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AAA’s Old Movies Thread (1 Viewer)

AAABatteries

Footballguy
***SEE 2ND POST FOR MOVIE LIST***

I’ve thought about starting a thread for old movies for a while now and I’m currently off my feet for several weeks after ankle surgery so now is a perfect time.

I love old movies and with streaming services we have unparalleled access to just about any movie we’d like to watch.  So, in this thread I’d love recommendations from you guys for your favorite old movies and I’ll be posting some (or a lot) of mine.

Feel free to define “old” however you see fit.

 
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I’ll kick this off with some of the ones I re-watch every year:

  • Casablanca
  • The Third Man
  • The Thin Man movies (6)
  • The Maltese Falcon
  • It’s a Wonderful Life
  • Vertigo
  • Rear Window
  • Godfather I & II
  • North by Northwest
  • Treasure of the Sierra Madre


Some recent ones I’ve caught while laid up in bed:

Tight Spot - Ginger Rogers, Edward G. Robinson and a young Brian Keith.  Story about a model turned inmate who is given a chance to get out by testifying against the mob.

Passage to Marseille - The Casablanca gang - Bogart, Rains, Lorre and Greenstreet - team up again in this one.  WWII is the time period where a ship picks up a group of men drifting at sea on its way to Marseille where they plan to fight in the war.

The Lady from Shanghai - Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles and Everett Sloane star in this film noir about an Irishman who is invited aboard a luxury yacht to be a ship hand and get mixed up in a murder plot

 
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great list 
i dont think ive watched the third man or thin man movies 

i love the old black and white movies 
I’ve been touting the Thin Man movies for a while now on these boards but even I have to admit that The Third Man is a superior film.  It’s outstanding.

 
I'm going to define old as pre-1975. You know, when Jaws changed everything.

The list begins, unquestionably, with Casablanca and Notorious.

I came up with a list of 25 others, but don't want to torpedo the thread before it can breathe.

So I'll just help seed the thing with

Sunset Boulevard

Double Indemnity
I almost listed Sunset - great flick.  Swanson is just incredible and steals the show.

DI and Notorious are great picks also.  And I was the same - I could have listed another 50 movies but wanted others to chime in.

 
I’ve been touting the Thin Man movies for a while now on these boards but even I have to admit that The Third Man is a superior film.  It’s outstanding.
Third Man is top 10 or 5 for me. Absolutely fantastic film.

Seven Samurai

Le Samurai

The Rules of the Game

The Seventh Seal 

If Godfather is "old", then:

Dr Strangelove

A Woman Under the Influence

 
As I watched Spielberg's West Side Story last week, I was thinking about WSS in general. And just how inferior it is (on the whoknew scale) to Singin' in the Rain. Such a great, fun movie. With one of the greatest scenes in movie history.

Also, watched about 30 minutes of White Christmas yesterday before I had to leave. Always a pleasant view.

 
Love almost every film mentioned so far. I'll throw in the old horror movies... not they they are considered "scary" by modern audiences, but I enjoy those old Universal monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Plus King Kong, the first Godzilla, 50's sci fi like This Island Earth, etc.

 
As I watched Spielberg's West Side Story last week, I was thinking about WSS in general. And just how inferior it is (on the whoknew scale) to Singin' in the Rain. Such a great, fun movie. With one of the greatest scenes in movie history.

Also, watched about 30 minutes of White Christmas yesterday before I had to leave. Always a pleasant view.
Agree totally here.  WSS is not my cup of tea - definitely should be watched due to its significance but it’s not something I would rewatch often.

 
Love almost every film mentioned so far. I'll throw in the old horror movies... not they they are considered "scary" by modern audiences, but I enjoy those old Universal monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Plus King Kong, the first Godzilla, 50's sci fi like This Island Earth, etc.
If you want "horror" then I'll throw out an obvious one and a few not so obvious:

Psycho

Seconds (early Frankenheimer)

The Innocents (terrific 60's gothic)

Island of Lost Souls (a good version of the Dr Moreau story)

 
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance- John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin - not quite a western but a film about the transition of the west from open range.  Directed by John Ford.  
 

The Quiet Man - John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara - story of boxer who moves back to family land in Ireland. Romance and fighting.  Another directed by John Ford.  
 

John Ford also directed The Searchers - attributed to some as the inspiration for the original Star WRs movie.  

 
I don't watch old movies as much as I used to, so in addition to ones already mentioned in the thread, I'll add just three.

First is The Best Years of Our Lives. I'm not as versed on WWII-era movies, but I always felt this one was ahead of its time in that it could also fit in movies made a decade later and not seem irrelevant.

