Black and White: The Golden Age

[peacheslatour]

It was a glorious era of film noir, pre-code illicitness and beautiful production values!  Let's talk about our favs!

[proserpina65]

The Sea Hawk with Errol Flynn - but obviously not the colorized version.  I love pirate movies from that era.

[ChelseaNH]

The Women -- maddening gender politics, but I love it anyway.

All About Eve -- ditto

Ball of Fire -- not quite as maddening

Edited April 22, 2015 by ChelseaNH

[King of Birds]

Love the B&W in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

 

And, beyond the whole 'greatest movie ever' stuff- Citizen Kane is just stunning B&W photography.  M, The Hustler, and Gordon Willis' work for Manhattan ... lots of great work to admire.

[Athena]

So many. Some that have not been mentioned: Astaire & Rogers movies, Metropolis, The Third Man, Brief Encounter, Roman Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, The General, City Lights, To Kill a Mockingbird, and on and on...

[ruby24]

The Lady Eve. One of the greatest movies ever made.

[LilWharveyGal]

I'd throw Dinner at Eight, Laura, and The Best Years of Our Lives into the mix.  And if we're talking silents I really have a soft spot for Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd short films.

[peacheslatour]

The naughty pre-code movies starring Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy.

The great horror movies, Nosferatu, Frankenstein and Bride and Freaks.

And everything with Melvin Douglas, Clark Gable and Cary Grant.

And the later horror movies like Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, obviously Psycho and The Haunting.

Edited April 22, 2015 by peacheslatour

[SallyAlbright]

I'm watching Top Hat as I browse this thread, and it just never gets old. The aforementioned Citizen Kane is still groundbreaking in terms of camera work, and holds up surprisingly well today. All About Eve is one of my all-time favorites too, just a fantastic film. 

[harrie]

All of the above plus Love Me Tonight with Maurice Chevalier, plus a bunch I haven't thought of yet.

[peacheslatour]

Did y'all know that Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer was a remake?  I saw an earlier version on TCM. 

[Rick Kitchen]

The original The Man Who Knew Too Much is hard to watch for people with modern sensibilities.  There is no sound track.  All of the action takes place with no backing music, and it really made me nervous.

[Amello]

My favourite era of film. M, I have watched constantly. Sticking with the great foreign films of this period: Pandora's Box, Boudo Saved from Drowning, Le Million, Under the Roofs of Paris, etc.

 

Footlight Parade is probably my favourite of those big musical production films. Thank you, James Cagney.

 

Anything with Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Harlow.

[raezen]

I love Hitchcock' Shadow of a Doubt with Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. I love the house, the cute California small town Young Charlie's family lives in and I love the shifty clips of the East Coast life of Uncle Charlie. I think Joseph Cotton was perfect as Uncle Charlie and I even love the saccharine opening performance by Teresa Wright.  

[peacheslatour]

Another one is Cape Fear with Robert Mitchum.  Scary stuff.

 

Oh how could I forget Bogy?  The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Key Largo....

[harrie]

I love all the old musicals --  the Busby Berkeleys, Ernst Lubitsch, Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, the Gold Diggers movies (I think 1933 is my favorite)  -- the cheesier, the better.  And if Joan Blondell is in a flick, it becomes a must-see.

 

Also love Lubitsch's non-musical The Shop Around the Corner; it's been remade a billion times (You've Got Mail, In the Good Old Summertime, maybe more) and is based on a play so it's a remake in  a way, but I love 1) the Jimmy Stewart/Margaret Sullavan chemistry; 2) Rudy's payoff conversation with Mrs. Matuschek towards the end; and 3) the wonderful Frank Morgan as Mr. Matuschek.   Morgan is not just The Wizard (of Oz); he's an understated, excellent supporting player who often goes unnoticed.  (At least in my opinion.)

[peacheslatour]

I love when Jimmy Stewart is describing the guy Margaret Sullivan thinks she corresponding with- fat, bald, unemployed.  So funny.

[Bastet]

Decades worth of films from just about every genre?  I'd never be able to compose anything resembling a comprehensive list of favorite black & white films, so I won't even try.  Those of you who read the TCM thread know I love, love, love Myrna Loy and Katharine Hepburn.  So it's no surprise that when asked to name my all-time favorite film, it results in an unbreakable tie between The Thin Man and Bringing Up Baby.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Bastet

[magicdog]

 

The Best Years of Our Lives

 

Love this film!  It's so watchable and so much of what occurs in the film is still affecting vets to this day.

 

I also enjoy silent - I was impressed by the original version of "Ben Hur" .  It's a spectacle in its own right.  Metropolis was also fascinating!  I saw a version that was reedited from film pieces located from prints all over the world.  It had a few black gaps with title cards describing what the action we were supposed to have been seeing but was no longer extent on film.  I'm guessing it was from an original shooting script.

Edited April 23, 2015 by magicdog

[peacheslatour]

Speaking of silent films, John Barrymore was sooo sexy in his day.

[Mick Lady]

All About Eve is my all time favorite movie! Bringing Up Baby still makes me laugh out loud, even though I almost know it by heart!

