Brent L

I'd just like to say one more thing.

If anything, "classic" films are UNDERrated.

It's sad to think that there are so many people out there that wouldn't watch one of the older films, just because that it came out years ago. I know plenty of people like this, and that really gets to me in a big way.

shill66

I don't know ANYONE who thinks like that. Everyone knows a bad movie when they see it, even the so-called film buff elitists.

shill66

Sometimes people forget that there are *thousands* of films that have been either lost or forgotten in the mists of time. Here in 2004 we see everything - the great films, the mediocre films, the truly horrible films. And we remember them all because they are all fresh to us. Seventy years from now, who is going to remember Thunderbirds (2004)? The movies people will call classics THEN will be the GOOD ones from today. The bad ones will be mostly forgotten.

What that means is most of the classic films WE think of (when we think of classic films) are, generally speaking, the GOOD ones from yesterday. The mediocre ones and the horrible ones are still out there, it's just that nobody considers them "classics". That's why I don't think "classic" films are overrated - they're considered classics because they're good.

As an aside, I first saw Lawrence of Arabia when I was probably around 14 years old, pan-and-scan on HBO. I can only barely recall my reaction, I only remember that I thought it was pretty good. I saw it again when I was 23. Widescreen on VHS, on a 51" tv. I was fascinated from start to finish, and the whole thing felt like it was about an hour long, it engrossed me so much. (I didn't remember any of it from my first viewing.) It was a thrill to be with my wife when she saw it for the first time, not expecting to like it, discovering that it was excellent. We had the benefit of seeing it in IMAX which helped intensify the experience, though.

Giantrobo

HAH! Get to know some of you fellow dvdtalkers

Same goes for some of the bad foreign films. They think Foreign automatically equals better than Domestic and good. I shit you not. Both sides have good films and bad films.



btw, I love your shillpages site. The actress page has been a favorite of mine for a few years now.

Giantrobo

So they have to get rid of their biases and think outside of the box.

QuiGonJosh

they make good and bad movies then...they make good and bad movies now...this is how its always been...

scroll2b

Sight and Sound Top 109 list is somewhere on this board, though it was closed because (shock!) too many people were posting what they owned....

scroll2b

I think you're forgetting the history of Ridley Scott. He directed over 2,000+ commercials before he ever made a feature film. He always wanted to be a filmmaker, but had to make a living at it first. His first film, The Duelists, is quite an accomplished film. Sure I appreciate it for its lush cinematography, but there are other things going on in that film, for sure.

Alien was his second film. The studio wanted another look for the alien, but Scott, with his experience making hard choices quickly, decided H.R.'s alien was best and there was no more time to debate. I may not be telling the story so great, but you can find it all on the Alien Quadrilogy.

As for your last point, I can't think of a film that's completely dialogue driven. The closest examples that were indeed successful at the box office are American Beauty and Lost in Translation. Also, I don't think it's the audiences as much as the studios who are to blame for the mass crap available today. They don't want to take chances on new material.

Imagine pitching Lawrence of Arabia today. It's too long, no women, no romantic love story.... It just doesn't happen anymore. To the studios, stories like that just aren't bankable. They need something for the boys, the older crowd, the women. It's something for everyone. You can't totally blame that blandness on the people, except when they make a flop a mega hit.

DVD Smurf

Sniper did not have any women or love story, yet I found it to be pretty good...

freudguy

I am currently 33 years old. I have found myself watching and LOVING films that I used to pass by when I was younger. I have been paying more attention to the "classic" section of my collection recently and I have re-discovered films that I hated in the past. I'm not going to say older movies are better or anything of that sort because I simply don't believe it's true. However, I would rather watch The Adventures of Robin Hood than a lot of the action dreck out today. I used to loathe Lawrence of Arabia due to it's running time and my lack of interest in world history. I bought the limited edition when it first came out...and never watched it (I got a good deal on it and wanted to start a classic collection). I watched it a year and a half ago and absolutely loved it.....and imagine my dismay when disc one had problems with it (I immediately went and bought another one).

