Classic Movies

[WayAbvPar]

I read a really great thread a few years ago on SA about all the great (and some not so great) Westerns in cinema history. It was amazingly detailed and the discussion that came after was equally interesting, and inspired me to start watching more movies from before I was born. I am not going to detail every movie, but thought it would be fun to have a thread we can post in/discuss when we happen to catch a 'classic'.

I DVR'ed El Dorado a couple of weeks ago and finally sat down and watched it tonight. I am not a huge John Wayne fan, but he was actually pretty good in this. His character took no shit and was short with people in all the right situations. He was still larger than life and cartoonish, but the rest of the cast (James Caan, Robert Mitchum, and Ed Asner as the bad guy) was good. Bull (an old retired Indian fighter) was good for comic relief, and Joey McDonald (played by the utterly gorgeous Michele Carey) was amusing as well. Some goofy continuity leads to an ad lib by Wayne near the end addressing it, which was pretty funny. Overall I enjoyed it, and am glad I watched it.

I was watching something else a couple of days ago and clicked over to The Hustler just as it was starting. I think I have seen the end of it before, but don't remember seeing the beginning. It is fun watching good actors do their thing. My TiVo was scheduled to tape a couple of other things so I had to give it up after 30 minutes or so, but will definitely sit down and watch it again soon. I love The Color Of Money, so it is fun to see Fast Eddie in his youth.

Any suggestions for 'classics'? I have seen most of the biggies from the early 70s and beyond (The Sting, The Godfathers, Jaws, The Deer Hunter, etc). I took a film class in college that exposed me to the likes of Citizen Kain, The Battleship Potemkin, and The 39 Steps to name a few, and I have seen quite a few others (The African Queen, quite a few Hitchcocks, High Noon, quite a few John Waynes, To Kill A Mockingbird (read the book too  ), Twelve Angry Men...Too many to list. Some I that I STILL haven't seen include Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, On The Waterfront, or anything with James Dean or Elizabeth Taylor.

Anyway- just thought it might be a fun thread.

[Abagadro]

You've mentioned a few. Here are some on my list of classics off the top of my head  that I really dig:

The Alec Guinness collection:
The Lavender Hill Mob
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Bridge on the River Kwai
Lawrence of Arabia

Bogie:
Casablanca
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Maltese Falcon
The Big Sleep

Wayne:
The Searchers
Red River
Rio Bravo
Fort Apache

Stewart:
Winchester 73
High Noon
Anything he did with Hitchcock

Kubrik:
2001
Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon

Random:
The Third Man
Kurosawa's stuff (7 samurai, roshomon, etc)
12 Angry Men
Cool Hand Luke

[satael]

I'd recommend Charlie Chaplin stuff like The Gold Rush, Great Dictator or Modern Times (and if you happen to like silent film comedy then Buster Keaton, Marx Brothers and Oliver&Hardy are also worth a look to name just a few).

[Abagadro]

One I forgot. Out of the Past. One of the earliest and best noir films ever.

[Nevermore]

Some I that I STILL haven't seen include Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, On The Waterfront, or anything with James Dean or Elizabeth Taylor.

The first thing you should do is watch Dr. Strangelove.

Fake edit:

One I forgot. Out of the Past. One of the earliest and best noir films ever.

The second thing you should do is watch this.  Double Indemnity is another good noir film.

[Khaldun]

For Guinness, add Tunes of Glory, which I think is a great underappreciated film.

The era of when something is an old "classic" is a moving target, so early 1970s films are for me starting to move into that era of "old", and some of them are mind-bogglingly great. Just rewatched Godfather and Godfather II recently and they are just so very good. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Chinatown. Five Easy Pieces. Last Picture Show. Bonnie and Clyde. French Connection. Etc.


More great older films:

The Hustler, for sure.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a really important film for me. When I think of the best kind of man you could hope to be, Atticus Finch is the role model that comes to mind.


I'm unreasonably fond of some of Errol Flynn's classic movies. Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Dawn Patrol.

I'm not sure that older comedies hold up very well much of the time, but some of the Marx Brothers' best still do for me. A few of the great screwball romantic films too--Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday.

I'm not sure James Dean's stuff actually holds up that well now--I mean, you can see why he made such an impression, but that was also because the rest of what was going on in his major films was sort of meh. East of Eden has some interesting moments, at any rate.

Speaking of Steinbeck, I think The Grapes of Wrath is worth a watch.