 

God there are so many great old films. Mildred Pierce is another really good one.

 

I can't imagine any of these films being shot in color!

[raezen]

Carnival of Souls. This is the creepiest movie to watch at Halloween and has one unnerving sound track.

[SallyAlbright]

I love Hitchcock' Shadow of a Doubt with Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. I love the house, the cute California small town Young Charlie's family lives in and I love the shifty clips of the East Coast life of Uncle Charlie. I think Joseph Cotton was perfect as Uncle Charlie and I even love the saccharine opening performance by Teresa Wright.  

 

One of the most underrated Hitchcock flicks, it's just so good and creepy. I don't know what it is, but I can watch that movie all the time and I still get into the small-town feel of it every time. 

 

My favourite era of film. M, I have watched constantly. Sticking with the great foreign films of this period: Pandora's Box, Boudo Saved from Drowning, Le Million, Under the Roofs of Paris, etc.

M is a great one. I just love that film! Wish I had more intelligent commentary to add, but everything about it is just so well done. Peter Lorre was incredible. 

Edited April 26, 2015 by SallyAlbright

[Sharpie66]

Another fan of M here! That is such an incredible movie, the cinematography, the seediness of everyone and everywhere, but most of all, Peter Lorre. Such an stunning performance--no wonder it was really impossible for him to shake it off (although his acting in The Maltese Falcon is a really close second for me).

 

My favorite silent film is The Passion of Joan of Arc. That's another film with unique directing choices (I can't think of another picture that has gone with similar camera angles throughout the film) and an amazing performance by Falconetti.

[JustaPerson]

A silent I always go back to is Sunset: A Song of Two Humans. The whole movie is on youtube (for free). The plot is a bit problematic on paper but it actually really works when it's on screen. A man is convinced by his mistress to murder his wife and make it seem like an innocent boat accident. He can't go through with it and she runs away into the city with him following (not to kill her.) If you want to watch it:

 

 

ETA: It's Sunrise! Somehow I remembered it correctly when I googled it, but not when I wrote it down.

Edited April 28, 2015 by JustaPerson

[harrie]

A silent I always go back to is Sunset: A Song of Two Humans. The whole movie is on youtube (for free). The plot is a bit problematic on paper but it actually really works when it's on screen. A man is convinced by his mistress to murder his wife and make it seem like an innocent boat accident. He can't go through with it and she runs away into the city with him following (not to kill her.) If you want to watch it:   

 

Oh, that's a serious classic -- but it's Sunrise.  

 

I do the same thing.  I once asked for the CD Here Comes Rhymin' Simon for my birthday.   The CD I received was titled There Goes Rhymin' Simon.   Duh.

[Amello]

Bringing up Sunrise, I must state how much I love the pairing of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor. A very underrated pair and Charles Farrell was a total babe.

[P2C2E]

Holiday with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. It's tradition in our house to watch this every year around New Year's. If you haven't seen it yet, please remedy that immediately!

[Bastet]

Holiday is a New Year’s Eve tradition here, too.  Along with After The Thin Man.  (Which, of course, necessitates watching The Thin Man first … not like I ever need an excuse.) 

 

Katharine Hepburn is my favorite of Cary Grant’s many on-screen partners, and while Bringing Up Baby is my favorite of their collaborations and I love The Philadelphia Story in spite of the major stumbling block of finding her father full of shit, Holiday is the unsung hero for me.

Edited May 2, 2015 by Bastet

[GreekGeek]

Film Noir can get routine, but its standouts are among my favorites:

Double Indemnity--classic "wife and lover murder husband" thriller. The dialogue and narration sound stilted by modern standards, but I liked them. (Its 80's counterpart, Body Heat, sounded silly by comparison.)

Detective Story--cop drama where the cop has to fight not only criminals but his own craziness, triggered by the fact that his wife *gasp* had an abortion before she married him.

White Heat --James Cagney as psycho gangster with mommy issues. Makes Tony Soprano look tame.

Sunset Boulevard--I'm guessing lots of people are familiar with this one already, but it's brilliant.

In a Lonely Place--I consider this a lesser-known Bogart movie, but it's really interesting in that his character has such a nasty temper that his lover never knows if he's wrongfully accused of murder or not.

Ace in the Hole--very prescient about media circuses created around tragic events.

 

Lots of interesting boxing dramas--Golden Boy, Champion, The Harder they Fall, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Set-Up. 

 

Paths of Glory--an early Stanley Kubrick set in World War 1. Kirk Douglas defends three soldiers accused of mutiny. 

He doesn't save them.

 

For me, comedy doesn't hold up as well, but I do like Preston Sturges' work: Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan's Travels (source of the title O Brother, Where Art Thou?), Miracle of Morgan's Creek (which featured a pretty daring plot--young woman gets pregnant and can't recall the daddy.)

[ratgirlagogo]

 

Christmas in July

If you can't sleep at night, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk!    God I love this one  and Palm Beach Story even though of course Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels are the real masterpieces.

 

Carnival of Souls.

So great, so influential, and so amazing that the director's other moviemaking  experience consisted entirely of educational films for  Centron.