As for the acting changes over the years, I don't mind the over-acting and melodrama of earlier films. If taken in context of the time of motion pictures & the casting (to basically get the biggest stars you can no matter if they fit the role or not), I completely understand the era and am able to look past those quibbles.

I recently saw "M", a movie I would have never watcheda few years ago due to it being old & in German. Damn, what a movie.

I believe appreciation for the "classics" comes with age, especially for a film buff. For causal movie-goers, most will never appreciate them.

Giles

'The Magnificent Ambersons' - I thought Agnes Moorehead's performance was fantastic, the story on the other hand really didn't do all that much to me. Great acting, noteworthy cinematography, but I was expecting alot more from this film.

Rypro 525

I'm only 19 also, and i like all the early 30's pre code gangster movies like public enemy, little ceasar, scarface (what the De Palma version isn't an original?). also love good, the bad and the ugly, citizen kane, loa, and many more.

Holly E. Ordway

I think that with any older movie, there's a tension between viewing it "as a classic" (ie. looking at it in the context of its time, appreciating its advances over other films of the era, etc.) and viewing it "as a movie" (simply considering its effect on you right now). Classics are revered for different reasons - some because they advanced the genre or the form significantly, even if since then, they've been surpassed, and others because they transcend their era in some way, so that they're enjoyable just as much 50 years after the fact.

I think that you can "appreciate" an important film, even if you don't "enjoy" it, and vice versa. The thing is, not everybody is interested in just appreciating a film, or may not be in the mood for that at the time. There's nothing wrong with that. I both enjoy and appreciate Chaucer, but that's not to say that someone who bounces off The Canterbury Tales is a cretin!

For instance, I'm another who just couldn't get through Citizen Kane. It didn't click with me as a film to enjoy, and at the time I was watching it, I wasn't in the mood to analyze it and appreciate it in terms of its contribution. I didn't particularly like Contempt (Le mepris) as a movie experience in its own right, but it was really quite interesting to watch it with the commentary and get an understanding of *why* that film was important, what ground-breaking things were done in it, etc. I still don't like it any better *as a film* but I can appreciate its importance and I'm glad I was exposed to it. However, without the commentary I wouldn't have gotten much out of it at all.

On the whole, I think there are more "classics" that are revered for their importance than ones that are revered for their ability to stand the test of time. Of the older films that I've enjoyed, some are sort of borderline on the appreciate/enjoy line. For instance, The Ten Commandments is a film I enjoy quite a bit, but I'm always a bit amused (and thus pulled out of the story) by the "Whee! We have Technicolor!" costume designs. On the other hand, I, Claudius is one of my all-time favorite pieces of filmmaking, ever, because its story, script, and acting are (IMO) just about perfect; I think it will be just as effective after fifty years as it is after thirty.

The age question is interesting, because I think in a way it cuts both ways. At 17, sure, you don't have the depth of experience that might add to your appreciation of a film... but you also haven't been jaded by seeing tons of other movies that build on the classics and take them in new directions. (I'm just about to turn 30, which puts me on the older end of the respondents here, btw.)

freudguy

Nice, I love seeing a "young 'un" who takes the time to appreciate classic cinema.

And, no, there is no sarcasm in the above. I think it's great that a 19 year old can appreciate such movies.

DouglasRobert

Just saw the 1930's version of A Farewell to Arms with Gary Cooper.

I was very disappointed. A War movie with very little battle scenes and way too much of scenes of people talking. The audio was terrible and some of the direction was just not that good. One scene is where the guy is in a hospital and you see the nurses from his point of view. It just called attention to itself and was very distracting.

While I really like The Bridge on the River Kwai, the one scene that really bothers me is the scene where the Alec Guiness character dies and falls down on the explosives detonator plunger. His acting is just way over the top in that scene.

