Old Movies

mellowyellow

mellowyellow

Well-known Member
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I know younger people hate black and white movies but I've been enjoying some wonderful old movies lately, Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge (still have the book falling apart in the bookcase) and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Yes, the sets are very much out of date, but the story lines and
acting take me away to a happy place. :)

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Most all the movies I watch are old B&W from the 30's, 40's. They are much better than the newer movies, IMO!
Herbert Marshall, Monte Wooley, Melvyn Douglas, William Powell, Fredrick March, Dennis Morgan, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Coleman, Walter Pigeon, Rex Harrison, Brian Ahern, David Niven. etc. , Not just the actors but the writing, the directing, the plots,;
all keep my interest more than most of the newer movies.
 

As I have written before, old movies are my one hobby, watching and collecting.
Have a pretty nice library of movies I've acquired over the years. (probably 75% Black and White Films)

Yard sales, discounted movie bins, gifts from friends and when all else fails, I go to 'The Criterion Collection' page or Amazon.
( my friends and family know what to get me for presents...an old DVD or a bottle of Scotch ).

Criterion bought up a lot of classics and you can only find them on their site.
Don't mine as they have sales that are pretty good.

Even with all the ways you can 'stream' movies by the internet, I enjoy reaching over to grab a movie that fits my mood.
( Kind of like a printed book instead of an EBook )
 
From my childhood, the Bowery Boys movies. As to movies on TV, for us they were all black & white. From a little later and still now, classic science fiction: The Thing, Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Them. Monolith Monsters, This Island Earth, and many more. BTW, Amazon Prime has a lot of old scifi and monster movies for addicts of that genre. Once you find one of them, the Amazon app shows you "Viewers also watched..."
 
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Kim Novak in 2015. She recalled waking up dazed and naked after a party in 1958
MATEJ DIVIZNA/GETTY

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Kim Novak has accused the actor Tony Curtis of spiking her drink at a Hollywood party, saying that she woke up dazed and naked.

The star of Vertigo recalled having one drink at a party in 1958 hosted by Curtis, who died in 2010 aged 85.

Novak, 89, told The Hollywood Reporter: “Tony Curtis had brought me a drink. I don’t know, I only had, I think, one drink there. But that’s the last thing I knew. I do not know anything afterward, cross my heart, hope to die. Don’t know what happened after that or how my car got back in front of my apartment.”

I had no idea she was still alive, and she looks wonderful if this picture is true. Remember the sexy dance with William Holden in Picnic? OMG
 
Gaer said:
Most all the movies I watch are old B&W from the 30's, 40's. They are much better than the newer movies, IMO!
Herbert Marshall, Monte Wooley, Melvyn Douglas, William Powell, Fredrick March, Dennis Morgan, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Coleman, Walter Pigeon, Rex Harrison, Brian Ahern, David Niven. etc. , Not just the actors but the writing, the directing, the plots,;
all keep my interest more than most of the newer movies.
Click to expand...
There are some solid reasons for this state of affairs:

1. The script writers had to be able to write solid and interesting story lines rather than relying on effects to make the movie work.
2. In order for solid story lines to sell at the box office, there had to be an audience who had the intellect to appreciate such a story line and not get bored due to lack of effects.
3. The acting had to be decent to make the story line come alive in the absence of effects.
4. Those old movies used real musicians recorded live playing the soundtracks. I don't feel that the feeling those musicians had can be reproduced on a computer.

I recently read an interesting line about the current state of music... Before Pro Tools, there were pro musicians.

For those who don't know what Pro Tools is, it is a software package for creating and producing music on a computer. This type of software is often referred to as a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Tools

Prior to this kind of technology, musicians had to be all pro, able to do a recording in one take, or as few takes as possible to keep production costs down and keep studio time to a minimum.

So the analogy is that movies can be bathed in effects to cover for weaknesses in the areas that old movies relied on solid professionalism for in the past.

In all fairness, there is some good music being made today, just as some more recent movies are destined to become classics. However, there really is something to those old movies that more recent movies just don't convey, just as computer produced music seems to lack something that real musicians recorded live in the studio had in the past.

Tony
 
Old movies on TCM are about all I watch on TV other than Sunday nights PBS shows.

My favorites are probably the old "women's movies" of the 30's and 40's with Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford. Movies like "Mildred Pierce," "Now Voyager," and "Stella Dallas," all three were good novels before being turned into films. I think that's always a good recommendation.

I also love the old film noirs like, "Double Indemnity." Great acting and good stories. Love 'em.
 

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