During the golden age of Movies some of the absolute best of all time were created.
The scripts, actors and stories were excellent and many are timeless in their value.
Brando, Grant, Bogart, Robinson, Garbo, Hepburn, Tracey, Greenstreet, were names that sold a lot of tickets and really made great re-runs on TV.
A lot of people believe that in those days Movies were a true art form.
What is your favorite(s) black and white movie of all time?
List as many as you want, but explain why you picked them.
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or Marlene Dietrich
or Laurel and Hardy ...
Or the old Universal Monster movies !!!
To Have and Have Not
ha ha
(ha ha - all the old Vincent Price movies !!!!!!)
North by Northwest - Eva Marie Saint again, Cary Grant gets cropdusted and Martin Landau falls off Lincoln's head. Great Hitchcock drama and humor.
Fugitive Kind -- Not so well known, but a Brando gem. With Anna Magnani in Tennesee Williams film version of Orpheus Descending. Magnificent film.
Orpheus - Jean Cocteau with Jean Marais as a modern day orpheus. Death is a woman who travels by car with motorcycles accompanying her, when you see her somebody's about to die. Surreal with Orpheus going through the mirror and hearing strange inspiration through the car radio; like "The birds sing sweetly through their feelings."
Beauty and the Beast - also Cocteau; On a different level than Disney or any other pretender for this story. Jean Marais again, and Beauty cries diamonds.
Eternal Return - Cocteau again. Marais waits for his love to return.
Oxbow Incident - John Ford uses Henry Fonda to explore injustice and the fallibility of self-righteousness.
Maltese Falcon - Bogie, Greenstreet, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook Jr as the pesky Wilmer - The stuff dreams are made of. John Huston directed this epic.
The Big Sleep: Bogart as Philip Marlowe with Lauren Bacall, and Martha Vickers as that crazy kid. Bogart: "Another guy who thinks a gat in the hand means the world by the tail."
Lady in the Lake - Robert Montgomery (Elizabeth's dad) plays Marlowe in this odd film where the viewer's viewpoint (camera) is that of the protagonist. Montgomery's first directing job.
Sunset Blvd. Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Gloria was still a star "it was the pictures that got small." Holden learns to float in the pool.
The Third Man - Classic Orson Wells mystery.
42nd Street -- Busby Berkeley pulls his camera through the legs of 150 chorus girls and William Powell's girlfriend falls out the window of a skyscraper. Classic mega-Berkeley kaleidoscope production of female bodies - Yeah!
Metropolis - Fritz Laing creates a world (kind of like ours) where the slaves work underground on strange machines while the elite luxuriate above ground.
Double Indemnity - Fred MacMurray falls under the spell of Barbara Stanwyck - bad move for the insurance agent. It might have worked out had it not been for Edgar G. Robinson.
Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House: Cary Grant and Myrna Loy build a house in New England. I used to think this was a comedy before moving to New England from Los Angeles.
DOA - the original: Edmund O'Brien is dying of luminous poisoning and tries to find his poisoners before he kicks the bucket.
No Time for Sergeants: Andy Griffith is Will Stockdale, Nick Adams doesn't want to be "a damned Airman." Andy arranges the toilet seats in the latrine to salute in unison for the inspection - classic.
8 1/2 - Fellini at his finest gets us to look at life in a different way. Marcello Mastroianni watches as all the women in his life form a parade. Well, there's more to it than that.
La Dolce Vita: More Fellini as Marcello watches Anita Ekberg romp in the Trevi fountain. Now that's the stuff real dreams are made of!
Day the Earth Stood Still - Michael Rennie in this film that's more of a social commentary (never more apt than it is today) than a sci-fi film.
That reminds me - my favorite Ingmar Bergman is The Seventh Seal. I love that one a lot.
I like the part where the giant is chasing the kid through the labyrinth and after the long chase the kid falls down and is about to be clubbed. He puts his hand up and says spare me, I am a ...student.
The whole movie is great moments !!! And so epic !!!
Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, too.
Many of the old films actually used black and white almost as if it were a character, as Citizen Kanedid.
I think maybe this deal about bW goes along way why current movies seem so lame.. Back then they were limited bu contrast and light and the of filters and teh lack of special effects liekwe have today.. by being limited, they had to have better stories, better actors adn had to be genius at manipulting images
(but back then technicolor was a way of saying "we're showing off!")
ha ha
Cinema tried to do color from the get-go - silent films with 2 strip technicolor was so ugly, and tinting just didn't do it. Black and white was only a chemical reality of their limitations.
But it worked out so neato !!!
Have you ever been stung by a bee?
It's a day in the life story about two guys working dead-end jobs as store clerks. If you've ever had to work in that type of job, the movie is so true and you can laugh about your life afterward. It also shows that people who work those jobs aren't necessarily stupid people.
Plus it gave us Jay and Silent Bob- two characters that continue to show up in Smith's films.
The Thin Man movies ~ Powell/Loy were such a great team.
I loved William Warren ~ Perry Mason, Lone Wolf, Philo Vance...
The Boston Blackie movies ~ with The Runt....just great!
Liked Powell in My Man Godfrey with Carole Lombard as well. A classic of a classic.
Does anyone know the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew's horse?
Who was the Lone Ranger's grand-nephew?
a) Victor is correct
b) no idea, who?
I was thinking of the clash of titans, Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens in The Enemy Below. One that should have been m