The Charlton Heston 10 Commandments was on TV the other night and I watched a few minutes of it and couldn’t help thinking just how cheesy and dated and almost hysterical the movie is by today’s standards. I’m trying to think why.
Gone With the Wind was made 17 years before 10 Commandments and still holds up. The lack of graphic violence or sex and of course the attitudes expressed in the script (happy slaves, evil Yankees, etc.) are dated of course but all in all I think somebody who has never seen the movie could still get engrossed in it. While I’ve never been able to watch more than a few minutes of Wizard of Oz I can see why kids today would still like it. Bridge on the River Kwai won the Oscar the year after 10 Commandments but seems incomparably more modern, and Coppola’s masterpieces Patton and The Godfather- filmed 14 and 16 years later admittedly but still older than most Americans- still find new audiences every year. The Taylor/Burton/Harrison Cleopatra was filmed about 7 years after The Big 10 and while it has problems as a movie and just as many historical inaccuracies as Heston’s “Moses Moses Moses” its ancient Egypt doesn’t look or feel anywhere near as dated.
Another Yul Brynner movie that comes across as incredibly dated is The King and I. You never once immerse yourself in the characters or the story or forget that it’s not just a movie but an old movie. Like T10C it had a big budget for the time- it’s no surprise when a low budget movie looks dated or cheesy, though many low budget films have aged much better than these two. (I watched Anatomy of a Murder again recently and even though it’s black and white and takes place mostly in a courtroom it holds up fine.)
So The 10 Commandments specifically or older movies in general, what causes some to become incredibly dated while others get much closer to timeless?
For Commandments the hammy acting I’m sure plays a part. For both T10C and King & I the fact that you can tell that most of the shots were filmed on a set (one with much too shiny floors and obvious backdrops as well) probably has much to do with it as well.
While you can’t get much further from 1950s epic than the 1950s nostalgia 1970s sitcom Happy Days I think much of its extreme dating is from the fact that almost all of the episodes were so obviously filmed on a soundstage, and the fact it was film rather than videotape detracts. Three’s Company, which coincided with the later seasons of HD, had jokes that were no stupider but the videotape makes it look fresher even with the early 1980s fashions.
Anyway, your opinions on what makes for a dated movie/TV show/etc.?
I can generally tell right away what decade a historical/costume movie was made, just from the hair and makeup of the actresses. The prevailing fashionable look of the time period that the film was made shows up onscreen. Is that what you mean? Also, a lot of really old movies (in the 30’s) were based on plays, and the dialogue and settings are very ‘stagy’. Just watch one of the oldies on TCM any weekday morning - there is no background music, all actors are dressed in formal clothing, sitting in nightclubs drinking and smoking.
This is what I think really sets old movies apart from new movies. I haven’t seen the 10 Commandments in years - but recently watched another Chalton Heston classic - Ben Hur. In that movie I thought the men were decent enough actors, but the women all drove me crazy! They acted like they were actresses on a stage: they had a very stilted and distinct way of speaking; their gestures were heavily exagerated; and there was nothing “normal” in their body language. I think this is what really sets the old movies apart. Once method acting gained popularity it put an end to treating movies like plays.
This seems to be more of what you wanted. The older movies are not fast passed with constant action. We’ve become used to movies being loaded with action and information to process. We become antcy waiting for the actors to spit it out, just say it for crying out loud and get to the point. The last five minutes could have been done in one.
This is what I say for the thread title. The tech used in the movie dates it for me. Hair, clothes and music are the next thing.
I’m dropping back to the cliched “it depends on the movie” as a general statement, but here are some features that if stressed will date a movie:
cars
makeup
hair styles
clothes
the color of the film itself (color palette)
lighting
the music
acting styles
dialog idiosyncrasies
“street talk” and slang
mannerisms and affectations
In spite of its age and period feel I can still see A Streetcar Named Desire and think of it as modern if not present day.
The Dirty Harry movies already feel dated out of their entertainment value.
If the movie intends to portray an earlier period (Westerns and Middle Ages, for instance) it’s going to depend on hair and costumes whether it’s “dated” or not.
