-land jazz band in a Roman coliseum film, if it fit – I’d pay good money to see it.
Sorry, my Dad was so proud of himself that he didn’t fall for the FBI segments. Later, he told me why: He found it hysterical that all the “agents” were wearing the same straw boaters and nearly identical suits, driving almost identical vehicles. He said it was like the conmen had never really seen an FBI raid except for in the movies, so that’s what they went with.
Anybody notice that Walston’s spiel stops during the “gutless cheat” sequence? I must’ve seen it twenty times before it hit me.
We had a talent show at my grade school in '75 or '76. Five different kids all performed The Entertainer on the piano. 
If you bought a player piano in the 1970s, it probably came with an “Entertainer” roll.
Watched it a couple of weeks ago. Still good, the pace was a little slow. People who haven’t seen it before may get more out of the ending.
It sounds good on the organ, too, go figure.
The right hand part has an incredibly wide reach; hurts just thinking about it.
If you bought a digital piano (much later), you can bet it was on 3.5" floppy.
This is a lot of it right there.
Yes, it was objectively well-made with good actors, good acting, good sets, good dialog, great music.
But IMO much of its staying power flows directly from it having been a period piece when brand new. And for most of us, it was set in a period we didn’t live through, knowing it only through other movies and maybe some stories from our parents or more likely grandparents. So the many aspects of it that would feel “off” to somebody who was middle-aged in the 1930s are lost on us. But the period is also close enough to us then that it felt familiar and readily recognizable then; something set in the e.g. early 1800s would have been much less familiar to us.
For darn sure it’s easier for any film set in its own past to age better than a film set in its own future. Imagine how a Sting made in 1973 but set 40 years in the then-future, so n 2013, would seem to us now. It will not have aged very well.
I’ve always thought that “The Entertainer” was not among Scott Joplin’s best ragtime pieces. But it works in the movie. This is not to say that accurate period music wouldn’t have been better.
M (1931) is the oldest talkie I can think of that still holds up extremely well.
I don’t love M, it was well worth watching, but not great to me.
As for early talkies that held up. Mostly true for Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931) & Horse Feathers (1932).
I’m using 1932 as the cutoff here. But Duck Soup 1933 is an all time classic.
One of my favourite films, have seen it many times. I love the bit where Gondorf is practising his card skills and makes a complete hash of the riffle shuffle. Probably not one of the traditional stand out scenes but it cracks me up every time, mostly due to Hooker’s incredulous look. Redford nailed it there.
Link here
I always (incorrectly) assumed the setting was the 1920s because of the music and title cards.
When they say “they don’t make em like they used to,” movies like The Sting are what they’re talking about. Great, great, great film.
Seconded! (A total surprise, I know. )
A great movie, and very quotable, but with a bit of a pacing problem. The first half is better than the second.