Don't know if Gone With the Wind hasn't been mentioned yet because of how we're currently looking back and judging the past based on our current sensibilities, but with all that aside, one aspect that went over my head when I was little was the perfect casting of Ashley and Melanie. Their frail/delicate appearances and demeanor were, to me, pretty clear evidence of their inbreeding heritage. That was probably the first subtext I ever picked up on.

Finally, I really enjoy watching The Caine Mutiny. Growing up, I only knew Fred MacMurray from My Three Sons, so seeing him playing a ##### character was a shock. Also impressive is the supporting cast, including Lee Marvin. 

 
I really enjoy watching The Caine Mutiny. Growing up, I only knew Fred MacMurray from My Three Sons, so seeing him playing a ##### character was a shock. 
Some of my favorite movies involved actors playing against type. Ronald Reagan also played a bad guy in his last film. Speaking of monkey movies I even liked Clint Eastwood during his Clyde period, Robin Williams being serious, Leslie Nielsen going from leading man to professional doofus.

 
Two stellar relationship dramas with Elizabeth Taylor in a lead roll:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Brick and Big Daddy finally have that conversation they've been avoiding for a long time while Maggie the Cat throws shade at sister girl and shows what hard dedicated love to a partner in hiding is all about

Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe: Be prepared to take a shower to cleanse yourself after Taylor and Burton eviscerate one another on a deep, personal, awful way while Nick and Honey live out disillusionment in real time. 

The first is by Tennessee Williams and the second by Edward Albee so you know going in the writing is top notch but its the acting that gives the words life and both movies are rife with great performances. Burl Ives is especially note worthy in Cat, perfect casting.

 
I see Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, and Treasure of the Sierra Madre on your list.  Do you celebrate the entire Bogart catalog?  African Queen?  We're No Angels?  High Sierra?  

 
I see Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, and Treasure of the Sierra Madre on your list.  Do you celebrate the entire Bogart catalog?  African Queen?  We're No Angels?  High Sierra?  
Yes.

To Have & Have Not

In A Lonely Place (my 2nd favorite Bogart)

Key Largo

 
I see Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, and Treasure of the Sierra Madre on your list.  Do you celebrate the entire Bogart catalog?  African Queen?  We're No Angels?  High Sierra?  
Absolutely - just didn’t want to list everything right off the bat.  Big Sleep, Key Largo and Dark Passage are some others of his I’ve enjoyed.  Bogart is deservedly a top 10 actor all-time, IMO.

 
dutch said:
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe: Be prepared to take a shower to cleanse yourself after Taylor and Burton eviscerate one another on a deep, personal, awful way while Nick and Honey live out disillusionment in real time. 
One of the worst films I've ever seen unless you enjoy awful people screaming at each other for 2 hours.

 
Forbidden Planet 

Lost Horizon (original Capra version)

12 Angry Men (thought the remake was good too)

The Grapes of Wrath

 
Charlie Steiner said:
Finally, I really enjoy watching The Caine Mutiny. Growing up, I only knew Fred MacMurray from My Three Sons, so seeing him playing a ##### character was a shock. 
As a kid, I used to watch "My Three Sons" every day after school. When I got older and started watching films, I was also shocked at seeing him as the villain.

A movie where he played an emotional villain was The Apartment.  

 
Three more, all to me examples of actors/directors at the top of their games:

1. I don't like many westerns but Rio Bravo is the one I will always stop and watch when it's on. 

2. Big fan of the first of Kubrick's anti-war trilogy, Paths of Glory.

3. Speaking of anti-war films, there's a scene in the original version of All Quiet on the Western Front that not only must have been the most harrowing to watch for the audience of its time, it's still a pretty powerful scene over 80 years later.

 
And "Streetcar Named Desire"

Cool Hand Luke

Seven Days in May
Where Eagles Dare

A Face In The Crowd

Once Upon a Time In The West
High Noon
The Wild Bunch

Out Of The Past
American Graffiti

Mr Smith Goes to Washington

Mary Poppins
Brief Encounter
 
Face in the crowd always one of my favorites.  Andy did a great job in that one.

 
These are some of my favorites that I haven't noticed posted yet

70- 75

Paper Moon- Ryan O'Neal and his real life 10 year old daughter star as drifters conning people during the Great Depression. Super funny and sweet. Tatum is an absolute force on the screen and gives one of the best child acting performances I've ever seen. 