Most movies, intentionally or not, hold their protagonists up to be the sexiest characters imaginable by the standards of when the film is released. The Roger Moore 007 films are particularly interesting in this regard; they embrace wholeheartedly a 70s/early 80s glamor that’s painful to watch from even five years down the road (As one critic put it, “There’s nothing quite as unforgiving as Roger Moore in a safari jacket.”). You can dress your protagonists in period clothing and carry it off (See: The Godfather, Boogie Nights, The Untouchables), but if you’re out of touch with a certain timeless sense of fashion, you’re as clueless as Roger Moore in that blimp in View To a Kill. Not to pick on poor Roger; the was da man for his time. But sometimes a film just wears its unhip notion of sexiness like a pimple on its nose, like Paris Hilton in The Hottie and the Nottie or Carol Channing in Skidoo.
One thing that dates certain older comedies for me is the practice of taping before live audiences and allowing – even inciting – the audience to go crazy when certain characters appear. You don’t see that nowadays. When I see an old episode of Happy Days and Fonzie enters the room, Henry Winkler has to stand there grinning like a chimp for the better part of a minute before he can say his line. It adds to your observation of how obvious it all is, with being taped on a soundstage and all. Today far fewer comedies are filmed in front of an audience – and they laugh when something is funny.
**Zeldar **mentioned the color palette, which is particularly noticeable for a number of 70s-era pictures. I am not certain if this was a choice by the filmmakers, or caused by deterioration of the film stock, but a lot of cop dramas of the period can be ID’d with just a momentary view of the shade of the picture.
One thing that always pulls me right out of movies of the mid-20th century is the use of night filters in outdoor scenes. I realize it was the best technology they had at the time, but it is so jarring to see it when the “night” is obviously a bright, sunlit day.
In my opinion, The Ten Commandments was a bad movie to begin with. Some of the dialogue is ludicrous:
Some movies age well even when they seem dated. The OP mentions The Wizard of Oz, which is still enjoyable to many even though it feels like an old movie. The interesting question to me isn’t what dates a movie, but what makes some movies age poorly.
The more contemporary and sophisticated a movie seems when it’s first released, the more likely it is to seem naive to audiences years later. For example, when Hitchcock’s Spellbound came out in 1945 it probably seemed very smart, but today the movie’s psychological mumbo-jumbo seems simple-minded. “Issues” movies are especially prone to this. It was considered courageous to make a movie about alcoholism in 1946, but does anyone still want to see The Lost Weekend?
Blockbuster movies often age poorly. Things that were impressive to audiences fifty years ago often seem ridiculous or dull today. The Ten Commandments is like this - it has an all-star cast and special effects that were state of the art for the time, but now it just seems silly. There are exceptions - Gone With the Wind is still widely loved (although personally I can’t stand the movie).
This – it’s disorienting to watch a film ostensibly set in, say, Victorian England, and see all these women with bright red lipstick set to form bee-stung lips. I’m sure we do things like that now and I just don’t notice, but…I’d like to think we take a little more pride in being period-accurate in our higher-quality TV and films. Molly Parker playing Alma in Deadwood did wear make-up (where as in reality Alma wouldn’t have), but it was very subtle and you could tell the attempt was made to balance playing up Molly Parker’s features for the camera while remaining true to the period for the character of Alma. I can’t think of any pre-1950s period movie that attempts to keep actresses’ makeup period accurate (please correct me if I’m wrong – I’d love to see them!).
Jeff makes a valid point: a movie can age well despite some dated elements. For example, Casablanca was a film that clearly was very topical when it came out, but it still holds up, since the story is a good one.
One issue is when a director uses a trendy style. Planet of the Apes is disappointing because it was shot with “cool” 70s-style camera work that looks very badly dated today.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Especially when you notice a character squinting because the sun hurts his eyes.
Another one for me that jars me is watching (what I take to be) early-technology cross-fades from one scene to another. The entire frame of the picture will sort of jump, as though it has skipped a sprocket on the projector or something, then the crossfade will happen, then the entire frame will sort of jump again, as though it’s been wrangled back onto the correct sprockets.
It’s not the same kind of thing everybody else is talking about, but to me it very clearly says “this was made in the time before they’d perfected this technique.”
Jebus, no. I was telling someone about this film a few weeks ago and said, “Have you ever heard of AA?” They said, “Yes.” I said, “Then you don’t need to see that movie. It’s only function is to make people aware that AA exists.”
This is definitely something that still happens all the damn time - it’s how we end up with Sam Worthington sporting exactly the same haircut in both “Avatar” and “Clash of the Titans.”
I think older movies that try to show what the future would be like tend to look very dated. The movie that comes to mind is the original Rollerball. Its supposed to take place in a future where six (or seven) corporation-countries rule the world annd they invented rollerball. yet the clothes and the other set peices look straight out of the mid 70s.
