old movies

[kenberg]

I'm glad you enjoyed Picnic. The themes perhaps were somewhat "of the 50s" but well done, I think. I knew more than one girl who was very attractive and very fed up with being defined by her good looks. I remember one saying to me "Not that I would wish it away but ." . She went on to the University of Chicago and I lost touch with her. I expect my wife would object to me getting in touch with her. And of course there is the corresponding problem of the time for the William Holden character, the high school big shot having to be an adult. And I am always a sucker for roles like the one for the younger sister.

 

Tree is definitively of a type. It suits me, but it no doubt is a bit sentimental. More than a bit. Again there is this young girl in what I think of as a great role.

 

I saw Summer again the other night. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Orson Welles, yep.

 

Did I suggest Rebel Without a Cause? I don't recall. Everyone should see a James Dean movie sometime, but imo his great fame was somewhat due to his being dead. Actually I think that as Rebel movies go, I prefer The Wild One with Marlon Brando. "What are you rebelling against?" "What have you got?". I think that's from Wild. And the beginning is something like "It all started with the girl". And a very good music score, which was more unusual back then. Also Lee Marvin is in it, before he was well known.

[MrAce]

I just watched "Papillon"

 

I am big time fan of Steve McQueen

[mike777]

If you enjoyed Babette's Feast you may enjoy My Dinner with Andre.(1981)

 

★★★★ | Roger Ebert

 

June 13, 1999 | ☄ 2

 

Someone asked me the other day if I could name a movie that was entirely devoid of clichés. I thought for a moment, and then answered, “My Dinner With Andre.” Now I have seen the movie again; a restored print is going into release around the country, and I am impressed once more by how wonderfully odd this movie is, how there is nothing else like it. It should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-my-dinner-with-andre-1981

[mike777]

The Longest Day.(1962)

 

 

 

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AnMYNf.Jro8WWbl34HANwtWbvZx4?fr=yfp-t-901-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&p=youtube%20movie%20longest%20day

 

Wow what a great war movie.

 

This was a big budget movie with every star in the world in it.

 

 

This is a movie where you can see where they spent all their money.

 

 

Even after 50 years the movie holds up.

 

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/longest_day/

[kenberg]

This may not qualify as old, but I put it here because it certainly isn't new. Becky and I saw Proof the other night. I had never seen either the play or the movie and actually I thought it sounded sort of dippy when I heard the general idea. But both Becky and I found it to be extraordinary. The daughter, the main character, is wonderfully written and Gwyneth Paltrow was perfect. The other performances are also very fine. I gather there was somewhat less enthusiasm from others, it was given a three star rating rather than four, but I do not understand this. We both regarded it as excellent. I saw the four star Ride the High Country last nigh. Boring. But you could not pry me away from Proof.

 

My opinion of course.

[y66]

I watched The Deer Hunter last night. Those guys look so young now. I don't think I'll watch it again. It would just kill me. But wow, what an incredible movie.

[Winstonm]

I watched The Deer Hunter last night. Those guys look so young now. I don't think I'll watch it again. It would just kill me. But wow, what an incredible movie.

 

Too intense to watch again, I agree.

[y66]

I enjoyed watching Benicio del Toro in Traffic (2000). A lot of good performances in that film and an interesting approach to using color to help viewers keep track of 3 different, overlapping story lines.

[Chas_P]

Streamed The Apartment from Amazon last weekend. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray. Filmed in 1960. It was really fun seeing a big office on the 17th floor in a NYC office building with Friden calculators, Jack Lemmon's apartment with a gas stove that had to be lit with a match, a TV set the size of a small refrigerator, the trysts that took place there, etc. Killed a coupla hours in what would have otherwise been a boring day. Sweetlips and I held hands and ate popcorn.

[y66]

Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott talked me into watching Groundhog Day again. I'd forgotten which movie I fell for Andie MacDowell in.

[FelicityR]

I have to admit a few afternoons ago I watched once again the wonderfully dark and humorous Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) where the excellent Sir Alec Guinness plays no fewer than eight different roles (members of the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family.)

 

The film rates 8 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database, and 100% on the Rotten Tomatoes movie database, with an audience rating of 94%.

