Classic Cinema

[Loredoctor]

Forbidden Planet is in my top five favourite Science Fiction movies of all time. Faultless movie.

[Orlion]

Well, I just finished watching Metropolis (1927 version, of course!), and I must say, I was impressed. Usually, it's a struggle to watch classic films for me because of the, well, lack of heard dialogue makes them seem slow paced... and often times, the over-acting required in such films are very distracting. While Metropolis does have plenty of over-acting, it was a very enjoyable film, enough was going on and the ideas were interesting enough to carry me through. I particularly like the interpretation of the Tower of Babel story told in this movie.

[Fist and Faith]

I just saw Strangelove a couple weeks ago for the first time. I had literally no idea what it was about until I saw it. Didn't even know it was a comedy. Holy cow, what a riot!!

[CovenantJr]

I saw Psycho for the first time at the beginning of this year... brilliant movie! It's certainly one that should never, ever be remade for the sole reason that it is all ready a perfect movie.

Sadly, your warning comes too late. There was a Psycho remake a few years ago.

[dlbpharmd]

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but....

Casablanca is an overrated B-movie.

Watch Out of the Past and Touch of Evil. Both are far superior films.

Under/overrating is overrated. I love Casablanca from start to finish, but when I watch Citizen Kane, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Lots of good films mentioned so far. 12 Angry Men is a good film, but I actually prefer the updated version down on Showtime starring Jack Lemmon and the incomparable George C. Scott. Ben Hur is another favorite of mine.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

12 Angry Men and Ben-Hur are both very good. Citizen Kane is technical brilliance...for it's time that wide-shot of Kane on the political platform had to be a first...and Welles is absolutely astonishing as Kane. But it's not a 'fav' of mine...so it's always hard to rate it. I saw Forbidden Planet probably twice, but both times were over fifteen years ago, so I don't remember much.

[Lord Mhoram]

Yeah, I think a pretty good case could be made that Citizen Kane is the greatest American film ever made. It's certainly among the most important. But we could discuss that elsewhere if anyone would like to.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

I also have started to appreciate the...I don't know how to put it...the shade contrast? that black and white films have...it's lost with color...almost like your eyes are overwhelmed percieving the color instead of percieving the depth...almost like a psuedo-3d that adds an extra dimension/depth to a film. Great lighting must have been sooooo important in the black n white era - Citizen Kane is a perfect example.

[Rigel]

I also have started to appreciate the...I don't know how to put it...the shade contrast? that black and white films have...it's lost with color...almost like your eyes are overwhelmed percieving the color instead of percieving the depth...almost like a psuedo-3d that adds an extra dimension/depth to a film. Great lighting must have been sooooo important in the black n white era - Citizen Kane is a perfect example.

It turns out our eyes are much better at perceiving contrast than color. This gives greyscale images a much clearer, sharper look to them.

[sindatur]

I need to watch it again, everyone raves about it, but, the one time I tried it, I couldn't finish. (I was never able to appeciate 2001 either, despite 4 or 5 attempts)

As far as reccomendations, you can never go wrong with the queens of Cinema (Bette Davis and Joan Crawford) or Lana Turner, Susan Hayward or Kim Novack.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

I just lost my Hitchcock virginity with Vertigo.

I've read some people saying it's flawless - that is not true at all...there's many flaws, but I don't feel like typing that much right now (I don't think the ending works nor makes sense, and neither does the beginning much). Don't get me wrong, this is one of the most influential films ever made - now I know where Chan-wook Park's story pacing annoys me so much.

Overall, the plot was really good, many things were good - the pull away shot at the shipyard when Jimmy's friend tells him about his wife's supposed possession is...the best I've ever seen for that kind of shot. And Jimmy was amazing, dark, real - not just the Andy Griffith type character he usually did (though I don't think he even came close to nailing what the character was really about - the psyche of the man Scottie was actually). Novak was good. The cinematography was great, much like Kubrick but with better use of the camera in motion.

Must have been a very dark film for '58. Wow. If the ending had only worked better for the film.

On another note - I can see how one might not 'get' 2001...it's very boring at times, Kubrick's inner-photographer gets too much play time. But the pathos, the time he allows us to think and wonder...amazing. It's probably my Taxi Driver for you Dan...no matter how many times I go back to it after a couple years it still just doesn't do it for me one bit.

[Montresor]

That's one of his films I have yet to see. Hitchcock is great in everything he does.

Has anyone ever seen Peeping Tom? It's often compared to Psycho, and the film itself predated Hitchcock's by three months. The negative press reaction to Peeping Tom (the British press labelled it as perverted and disgusting) was a contributing factor in Hitchcock not allowing the press to see an advanced screening of Psycho. Michael Powell's career was almost completely destroyed by the press's vehemence for his film, though it has grown in respect over the decades. I would strongly recommend Peeping Tom to anyone who liked Psycho, it honestly is one of the best thrillers of the '60s and '70s, and I'd be very6 hard-pressed to pick which of the two I like more.

