Classic cinema - thoughts and questions

Forostar said:
The last few years I have been getting more and more into older films. Older films? You mean, OLD films? Sounds boring doesn't it? Old is dull. Old is black and white. Old is slow.

Unfortunately, many people nowadays suffer from these prejudiced thoughts.
They appreciate current trends. Fast stuff. Easy stuff. Stuff that's now in the movie theater. All that's new is cool.

Alright then, Redtube Beeg Spankbang what's nice about older, let's say classic films? I'll try to explain my point of view.
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Forostar said:

Earlier, I had never been so much into directors or actors. A film was good or not that good, regardless of the maker of this film. Until my wife introduced me to Alfred Hitchcock. He was the master of suspense and many of his ideas and techniques have been admired and later used by others. The tension he created is amazing!

Together we watched a Hitchcock-film, then another one... and suddenly I realized that it was mighty interesting to discover more and more of his work. It's like getting into the discography of Iron Maiden. :)

At the same time more things were happening. In films sometimes you can be impressed by a certain role or actor for the first time. I started liking people like Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck. I had to know what other films they did - what kind of genres etc. Like this, I got into a genre of which I wasn't aware of that much.:

Film noir --> From wikipedia: Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe Hollywood crime dramas that set their protagonists in a world perceived as inherently corrupt and unsympathetic. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression. Way more info --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir

My favorite elements in films are good stories / scripts, tension, the earlier mentioned suspense. A film for me has to be exciting, giving the anxious feeling of uncertainty about what is about to happen. In real life such feelings are terrible, but in film! The film noir genre fits excellent with these demands :)

The best tool to explore films is imo The International Movie Database:

http://www.imdb.com

I checked some ratings and saw that the director Kurusawa has many high ratings. After the first film (Seven Samurai) I had to see more of this fantastic creator! His biggest strength is the way of telling a story, how real it looks.

The last years I saw many old films (from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) till let's say the fifties/sixties).
The forties and fifties are probably my favorite decades.

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So what's my point:

Everyone could look back. There's a whole world left to be discovered. For everyone his / her own taste.

I also have some questions:

1. What are your favorite films?
2. Do you also appreciate older films? Which ones?
3. Do you have favorite directors?
4. Do you have favorite actors?
5. Which genres do you prefer?

Cheers and thanks for reading / answering. :)


This next list consists of my favorite films (not in order):

The Grapes Of Wrath
12 Angry Men
Psycho
Rear Window
Shadow Of A Doubt
Dial M For Murder
North By Northwest
Rope
Notorious
Strangers On A Train
The Wrong Man
Seven Samurai
Kagemusha
Throne of Blood
The Hidden Fortress
Guns Of Navarone
The Longest Day
Spartacus
Ben Hur
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy
The Woman In The Window
Double Indemnity
The Third Man
Sunset Blvd.
Das Boot
The Big Sleep
Fury
White Heat
The Maltese Falcon
The Killing
The Set-Up
Laura
Anatomy Of A Murder
Where The Sidewalk Ends
Brute Force
Sudden Fear
Odds Against Tomorrow
Gaslight
Gentleman's Agreement
High Sierra
The Gunfighter
Hangmen Also Die
They Drive By Night
In A Lonely Place
High Noon
The Name Of The Rose
Paths Of Glory
To Kill A Mocking Bird
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he made famous has been copied enough times - John Landis and Peter Howitt always seem to do this in their films, for example.
 
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Olivia de Havilland died... As far as I'm aware, Norman Lloyd (105 years, best known from Hitchcock's "Saboteur" from 1942) is now the oldest figure alive from Hollywood's golden era (or any other era in the history of cinema).
www.nytimes.com

Olivia de Havilland, a Star of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Dies at 104 (Published 2020)

She built an illustrious Hollywood career punctuated by a successful fight to loosen the studios’ grip on actors.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Maybe it's not real cinema but it's at least a classic: what about Culombo?
Any fans 'round here? favorite episodes? ( Although these long episodes are more like movies.)
 