Kubrick's Paths of Glory, if you've never seen it, is possibly his best film.

The 1954 western Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford is fantastic, especially if you've seen a lot of the rest of the genre--very subversive and unusual.

I think it's fair to put Werner Herzog's earlier films into the category of "classic": Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre the Wrath of God are both great films.



Singing in the Rain is the musical that even people who don't like musicals (like me) like.

I'm not a great fan of most Hitchcock even as I respect the craft of his films. But Rear Window is pretty terrific.

[DraconianOne]

Too many to list. Some I that I STILL haven't seen include Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, On The Waterfront

Get them watched! You may not like them and that's fine - some people don't - but when you watch a film like Lawrence of Arabia on a big screen, you realise that the word "epic" was made to describe that film. The cinematography in particular is phenomenal. A good follow up would then be Bridge on the River Kwai. Speaking of which..

You've mentioned a few. Here are some on my list of classics off the top of my head  that I really dig:

The Alec Guinness collection:
The Lavender Hill Mob
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Bridge on the River Kwai
Lawrence of Arabia

Also: The Ladykillers

Then you've got Billy Wilder films:

Some Like It Hot
Sunset Boulevard
The Apartment

Other classics:
All About Eve
The Night of the Hunter (the only film Charles Laughton ever directed)

I also like the films of Bergman, Polanski and Luis Bunuel but they're not for everyone.

[Speedy Cerviche]

The longest day is worth watching for some of the camera shots alone. A lot of hugely expensive wide angle scenes with a lot happening, pretty impressive

[Chimpy]

Here are some 'Classic' movies I would recommend that have not been mentioned yet:

Get Carter  (1971) - Michael Caine is 100% badass in this movie.
The Haunting (1963) - Great psychological thriller driven almost entirely by the actors' reactions to things off screen.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - This is Jimmy Stewart at his best, to me.
Wait Until Dark (1967) - Good screen adaptation of a great play, is it possible to go wrong with Audrey Hepburn?

Other than that, ANYTHING starring Peter Sellers is fun. I would start, as others have said, with Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Oh and to add, if you want amazing grand-scope vistas, How the West Was Won has some of the most amazing shots ever due to it being shot in 3-Panel Cinerama. I don't know if there is a good Blu-Ray transfer of it, I actually saw it at a rebuilt Cinerama theater when I was in college and the visuals were jaw dropping.

[Khaldun]

I actually think Sellers was in some pretty bad films. The Mouse That Roared doesn't hold up very well overall, but he's kind of fun in it.

Completely agree on Night of the Hunter and the three Billy Wilder films.

Also would really recommend Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. Public Enemy has a memorable scene but I don't think it's quite as great.

[Samwise]

I saw Lawrence of Arabia for the first time on the big screen last year.  I went into it fully expecting to fall asleep partway through because of its extreme length and because I had some notion that it was about an angsty white guy wandering around the desert, which sounded boring as fuck, but I figured since it was a classic I should at least attempt to watch it.  Holy shit was it not what I was expecting.  So many dudes killing dudes.   

Casablanca is one of my all time favorite movies, and I love it more every time I see it.

Duck Soup is my favorite Marx Brothers movie, and if you are a fan of Looney Tunes style humor you absolutely owe it to yourself to check out the Marx Brothers because they were a huge influence on basically everything that came after them, Looney Tunes in particular (which was itself obviously hugely influential).

Yesterday I made my brother and a friend who's taking a film class watch The Graduate with me because we were all talking about good filmmaking and clever camera work, and that's a great movie for that and neither of them had seen it yet.  Not as in your face and groundbreaking as something like Citizen Kane maybe, but it's a fun movie and there's a lot going on with the cinematography if you're paying attention to it.

Rear Window would be my pick for favorite Jimmy Stewart/Hitchcock movie, but it's hard to go wrong with any of them.  North by Northwest is also a good one that's been heavily "homaged" in the years since, and I have a special soft spot for Vertigo since it's set in my hometown.

Dr. Strangelove was the first move I ever saw that made me laugh until I physically hurt.  I think I was maybe eleven years old and watching it on the big screen in a packed theater, which is the best way to see a comedy since laughter is infectious.