There are probably tons of movies that are classics that contain scenes that I would have edited out. The one scene is from Raiders of the Lost Ark - when Indy and the lady are on the boat and the entire mirror and kiss here scene just slows down the movie at that point and if I was the editor I would have trimmed or edited out completely. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Raiders but not that one scene.

chente

It was butchered by the studio before it was released. The original cut of the movie was much longer, by something like 50 minutes if I remember correctly. Not only that, it was re-edited and an alternate ending was used. The cuts were done without Welle's approval and from what I gather, the footage was destroyed to prevent reconstruction because Welle's managed to piss the studio off. The changes were made after the studio panicked after a test screening in Pomona, CA. Overall the film is a mess now. It really is sad.

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Breakfast with Girls

That makes sense, except I'm 23 and I love older movies. And obviously I love video games as well.

FWIW, the original Manchurian Candidate is vastly superior to the remake. I saw the new one last night.

das Monkey

This is a good point. I try so hard not to become jaded -- especially when it comes to television, where so much is repetitive -- but as you get older, it's hard to avoid that feeling of, "I liked it the first time ... when it was called ________." It's also interesting how nostalgia plays a part. These 90s screwball teen comedies rarely make me laugh, because I lived through the John Hughes years. Are they superior films, or is it just nostalgia skewing my opinion? I'd argue the former, but it could easily be the latter.

As I've grown older, I've tried to learn how to include without excluding, to understand and appreciate the past without becoming a snob about the present. I've had to recognize that when I was young, I didn't understand a lot of things, and I've rewatched many a film and found that with some life experience under my belt, they really hit home. Being a film lover is an ever growing process, and while we are often imprisoned by the time in which we were born, I try hard to break free of that as often as possible, and I've found that doing so has been very rewarding.

das

Josh H

I don't know that I would agree with the OP that classics are overrated.

But I agree that I don't get any enjoyment out of most of them. I watch movies soley for entertainment, and most classics simply don't entertain me much.

Breakfast with Girls

On the flip side, there are newer things coming out that never would (or could) have been made 30 years ago. Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Farscape as examples. Truly new viewing experiences. Sure, you had shows like Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek, but even though I like both, they are far more campy than anything that could be accepted today. Even series like The Office seem much more refined than similarly-set comedies from that era.

FinkPish

While I respect your right to give your opinon, I completely disagree with it. It seems, like some other people posting here, as though you are thoroughly entrenched in your own modern world, and everything you see previous to that has to be compared directly to it. "A Farewell to Arms" is a love story, plain and simple, so to complain that it only had one battle scene seems rather childish.

I couldn't tell if you enjoyed Bridge on the River Kwai, so I'll give that a pass.

I really don't understand your point regarding Raiders, though. That scene is the only romance scene in almost the entire movie, and you want to cut it out, because it slows things down? I hate to be a snob, but I have to ask how old you are.

tdilia

I agree classic films are not overrated. Without these classics where would some of the inspriation for todays movies come from. Also filmmakers back then didn't have the freedom that todays filmmakers have. Could you imagine American History X coming out during the 50's or 60's. There would have been scandals and the movie would have been banned. Look at the big deal that was made about Clockwork Orange or Straw Dogs when first released they where banned in England. I don't think that would happen today.

I also agree about foreign films. I've seen tons of foregn films and so many them are better than so many movies that came out of Hollywood. Some of the greatest movies I've seen are foreign.
(Seven Samauri, Grand Illusion, Seventh Seal to name just a few)

ehonauer

This thread reminds me of an argument I had with someone who said "I don't have an accent." Everybody has an accent, some people just don't realize it. It's a question of perception, and being able to recognize the relativity in the situation.

There is a similar bias when you watch a modern movie. The impression that Saving Private Ryan or The Usual Suspects or The Road To Perdition are more "realistic" than older films is based on style. When you judge these movies as "better" than older films, you are just responding to the movie's style (and not its content). These films were carefully crafted to aesthetically appeal to today's moviegoing audience. The style is "invisible." You're not hearing the accent.