Aguirre, the Wrath of God- Werner Herzog has spent most of his career making documentaries like Grizzly Man but before the docs, he made grueling on location historical epics. This is the precursor to Apocalypse Now as it follows Spanish Conquistadors through Peru in search of a City of Gold. It is a classic man vs nature story. 

Dirty Harry- I am sure many have seen or are at least are aware of this as a cliche. The original is no cliche, it's a damn good cop movie. 

60s

Hud- Paul Newman at his absolute peak playing a drunken, philandering toxic mess of a man who destroys his family. It's kind of a modern Western written by the great Larry McMurtry 

The Apartment- Not exactly off the radar since it won Best Picture and a bunch of other Oscars but it's a great holiday movie and holds up quite well, it was a major inspiration for Mad Men. Jack Lemmon plays a lovable loser with a crush on the original manic pixie dream girl Shriley MacLaine. In order to get ahead at work, Lemmon begins lending out the key to his apartment  to his bosses so they have somewhere to cheat on their wives. It's a comedy but also features some really dark stuff and it's all set around Christmas and New Years. 

Z- An edge of your seat political thriller based on a real life political assassination in Greece

50s

Throne of Blood- Macbeth as a samurai movie. 

The Big Heat- One of the all time great noirs and cop movies. When a cop's apparent suicide leads the investigator to a mob connected wife, he soon discovers that's just the beginning of the corruption involved. 

From Here to Eternity- Another massive Oscar winner, one of the most awarded movies of the era based on the widely acclaimed book. It's a look at the lives of soldiers stationed at Pearl Harbor just prior to the December 7th attack. Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine, Donna Reed and Deborah Kerr might deliver the best collective acting performances in any Hollywood movie. 

40s 

The Philadelphia Story- Another incredible cast top to bottom but the real appeal here is the charm, wit and beauty of Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. One of the funniest movies of the time period that pokes fun at the wealthy and puts Hepburn in a not a love triangle but a love square. 

White Heat- James Cagney sizzles as a mentally unstable gangster with mother issues who unbeknownst to him has an FBI agent in his gang looking to take him down. 

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp- It follows the career of an English soldier from the Boer War to WW2 using his military career as a means for understanding the development of the British Empire during that time. It's both patriotic but also highly critical. One note, Colonel Blimp is not a character in the movie but an allusion to a popular British cartoon of the time that satirized the stiff upper lip aristocratic British elite. That really confused me on my first viewing as I was wondering when the heck the Col Blimp character was going to enter the movie. 

20s/30s

It Happened One Night - Basically every rom-com trope comes from this movie. A wealthy but naive heiress on the run, the rough blue collar street smart reporter who helps her. They are opposites and hate each other but of course that animosity turns to romance. It's also a pure screwball comedy that is still one of only 3 movies to have won the Big 5 Oscars (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay). 

The General- The perfect gateway movie for someone apprehensive about silent movies. It's one of the purest action comedies ever made. 

 
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These are some of my favorites that I haven't noticed posted yet

Paper Moon- Ryan O'Neal and his real life 10 year old daughter star as drifters conning people during the Great Depression. Super funny and sweet. Tatum is an absolute force on the screen and gives one of the best child acting performances I've ever seen. 
9 year old me was instantly smitten by Tatum O'Neal.

 
Breathless

Seven Samurai

Modern Times/Great Dictator

The Stranger (Wells, Edward G Robinson, Loretta Young)

D.O.A.

The Wages of Fear

Lord of the Flies

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Ace In The Hole

The Lost World

All the King's Men

All but the last one are available on Kanopy. In fact, a lot of the titles in this thread are.

 
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My favorite movie of all time is Lawrence of Arabia.  And for me directors are like Scotch’s so if you like that one you may as well dig Bridge on the River Kwai and Doctor Zhivago.  
I love everything Kubrick so everything he’s done is worth a watch.  I know Barry Lyndon gets panned pretty bad but do yourself a favor and check it out and then read a bit about all the painstaking lengths Kubrick went through to film it and it just gives you some added appreciation for that film. 
The great escape is also pretty terrific and hasn’t been mentioned yet I don’t believe.  
Lastly I saw someone post once upon a time in the west and that’s a great one with a great cast and Claudia Cardinale is very pretty. 

 
Network might be borderline for what we're considering old. But it's a personal favorite that feels more relevant than ever.

 
 A couple from this weekend:

Lady in the Lake - Robert Montgomery plays plays private eye Phillip Marlowe.  Typical Marlowe story but used a notable feature - the movie was entirely filmed from Marlowe’s first-person perspective.

Cover Up - Insurance arrived in a small town to investigate a suicide but immediately suspects murder 

 

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