[MahrinSkel]

I think I worked my way through most of the AFI 100 when I was on Netflix. Beyond that, there were some movies from the early Film Noire period that got kind of lost along the way by movies that hit the same themes later with better-known actors, but were well worth seeing from before they became tropes:

Criss Cross (1949)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950, the *original* 'caper film')
Thieves Highway (1949)
Acts of Violence (1949)
City That Never Sleeps (1953)

--Dave

[Father mike]

Off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Father Goose - Cary Grant and Leslie Caron
Harvey - Jimmy Stewart at his puzzled-but-wise best.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? - Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.  'Nuff said
Singing in the Rain - no love yet for classic musicals.

[HaemishM]

Some I that I STILL haven't seen include Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, On The Waterfront, or anything with James Dean or Elizabeth Taylor.

The first thing you should do is watch Dr. Strangelove.

This. Also, watch Lolita for the same reason - to see Peter Sellers as a master actor in action.

I'd definitely recommend both Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon for Bogart, but you really should also catch The Caine Mutiny to see him really stretch his acting chops.

If you like Citizen Kane, you should watch The Magnificent Ambersons. Welles was in his stride around this time.

And if you are talking about classic foreign movies, anything by Fellini but especially 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita and La Strada.

Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries or The Seventh Seal and Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.

[Khaldun]

If you're gonna do Bogart, you have to include High Sierra, Treasure of Sierra Madre, and The Big Sleep in there. But after Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.

Magnificent Ambersons is surprisingly great.

If you're enjoying Wells, Touch of Evil is great even considering that Charlton Heston plays a Mexican cop in it.

And The Third Man, mentioned already, is mind-bogglingly good. Great source of memorable quotes.


Seventh Seal I'm going to be contrary on; I think it's dull as fuck.

[WayAbvPar]

I actually have Touch of Evil DVR'ed and ready to go as we speak 

[Merusk]

I saw this and then wondered, "What can be considered a 'classic' movie.  Then realized classics from when I was teens/ 20s were 25-30 years old.  This makes Ghostbusters, Aliens, Transformers (animated) and most of the movies I grew-up with classics now.  Goddamnit, Time.

As for the 'silver screen' era classics, I concur on the Kurosawa flicks. At the least watch Ran because it was amazingly beautiful.

Also a second for Bridge over the River Kwai. I didn't think I'd enjoy it, despite folks always saying how good it was.  I was pleasantly wrong.

[HaemishM]

How could I forget the goddamn Marx Brothers? Duck Soup is just one of the most perfect comedies ever created ever in the history of fucking time.

And if you are looking for classic Jimmy Stewart, Harvey is also a perfect movie. Followed by Rear Window and Vertigo. Then you should watch High Anxiety so the jokes are even more on point.

[lamaros]

I saw this and then wondered, "What can be considered a 'classic' movie.  Then realized classics from when I was teens/ 20s were 25-30 years old.  This makes Ghostbusters, Aliens, Transformers (animated) and most of the movies I grew-up with classics now.  Goddamnit, Time.

As for the 'silver screen' era classics, I concur on the Kurosawa flicks. At the least watch Ran because it was amazingly beautiful.

Also a second for Bridge over the River Kwai. I didn't think I'd enjoy it, despite folks always saying how good it was.  I was pleasantly wrong.

Classic is at least 40 years, its the generation beyond new parents imo. If you watched it when you were young and now have adult children...

[shiznitz]

Kung Fu Classics:

Five Deadly Venoms
The Kid with the Golden Arm

[Margalis]

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I don't know.

Touch of Evil is an interesting movie. It's pretty well done in some ways but also just absolutely awful in others. Curious to hear what you think of it. I was captivated the whole time watching it but not always for good reasons.

I'm very partial to the Leone spaghetti westerns - the Eastwood trilogy and also Once Upon a Time in the West. The latter has IMO both the best opening and best ending in cinema history. Not sure if those are quite old enough to meet your criteria.

Also I'd be remiss not to mention Dirty Harry, though again it's not that old.

Personally I can't stand anything with John Wayne in it. The acting style just takes me right out.

[Khaldun]

Wayne is only really good in a handful of films--John Ford and Howard Hawks films. Nowhere else. And even then it's best to see him as an environmental feature rather than an actor per se. The Searchers might be the film where his existing personality is played off of in the most interesting ways.

[Margalis]

I've tried watching The Searchers - can't do it.