I'm a fan of Columbo. I spent the last 8 months or so watching the series.
My favorite episodes are one about an assassin that could control his dogs with the sound of a whistle to attack and kill. I remember another one about an architect who buried the millionaire investor under the building pillars of his building masterpiece. That's another good one. But I think the best one is about the magician who occult his nazi past but someone discover this and he is about to call someone when he's killed by this man (the magician). There's a couple of episodes featuring Patrick Mcgoohan (The Prisoner) one about an assassin and other about a captain in a military school…
I like this serie because the killing is at the beginning of each episodes and 20 min. after is when Columbo appears to try to discover how the killing was and the dude always is asking the right guy (the assassin) because he knows that the guy is the assassin.

The serie won a ton of Emmys awards and Peter Falk as well. He is awesome playing the detective. I've seen him in a couple of movies, dramas and the guy is a classic actor and very beloved in many countries because Columbo.

What's your favorite ones?
 
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Great picks, 7th one! It's hard to pick a favorite though. I have all the seasons on DVD. Season 3 and 4 are the strongest.
but here are a few:

Any Old Port In A Storm - (with Donald Pleasance as the murderer)
Double Exposure - (with Robert Culp as the murderer)
Swan Song - (with Johnny Cash!)

There's another episode starring Patrick McGoohan as well! And one of the best of that season.
As funeral director to the stars Eric Prince, he murders gossip columnist Verity Chandler (Rue McClanahan) when she attends his latest funeral, that of actor and war hero Chuck Houston. Chandler threatens Prince that her next exposé will be about him. (Two decades earlier, he stole a valuable diamond from the body of a deceased silent film star.) Prince bludgeons Chandler with a tool in his storage room, then hides the body in a compartment used for corpses. After the funeral, Prince takes the casket containing Houston's body to the preparation room, where he puts Chandler's body into the casket in its place. It next enters the cremation oven, and afterwards, the ashes are scattered by helicopter over the Hollywood hills. Prince then goes to Chandler's house and fakes evidence of her abduction. So that no one will become suspicious, he cremates Houston's body by piggybacking him onto another corpse scheduled to be cremated.

The great thing about Columbo is that we allready know the murderers.The excitement comes from how Columbo is going to catch 'em.
There's also a great amount of humour, Falk's acting is amazing.

Columbo is investigating a murder on a junkyard. When Columbo is driving to it in his old car the owner of the junkyard sees Columbo's car and says: "Sorry sir, We're closed today."

Columbo in his trenchcoat shows his badge.
Columbo: LAPD
Witness: Are you undercover?
Columbo: No, I'm underpayed.
 
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I love Columbo !
A while back I finished seeing all episodes (borrowed some DVD sets from a collegue) and I felt sad when it ended.
Robert Culp was great indeed. One of the best villains.
 
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Barbara Shelley died. She was the "Queen of Hammer", but it could also be argued: the finest actress associated with the horror genre.
Very charming, subtle and intelligent.

Shelley died at the age of 88. Shelley was admitted in hospital in December 2020 for a muscle check up and in that process she contracted COVID-19. She then recovered from the disease. No cause of death has been given, while her agent reported that underlying issues are the cause of death.

Here she is in Village of the Damned

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Old article from 1957, before she was famous:
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An amazing actor to the very end. I really only started to appreciate him in recent years.

EDIT: What I mean by that is that for a long time, to me he was just a name in a long list of vintage Hollywood actors. Then a few years ago I saw Remember and was really impressed by him, so I went back and checked out some of his older performances and saw just how much he stood out.
 
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Perun said:
An amazing actor to the very end. I really only started to appreciate him in recent years.

EDIT: What I mean by that is that for a long time, to me he was just a name in a long list of vintage Hollywood actors. Then a few years ago I saw Remember and was really impressed by him, so I went back and checked out some of his older performances and saw just how much he stood out.
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