# Why are old movies good? Please help. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 3, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576 "2011-05-03T15:14:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/21 "2011-05-03T17:08:15Z")
Great acting and great storytelling remain timeless, spifflog. My favorite movie of all time remains “Casablanca” from the early '40’s, a wonderful tale of love, honor, patriotism, and redemption. Movies like the Marx Bros. films, “His Girl Friday,” “Caddyshack,” and “Animal House” still crack me up. Hitchcock still generates suspense. Sure, there was a lot of shite done in the earlier decades, but those movies that are good are still well worth watching. ---
**Author:** ![ministryman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@ministryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ministryman)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/22 "2011-05-03T17:31:58Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > I’ll admit it. Old movies suck to me. I’m in my late 40’s, and it’s very rare that a flick from before my time (1980’s) doesn’t suck. I’ve heard about all the good old movies - Hitchcock to “Gone with the Wind,” to all the 1940’s ones. You name it, they universally aren’t all that good. > > Am I film challenged (which might well be the case) or is this love of the old a case of film snobbery? > > Do you like old films? If so why? > > If you don’t, why do you think they are so touted? I like old films. Society was different. People had more class and manners. Actors and actresses weren’t bedhopping and marriage vow breaking and drunk driving and stealing. That was reflected in both the type of people acting, and the subject matter filmed. There was no CGI or green screen or computer-generated music. A good director had to use lighting to convey a feeling. The actors really had to act. Sometimes (Breakfast at Tiffany’s for example), one song was used throughout the entire film, and that song had to, with the acting and the lighting, propel you through the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/23 "2011-05-03T17:35:30Z")
Tell use what movies you do like an why you like them. It is perfectly OK to not like any particular film from Fast Five to Citizen Kane. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/24 "2011-05-03T17:41:28Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Julie Christie wasn’t as beautiful as I was told she was. You are dead to me. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/25 "2011-05-03T17:43:35Z")
> [@ministryman](#): > > Society was different. People had more class and manners. Actors and actresses weren’t bedhopping and marriage vow breaking and drunk driving and stealing. Society might have been different, but people weren’t. If you think actors and actresses (along with everyone else in the world) weren’t “bedhopping and marriage vow breaking and drunk driving and stealing,” then you’ve got an unrealistic conception of the past. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/26 "2011-05-03T17:45:19Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Nothing before the '80s? The early '70s were a golden age in American cinema. And what man doesn’t like Humphrey Bogart? A few months ago I watched _The Changeling_ starring George C. Scott which was released in 1980. It was a really good ghost story that featured a neat investigation into a murder that happened sixty years in the past. Compared to movies today, the plot plodded along very slowly. I can see how people might have a hard time enjoying the movie today even though it was superbly acted and had some genuinely scary moments. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/27 "2011-05-03T17:48:51Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > That’s right. For example, this past weekend I saw _Doctor Zhivago_ for the first time (1961 or thereabouts, I believe). I didn’t like it, and here are some of the reasons why – The costumes, sets, and makeup were too “clean,” very stagy, not creating a sense of reality. Even when people were meant to be shown as being poor and unkempt, they were unkempt in a very mannered way, as if they had put on brand new, clean clothes and randomly smudged and ripped them. That’s because you’re concentrating on the trivia and ignoring the movie. I haven’t seen **Doctor Zhivago** , but I’m sure the reason it’s so well regarded is the story. And a great story can be told using actors and dialog that isn’t in the current style (which will be just as dated in 50 years as **Dr. Zhivago** is nowadays). It seems that you are just unwilling to accept that there are many different ways of showing a story and that “realism” is just one of them (and not even the best of them). ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/28 "2011-05-03T17:52:22Z")
> [@ministryman](#): > > Actors and actresses weren’t bedhopping and marriage vow breaking and drunk driving and stealing. Well, they were, but the studio publicity departments went to great lengths to keep it out the papers. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/29 "2011-05-03T17:54:58Z")
And the Hayes Code kept some stuff out of the movies. ---
**Author:** ![Lethal\_Babydoll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3be4f8/32.png) [@Lethal\_Babydoll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lethal_Babydoll)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/30 "2011-05-03T18:01:18Z")
Why is realism so important. I’ve never seen a realistic film. ---
**Author:** ![NiceGuyJack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/niceguyjack/32/3069_2.png) [@NiceGuyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NiceGuyJack)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/31 "2011-05-03T18:07:00Z")
I think you’re caught in what movies can bring to you today. Try picturing yourself watching the old movies as if it had just come out. The silent movies had a lot of excessive expressions and pantomime in order to express the situation the actors were portraying without audio. Chaplin was a master as a silent actor. I still laugh out loud when I watch Chaplin. When films got audio, the actors of the day were still used to silent films, and it took a few years for them to transition to speaking roles. That fast and loud talking you get in the early talkies from the '20’s and the '30’s is IMO, because of the silent actors exaggerating, the way they would act in a silent movie. Didn’t really work so well. The first “talkie” to win an Oscar was “All Quiet on the Western