I feel like I could comment all day in this thread on Classic Cinema . . . in fact, I'm intimidated by the scope and may have to simply retreat. Jacob Raver deserves points for starting discussions like these, though.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Ya know...at the beginning of the thread, someone mentioned that they saw Casablanca as a 'B-movie' type. I don't disagree with this...however, most films of that period were shot and acted that way...one's expectations when seeing a film can change how you rate it entirely. I always try to except the 'standards' of the period when watching classics and see beyond this (I must be getting old).

[sindatur]

I just lost my Hitchcock virginity with Vertigo.

Rope is one of my favorite Hitchcock's

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Hitchcock's library is astounding.

[matrixman]

Usually, it's a struggle to watch classic films for me because of the, well, lack of heard dialogue makes them seem slow paced... and often times, the over-acting required in such films are very distracting.

It's mainly the over-acting that makes me a not-very-enthusiastic viewer of classic black-and-white films - and not just from the silent era. I find the acting in many talkies from the 30's and 40's embarrassing.

I just saw Strangelove a couple weeks ago for the first time. I had literally no idea what it was about until I saw it. Didn't even know it was a comedy. Holy cow, what a riot!!

That is sometimes the best way to see a movie - with no preconceptions at all. (Me, I usually prefer to know what I'm in for.) Glad you enjoyed Dr. Strangelove. As has been said by many, the satire is so observant that as you watch the movie, you're laughing while simultaneously thinking, "Crap, this could happen."

For anyone interested, I'm posting an excerpt from an essay on Kubrick by Jeremy Berenstein (during the time Kubrick was making 2001) that pertains to Dr. Strangelove:

It was the building of the Berlin Wall that sharpened Kubrick's interest in nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy, and he began to read everything he could get hold of about the bomb. Eventually, he decided that he had about covered the spectrum, and that he was not learning anything new.

"When you start reading the analyses of nuclear strategy, they seem so thoughtful that you're lulled into a temporary sense of reassurance," Kubrick has explained. "But as you go deeper into it, and become more involved, you begin to realize that every one of these lines of thought leads to a paradox."

It is this constant element of paradox in all the nuclear strategies and in the conventional attitudes toward them that Kubrick transformed into the principal theme of Dr. Strangelove. The picture was a new departure for Kubrick. His other films had involved putting novels on the screen, but Dr. Strangelove, though it did have its historical origins in Red Alert, a serious nuclear suspense story by Peter George, soon turned into an attempt to use a purely intellectual notion as the basis of a film. In this case, the intellectual notion was the inevitable paradox posed by following any of the nuclear strategies to their extreme limits.

"By now, the bomb has almost no reality and has become a complete abstraction, represented by a few newsreel shots of mushroom clouds," Kubrick has said. "People react primarily to direct experience and not to abstractions; it is very rare to find anyone who can become emotionally involved with an abstraction. The longer the bomb is around without anything happening, the better the job that people do in psychologically denying its existence. It has become as abstract as the fact that we are all going to die someday, which we usually do an excellent job of denying. For this reason, most people have very little interest in nuclear war. It has become even less interesting as a problem than, say, city government, and the longer a nuclear event is postponed, the greater becomes the illusion that we are constantly building up security, like interest at the bank. As time goes on, the danger increases, I believe, because the thing becomes more and more remote in people's minds. No one can predict the panic that suddenly arises when all the lights go out -- that indefinable something that can make a leader abandon his carefully laid plans. A lot of effort has gone into trying to imagine possible nuclear accidents and to protect against them. But whether the human imagination is really capable of encompassing all the subtle permutations and psychological variants of these possibilities, I doubt. The nuclear strategists who make up all those war scenarios are never as inventive as reality, and political and military leaders are never as sophisticated as they think they are."

[Cagliostro]

I saw Psycho for the first time at the beginning of this year... brilliant movie! It's certainly one that should never, ever be remade for the sole reason that it is all ready a perfect movie.

Sadly, your warning comes too late. There was a Psycho remake a few years ago.

More like over a decade ago. And to make it even more pointless, they matched the original shot for shot, for the most part. Seriously....what was the point? Just to add a masturbation scene?

Blah.

As for 2001, I also have never found what the big deal was with that, other than my friend likes to watch it while he smokes pot. Maybe that's why I've never "got" it. I sit there hoping something will happen.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

2001 is very, very slow...but once it's over, there's a feeling, the pathos - life/death, the cosmos, creation, existence, AI, lifespans...something very different.

[sindatur]

2001 is very, very slow...but once it's over, there's a feeling, the pathos - life/death, the cosmos, creation, existence, AI, lifespans...something very different.

A Feeling of Relief?

I've heard 2010 and the 3rd one are much more exciting for those of us who didn't enjoy the 2001. I've never had the opportunity to see the others

[Menolly]

2001 is very, very slow...but once it's over, there's a feeling, the pathos - life/death, the cosmos, creation, existence, AI, lifespans...something very different.

I still think the "death" of HAL9000 is one of the best death scenes ever.
(We had discussed death scenes awhile ago here, and that was my pick)