This careful crafting goes on during the making of all movies. The craft was not poorer in older films, just different. Whether it's All Quiet On The Western Front, Bridge Over The River Kwai, Apocalypse Now, or Saving Private Ryan, they were all designed to appeal to the style preferences of the current generation. I guarantee Saving Private Ryan (at least some aspects of it) will appear hokey in 20 years time.

Watch some of Spielberg's "classic" films like E.T. or Poltergeist from the 80s - they were cutting edge at the time (modern classics, I thought) but they now seem like manipulative rollercoaster rides. I think Jaws is one of Spielberg's greatest films because the mechanical shark malfunctioned during filming. Because the shark was kaput, Speilberg was forced to put the characters at the forefront. How many people remember the classic scene with Scheider, Dreyfuss, and Shaw comparing injuries? It wouldn't be in the movie if it weren't for the effects problems that left the three actors sitting around rehearsing and ad-libbing.

opti, you wrote, "Before viewing the aforementioned films I thought I was rather limited in my exposure to only recent popular fare, and I'd expose myself to everything I'd been missing from previous decades. Now I'm thinking the opposite is true -- these lists should be dominated by recent films." If "classics" lists are dominated by recent films, then there is no such a thing as a classic.

The true measure of a classic is its abililty to affect us regardless of its stylistic trappings. Time is the best critic of art, whether it's music, movies, or books. If it continues to be meaningful to future generations, then it's a classic. All of the people who loved Chaplin's films when they came out are probably dead or close to it. But the films are on the classic lists, not because of critics, but because of audiences continuing to discover them. I saw Modern Times last Fall and it was unbelievably funny and charming, even though I went into it with a bad attitude (personally I think comedies age worse than other types of films).

I hated Casablanca when I saw it in high school. I thought the main character was an unlikable 50s tough guy and the events were distant and uninteresting. When I saw it in my late 20s, I realized the film was about the pain of love lost and the healing of that pain, and I enjoyed it much more.

If you put Saving Private Ryan on the list and take off Bridge Over The River Kwai, in a few years you'll be taking Saving Private Ryan off and swapping out for the latest and greatest. You'll loose your connection to history and to what is truly important: content, not style. As you get older, your sensitivity to style lessens, because you've seen the styles of your childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood come and go. You come to understand that style is fleeting, and that content and humanity in movies is what matters - they are the constant.

You don't have to like these films - everybody has their opinion. But to react negatively to such a disparate set of films as the ones you listed indicates some kind of mental barrier to accepting the stylistic trappings of other time periods. But, just like an accent, those stylistic trappings are present in the recent movies you love so much more - you just don't see them (yet). Even if you never do see them, your children and grandchildren will, and they will be sure to point out how crappy Saving Private Ryan or The Usual Suspects or The Road To Perdition are.

Good thread, opti. Thanks for keeping it flamefree.

adamblast

Thanks for the post, ehonauer. I think those are the points many have been trying to make. opti is, of course, free to like or dislike films as he chooses, but his feeling that "today's films are more realistic" as a reason to strongly prefer modern releases shows a lack of perspective. It is to ignore the thousands of ways that today's movies are equally artificial and dated--and to denigrate many of the best movies of all time based on an overly narrow set of stylistic preferences.

Jeraden

Tell that to all the Criterion worshippers. In my opinion, the majority of the Criterion catalog is rubbish, but many maintain its high art. Somehow slapping the name Criterion in front of a bad "classic" magically makes it a good "classic".

But yeah, I'm in the same boat as the original poster. I dislike the majority of "classic" films. They are generally over-acted, overly melodramatic, use uninspired filming techniques, and have out-dated subject matter. Notice I say generally - not all of them do but I'd say the majority do. Back in the day they might have been revolutionary, but it just doesn't have the same effect today. I'm 30 btw.