Front”. A brilliant movie in English, but from a German perspective, as the original novel was by a German author. It was a brilliant movie for different reasons, but I think the main reason was how the actors tried to portray the horror of World War I. No one talked fast or loud unless it was during a combat scene. It was not a silent movie, but the actors facial expressions were convincing. The movie was a success because it took the movie industry to a new level. The first talkie to show good acting with use of dialogue. The next big forward step in my opinion was King Kong 1933. Unfortunately, it did still have a bit of the fast and loud talking which many movies were cursed with from that era but this movie did a great job in introducing special effects. Important development for the history of film. May look extremely corny and outdated today, but it was a huge leap in the '30’s. Interestingly the fast and loud talk didn’t really subside until the late '50’s and early '60’s. And it was one of those things where in the '30’s it was 95% fast talking and by early '60’s it was 5%. Apart from the actors, I also think it probably had much to do with directors and producers having a tough time adapting. But from the '40’s and '50’s there are some fantastic films by directors like Hitchcock. Hitchcock changed the film industry by bringing in thriller and suspense. Yes, there were other directors who had made some suspenseful movies, but nothing like Hitchcock. Also, what happened in the late '40’s and the '50’s was the introduction to war movies as well as Westerns. “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1930 was a war movie, but it was a drama. The late '40’s and '50’s saw the introduction of War and Westerns what we could consider as the very first action movies. Also from that time the first Science Fiction and Horror movies. There are some classics there. Like the original Frankenstein. Incredible! And the the '60’s when just about every movie was in color. This has become longer than I had planned. The point is, I think you need to have a bit of historical interest if you want to enjoy older movies. If you are only looking for entertainment then the old movies will appear dated and boring. You need to watch the movies in the spirit of the time they were made. Think of your parents, grandparents or even great grandparents and imagine how they would have perceived these films when they came out, then perhaps you could imagine how these films were enjoyed. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Lovely_Margo_Lane)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/32 "2011-05-03T18:08:45Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I like a lot of older movies, but this weekend I caught \*The Bad Seed \*on TCM. The caricaturish melodrama was hilarious. It sounded like a long SNL skit missing the laughter. Everything you say is true, but yet I love this movie! Leroy is so creepy- the scenes with him and Rhoda, these two who are so far apart in terms of how they fit in society and how they’re seen, yet they are as he says so alike. The perfect understanding of these two monsters. Shivers! Also I can’t help but believe Leroy is Christine’s brother. There’s nothing in the text to indicate that, but it just seems obvious given the films obsession with heredity. Also Hortense’s scene. Melodrama all the way, but damn if she doesn’t break my heart every time. I do have major philosophical issues with the central theme of inherited, soul-staining evil, but sometimes I think that the clueless husband has it right in the end, and Christine’s actually the crazy one, and Rhoda didn’t do anything! again, not much in the text to support that but it’s speculation like that that keeps a melodramatic movie like this interesting to me over repeated viewings. Hearking back to Hitchcock - how about **Shadow of a Doubt**? I love Joseph Cotten in anything, and this was my introduction to him back when I was a kid. But in recent years, I’ve come to feel that young Charlie is actually pretty despicable. She doesn’t seem to give a shit that her beloved uncle brutally murdered those silly, stupid women, and what has her worked up is that he brought his ‘stain’ into her perfect little world. She’s happy to see him get off scot-free rather than shake up her family by exposing the truth. Yuck! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/33 "2011-05-03T18:13:11Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s right. For example, this past weekend I saw Doctor Zhivago for the first time (1961 or thereabouts, I believe). I didn’t like it, and here are some of the reasons why – The costumes, sets, and makeup were too “clean,” very stagy, not creating a sense of reality. Even when people were meant to be shown as being poor and unkempt, they were unkempt in a very mannered way, as if they had put on brand new, clean clothes and randomly smudged and ripped them. > > The acting and dialogue style of the era was also very mannered and stilted. The speech and physicality of the actors too precise and articulated. The language too literary and expository. The portrayals of characters and emotions were too over-the-top. The dialogue was too precise in its word choice, too deliberate-sounding. > > There wasn’t enough acting in the acting. Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif never stopped being Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif. I love **dr. Zhivago** , and have to disagree with you about most of this. I don’t find it stagey or artificial at all. I absolutely love Robert Bolt’s dialogue. And Omar Sharif and Alec Guiness would shoot you for saying they don’t _act_. Guiness, in particular, was a helluvan actor. Again, i think it’s the style you don’t like. You might want to have a look at the recent television adaptation **Zhivago** , which is more faithful to the book, less “literary” in its dialogue, and less concerned with how beautifully it’s photographed 9what i think you mean by “stagey”) That should high;light the difference between two eras of filmmaking (and venues – the new one was made for TV). You might also contrast Bolt’s 1960s dialogue not only with the dialogue in this with the TV film, or with Bolt’s later scripts in **The Mission** or **The Bounty** , where he is more spare and less “literary”. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/34 "2011-05-03T18:14:37Z")