I think I was spoiled because growing up Spaghetti Westerns were the only westerns I knew. Not just Leone westerns but lesser known ones as well. If you're used to that stuff and experience it first it's hard to go back to slightly older American westerns. They are shot much less cinematically, the acting style is much cornier, the music is very earnest classic American stuff - it comes off almost as parody. Spaghetti Westerns were in some ways a reaction to those sorts of movies, so even though some of those American films are only a few years older they come off as wildly anachronistic. Sort of like how late 80s / early 90s hair metal seems so out of time with the stuff that immediately followed it.

I'm sure I'd have a different opinion had I experienced the films in a different order, but I just can't help but roll my eyes at most classic American westerns.

[HaemishM]

I like John Wayne - again, he's not much of an "actor" more of a set piece that talks. But you can't deny the effect movies like The Fighting SeaBees are classic examples of the kind of "propaganda" type of films that enshrined a certain attitude of military fetishism in our culture. I realize all countries with their own film industries created similar type of movies during and after WWII, but America really did a helluva job exporting it around the world to places that should otherwise not have given a shit about such type of movies.

[Khaldun]

The Searchers is actually a pretty serious subversion of traditional Westerns, though--just not in the spaghetti Western way of doing it.

[Margalis]

I keep reading that which is why I keep trying to watch it but I never even make it that far.

From what I understand it sounds like the sort of thing I'd like in theory and pretty bold for the time-period.

[Nebu]

Not a John Wayne fan, but enjoyed his last two films; the Shootist and True Grit a lot.  Wayne was the inspiration for Nicholson and De niro. Actors that just have a distinct personality that enhances the dialogue. 

[satael]

Not a John Wayne fan, but enjoyed his last two films; the Shootist and True Grit a lot.  Wayne was the inspiration for Nicholson and De niro. Actors that just have a distinct personality that enhances the dialogue. 

My impression of John Wayne is forever tainted by him playing Temujin in The Conqueror. 

[Khaldun]

"My blood says this Tar-tah woman is for me, so I will take her!"

[WayAbvPar]

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I don't know.

Touch of Evil is an interesting movie. It's pretty well done in some ways but also just absolutely awful in others. Curious to hear what you think of it. I was captivated the whole time watching it but not always for good reasons.

I'm very partial to the Leone spaghetti westerns - the Eastwood trilogy and also Once Upon a Time in the West. The latter has IMO both the best opening and best ending in cinema history. Not sure if those are quite old enough to meet your criteria.

Also I'd be remiss not to mention Dirty Harry, though again it's not that old.

Personally I can't stand anything with John Wayne in it. The acting style just takes me right out.

Watched Touch of Evil last night. I was expecting it to be a Western for some reason, so seeing a film noir was a jolt at first. I agree with the bolded above- there was some really good stuff, and some just awful stuff. Some of the bad stuff was just from how dated it was, but there were some interesting editing decisions as well. After I watched it I looked at IMDB and discovered there are 2 other versions, both longer than the theatrical version I saw. That might help with the rushed/jumbled feeling I got from it.

At first I thought Welles was just hamming it up something terrible, but either I got used to it, or he got better as the film wore on, or the acting choices better fit the scene/character later in the film (the latter is my gut instinct). I thought a lot of the early scenes with Welles suffered from not having the director apart from the action- they felt chaotic and unclear. I am not sure if that was a choice of just a result of Welles' participation in the scene instead of just directing it.

Other random thoughts- Marlene Dietrich looked amazing for being in her 50s. Her character felt extraneous and forced though, and I wonder if the longer versions had more back story or exposition to justify her screen time. Wow Janet Leigh was a hottie in her day. And Heston with a tan = Mexican was hilarious.

[Khaldun]

There's also multiple versions of the film around--the studio edit from when it came out is absolutely bad; there's a later edit that people did that pieces together some of what got caught and a bit of what Wells meant to shoot but wasn't able to, and it's better. Still a rough film in many ways, but the good material is very interesting.

[Margalis]

Marlene Dietrich looked amazing for being in her 50s. Her character felt extraneous and forced though,

Was she the prostitute? (Or whatever she was - been a while since I've seen it)

If so that part was strange. It does hint at some greater plotline that was left out.

[WayAbvPar]

Yeah she was the brothel runner or whatever that watched Welles die at the end and said something profound (in the version I watched).

[Margalis]

I sort of liked that that part hinted at something greater, but it was weird.

How about the acting of that guy at the hotel? Famously awful performance.

[WayAbvPar]

He is not a terrible actor either. That was part of the direction I was wondering about. I think Welles was actually as drunk as his character most of the time.