Who Watches Old Movies Anymore? (1 Viewer)

[Wes Ray]

I'm 21 and watched The Maltese Falcon the other day. What a movie! I almost liked it better than Casablanca. Almost.
Casablanca spoiler below...
Spoiler:Rick should've told her to go to Hell.
I'm also the biggest Hitchcock buff in my area. I like older films quite a bit, but I haven't seen a great amount of them. The ones I do see, I love though.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Am I the only one who thought Vertigo was a better film than Psycho? I mean Psycho was an exellent horror movie, but didn't stick with me the way Vertigo did. The slow, creepy buildup to that shocking end just had a much larger impact with me. Once the credits hit after Vertigo I was just blown away. Spoiler:You know something's still wrong with the guy, but instead of revealing his cards throughout the movie, Hitchcock slowly let the man's problems and obsession evolve until that fateful end on top of the bell tower
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[Wes Ray]

I agree. Vertigo is my favorite "old" movie. I love Psycho, but if I had to pick a movie as my favorite of all time, it'd be Vertigo. Some people say it's too slow, but I say it's the perfect movie about obsession/love/losing someone. Way ahead of it's time.

 

[Kirk Tsai]

I'm not a fan of old movies, per se, but a fan of good films from any era.

That's what I would say, too. Sure, a lot of people my age (19) probably don't care for older movies, but I also know more about "old" movies than most of the people twice my age that I know of. I don't know if teenagers today are more ignorant of the past than previous generations, but I've seen many so called adults hang on to the films I consider old simply because of nostalgia as well. In any generation, the film lovers will watch any good film, case closed.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Let's not idealize the period per se and forget that many, many bad movies from the pre-1990 period are totally, and deservedly so, forgotten.

Possibly true, but, as someone on this board said (and, it might even be in this thread; I'm too lazy to go back. ), a bad movie during the Golden Age was usually simply boring. A bad movie today makes you want to reach for the barf bag. They put it more eloquently than that, but. . . .

 

[Peter Overduin]

I never saw Fiddler on the Roof until it came out on DVD. Ditto, It's a Wonderful Life, Bells of St. Mary's, etc. Their re-birth on DVD has kindled a buying spree of all the Rogers?hammerstein musicals, Christmas classics, etc. Even my teen aged kids love these old films (although they couldn't get into Lost Horizon.

 

[BarryR]

I know, the easiest way to get a new crowd started on old films is when they're kids--and there's no reason to apologize for b & w! It's just there.

 

[MatthewA]

I am 18 now, and I cannot stand most modern TV shows, movies, or music. Mediocrity does not even begin to describe most of them.
My younger sister is 12 and her friends think any movie before 1997 is "old." I have given up on trying to get them to view Citizen Kane or any such film. When I was 12, I saw the re-issue of Doctor Zhivago TWICE! I could watch Vertigo 20 times before I watch one second of Dude, Where's My Car.
What would help modern movie making would be to:
¥ Spend more money on scriptwriters with talent
¥ Spend much, much less money on special effects
¥ Get rid of focus groups
¥ Do not let Political Action Committees dictate what can be seen
¥ Cut down on hiring actors and actresses who look like Ken and Barbie
¥ Put an absolute end to the MTV mentality of directing and editing
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[Rain]

I think that people tend to underestimate the very young movie viewers, which may account for much of the crap that gets released.
I'm 30 now and the vast majority of films that I enjoy were released well before my birth. I also recently showed Duck Soup to an 18 year old friend and North by Northwest and They Were Expendable to a 20 year old friend and they loved them.
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[Richard Kim]

Let's not idealize the period per se and forget that many, many bad movies from the pre-1990 period are totally, and deservedly so, forgotten.
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Possibly true, but, as someone on this board said (and, it might even be in this thread; I'm too lazy to go back. ), a bad movie during the Golden Age was usually simply boring. A bad movie today makes you want to reach for the barf bag.

Oh, I don't know about that. Look at all those crappy Z grade flicks from the 50's and 60's that they showed on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

 

[Jun-Dai Bates]

Nowadays, almost all film-goers are teenagers that want to get out of the house. Most people older than that watch well over half their films at home. This was not true in the 50's and 60's (and before), when films were designed as evening entertainment, like going to the theater or opera. This explains a lot of the differences between the film styles. Most of the remainder can be explained by:
many contemporary directors have backgrounds in advertising and music video
computers have allowed us to arrive at a new age of filmmaking, which, like the advent of sound, tends to lead to spectacle and monstration, before people learn how to use these new tools artistically.
the studios tactics have changed from pouring a lot of money into many films (often more than one per week from each studio) into pouring a lot of money into a few films a year. This means that each film has to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
Anyways, despite all this, there are plenty of films from before the 80's that make me want to reach for the barf bag. There are grating cliches, romantic and otherwise, as well as poorly acted, poorly written dialogue all over the place. Of course these films tend not to be remembered. Only the best and worst films of each decade remain. Anyways, there a plenty of good films still coming out. People tend to think that the current year lacks good films, but a good number of the best films won't be recognized as such for several years afterwards (a few are instant successes).

 

[BarryR]

I think at this point there are at least a thousand worthwhile films from, say, pre-1960 that should ultimately find their way to DVD, even if they're not four-star classics. And I'm being conservative, because there's so much good stuff among even modest "B" films that can up the tally even more. I'd like to get beyond the point where we find maybe the same 2-3 titles per distant decade as par for what's worth having!

[Edited last by BarryR on September 10, 2001 at 05:37 PM]

 

[Jun-Dai Bates]

I think we can all produce lists of more than 2-3 films from each decade since 1920 that are worth having in a high quality presentation. It's not as bad as that. As for what's neglected, well, neglect is largely caused by what's available to us. If I could see more pre-1960 films than I do, I'd jump at the chance. I'd say my ratio of pre-1960 films to post-1960 films that I watch are about 2:3 (and worth owning? probably 1:1), and of course I watch more films from this year than from any other, because I like to stay with the present as well. In my opinion, however, the 50's, 60's, and 70's were the best decades for film (I'd probably choose 50's if I had to pick one). But of course I've only seen a fraction of the films from any decade.

 

[BarryR]

On a sidenote, my DVD collection (a whole other topic!) is at around 200 or so; I'd say a good 40%, the largest chunk, cover the '90s and beyond; the '60s and '70s probably account for 30%, with the remainder scattered among other decades, including the '20s. Of course the availability of current films make it easy to collect (and I can't wait for A.I., yet another topic), but I do know how my collection would explode if the '30s and '40s were represented more by studios! Oddly, I find the '80s the most problematic of the decades...but then, the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy isn't out yet.