> [@ministryman](#): > > There was no CGI or green screen or computer-generated music. A good director had to use lighting to convey a feeling. The actors really had to act. Sometimes (Breakfast at Tiffany’s for example), one song was used throughout the entire film, and that song had to, with the acting and the lighting, propel you through the movie. On the other hand, the original King Kong had some great special effects, which, most importantly, gave Kong a personality. 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds up. Yes, the spacecraft travel in a straight line, but it gains from being realistic. And I’ll take Strauss and Ligetti over computer generated music any day. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/35 "2011-05-03T18:22:08Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It seems that you are just unwilling to accept that there are many different ways of showing a story and that “realism” is just one of them (and not even the best of them). No, I was giving an example of a movie I didn’t like and giving reasons _why_ I didn’t like it, rather than simply writing off “old” movies as a class without any basis, as the OP did. ---
**Author:** ![Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/36 "2011-05-03T22:57:57Z")
The OP likes pictures more than stories. He’s a product of the fast-paced style of TV editing. You have to _watch_ movies, but it doesn’t require your attention to have pictures flash by between special effects scenes. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/37 "2011-05-04T05:58:54Z")
the old saw that classical music lasts while pop music doesn’t is wrong. the good ones last. you have timeless masterpieces of cinematography, acting and directing (i’ll be too exposed in enumerating my top picks.) just this example: the sound of music. the fact that it’s the first musical shot on location is no longer thunderous news. but the setting is beautiful all the same (even by today’s standards.) julie andrews’ singing skill, plummer’s superb acting, and little things like charmaine carr’s dance with her messenger-boyfriend in the glasshouse are difficult to do today because too many actors and actresses right now don’t have the same talent. “besides which, you see, i have confidence in me.” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/38 "2011-05-04T10:48:24Z")
spifflog, is there any point in us explaining our love for old movies, or have you already decided that they’re no good so you don’t have to bother to reply to any of our posts? Is this going to be one of those threads where the OP throws out an off-the-wall opinion and then drops out of the thread because they’re bored with the discussion? If you don’t have time to reply to the posts in this thread, then neither do I. On the other hand, if you truly want to find out what’s interesting about old movies, you’re going to have to see more old movies. I can’t make sense of the notion that there’s a clear division between films made after 1980 and those made before then. Yes, there are slow trends which go on in movies and everything else in life in which things change, but that goes on all the time. There’s no single point at which everything changes. As I said in my last post, if you slowly work yourself backwards through the years before 1980, I think you will slowly get to appreciate older films. ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/39 "2011-05-04T11:52:19Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > spifflog, is there any point in us explaining our love for old movies, or have you already decided that they’re no good so you don’t have to bother to reply to any of our posts? Is this going to be one of those threads where the OP throws out an off-the-wall opinion and then drops out of the thread because they’re bored with the discussion? If you don’t have time to reply to the posts in this thread, then neither do I. On the other hand, if you truly want to find out what’s interesting about old movies, you’re going to have to see more old movies. It seems to me that someone making comments like this about “all the good old movies - Hitchcock to ‘Gone with the Wind,’ to all the 1940’s ones” has already more or less made his mind up on the matter. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576/40 "2011-05-04T11:59:41Z")
I like SOME old movies, but most of the ones mentioned as “classics” are very boring to me. My favorites typically are movies that are NOT considered classics, which frankly follows my taste in new movies as well. I like the Italian peplum (sword and sandal movies) from the 1960s, as a general rule. Most are MST3Kable, but even the one’s that aren’t are generally cheerful, unpretentious adventure movies that tend to move right along. I also like some of the movies that came out before the Hayes Code crappified Hollywood for three decades, like “Sign of the Cross” and “Roman Scandals of 1933.” They were raunchy stuff, for their time, actually would be raunchy stuff for a mainstream release in our time if they had included modern nudity. “Sign of the Cross” had a gorilla rape scene with bondage (implied but not shown, but they did have a pretty much naked woman tied to a pole in the arena while a gorilla approached her with dishonorable intentions, Amazons fighting midgets, pretty much naked Sally Rand tied up and menaced by alligator, a lesbian seduction scene, and pretty much naked Claudette Colbert taking a batch in milk. Now one reason a lot of old films suck is the Hayes Code. It didnt just preclude nudity. It also precluded most any direct sexuality, or even implication of it, and it forbade scenes in which priests, cops, judges and other authority figures are challenged or made to look bad (now known as the “pedo-preist protection clause”) and it forbade gory scenes, and a whole host of other codicils that tended, on the whole, to make films a lot duller and less interesting than they would otherwise be. Oh, sure, some great films were made DESPITE the Code, and some films dealt with sexual subjects (after going through INCREDIBLE hoop-jumping to gain the censors’ approval) but on the whole, the Hayes Code made for bad movies. the kind of raunchy fun I like was just not there. I’d say look for films in the genre that interests you now. If that’s raunchy stuff or Sf, you’re gonna be mostly out of luck, because of the Hayes Code in the one case and the lack of good special effects in the other. Historical context will help, as suggested, but really, if you need the equivalent of a glossary to watch a movie, why watch it if you’re just looking for a pleasant movie experience? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-old-movies-good-please-help/580576.md?page=3)