I’ll offer another title for consideration as best drama, Pleasantville. It wasn’t entirely black-and-white, and used the shift to color as part of the plot. When I run across it on television, I’m always surprised to remember how good it is.
Comedy: I’m a big fan of WC Fields so I’m going with It’s A Gift.
Drama: This may be a wee bit cheating as there was a tiny bit of color in it (the red coat) as well as at the end, but Schindler’s List.
Modern Times and Casablanca
Lots if good ones mentioned already.
Here’s a couple more:
Drama: “Out of the Past”
Comedy: “Monkey Business”
The Comedy catagory is a toughie, but Bringing Up Baby just barely manages to edge out The Philadelphia Story, A Night At The Opera, and A Hard Day’s Night by a whisker.
Drama is easier, Casablanca is my idea of perfection.
Comedy: Young Frankenstein
Drama: A Face in the Crowd
Actually, after re-watching, I guess technically it’s not a 100% b&w movie. There is color Super 8 (or similar) style footage in the film that helps with bridging the narrative and passage of time.
In that case, I will go with last year’s release Cold War, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski.
I don’t think you can count Pleasantville, for the same reason that you can’t count Wizard of Oz (and I’m guessing The Giver did something similar, though I didn’t see it). Both made good use of black-and-white, but it only worked because they also made good use of color. Contrast it with, say, Schindler’s List, which also had color that was especially set off by contrast with B&W, but without it, it would have still been fundamentally the same movie.
Yep.
With The Maltese Falcon and Seven Samurai right up there.
But Young Frankenstein is clearly tops.
It was, however, based on a play (Everybody Comes to Rick’s).
I think*** Lonely Are the Brave*** deserves a nod. Kirk Douglas once said that out of all the movies he starred in, it was his favorite.