 

It is wonderfully stylish British black and white movie about class, manners, revenge, murder and societal adultery. Darky funny in places, utterly charming in others, I doubt if any actor will better Sir Alec's varied character acting here. Are there any other movies where one actor has played eight separate roles, including one female, with such aplomb? I doubt it. Just enjoy :)

[kenberg]

I have to admit a few afternoons ago I watched once again the wonderfully dark and humorous Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) where the excellent Sir Alec Guinness plays no fewer than eight different roles (members of the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family.)

 

The film rates 8 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database, and 100% on the Rotten Tomatoes movie database, with an audience rating of 94%.

 

It is wonderfully stylish British black and white movie about class, manners, revenge, murder and societal adultery. Darky funny in places, utterly charming in others, I doubt if any actor will better Sir Alec's varied character acting here. Are there any other movies where one actor has played eight separate roles, including one female, with such aplomb? I doubt it. Just enjoy :)

 

I believe I saw it as a youngster. I definitely saw Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit. I was born in 1939 so this would put me in early, ore maybe pre, adolescence I get a kick out of thinking back to films of that era.

 

I went to the Wikipedia for a summary and yep, I remember it. It sounded a bid bawdy for the times and then I got to the bottom of the Wik article and found it had been edited for American audiences. Don't want to be corrupting eleven year old Kenny.

A quick story about how cautious media were back then. When I was 14 there was a local disk jockey I listened to. You could send in a telegram and he would play the requested song. Two friends, Janet and Rick, were dating, something went wrong, and Janet sent in a telegram to play I Hate Men, dedicating it to Rick. The DJ said he couldn't do that, the song was banned. I had recently seen the movie Kiss Me Kate and could not recall any reason for banning any of the songs. But then I heard the Broadway recording and I understood. Movie version "Of course I 'm awfully glad that mother deigned to marry father". Broadway version: "Of course I'm awfully glad that mother had to marry father".

We were very protected back then.

Anyway, I'll see if I can find a copy of Kind Hearts to watch. And maybe seek out the original version, I think I am old enough now to handle it.

[FelicityR]

I believe I saw it as a youngster. I definitely saw Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit. I was born in 1939 so this would put me in early, ore maybe pre, adolescence I get a kick out of thinking back to films of that era.

 

Another Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness (and Peter Sellers) that you should seek out, Ken, is The Ladykillers (1955). It was remade with Tom Hanks in 2004 by the Coen brothers, and whilst the American version is funny in places, it does not match the dark humour of the original (just my opinion.)

[kenberg]

Another Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness (and Peter Sellers) that you should seek out, Ken, is The Ladykillers (1955). It was remade with Tom Hanks in 2004 by the Coen brothers, and whilst the American version is funny in places, it does not match the dark humour of the original (just my opinion.)

 

I agree. And yes, Ihad also seen The Lady Killers when it first came out.

[Elianna]

I have to admit a few afternoons ago I watched once again the wonderfully dark and humorous Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) where the excellent Sir Alec Guinness plays no fewer than eight different roles (members of the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family.)

 

The film rates 8 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database, and 100% on the Rotten Tomatoes movie database, with an audience rating of 94%.

 

It is wonderfully stylish British black and white movie about class, manners, revenge, murder and societal adultery. Darky funny in places, utterly charming in others, I doubt if any actor will better Sir Alec's varied character acting here. Are there any other movies where one actor has played eight separate roles, including one female, with such aplomb? I doubt it. Just enjoy :)

 

I saw a musical version of this on Broadway (from the same source material) called "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder". It was really quite entertaining. Jefferson Mays played all the D'Ysquith family (the musical version of the D'Ascoyne family in the film) and he was really good in it, too. I wish that they had recorded it so it could be rewatched in these times, but here's a segment from the Tonys that year, that showcased the musical (which won the Tony that year for best musical):

[y66]

I have to admit a few afternoons ago I watched once again the wonderfully dark and humorous Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) where the excellent Sir Alec Guinness plays no fewer than eight different roles (members of the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family.)

 

The film rates 8 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database, and 100% on the Rotten Tomatoes movie database, with an audience rating of 94%.

 

It is wonderfully stylish British black and white movie about class, manners, revenge, murder and societal adultery. Darky funny in places, utterly charming in others, I doubt if any actor will better Sir Alec's varied character acting here. Are there any other movies where one actor has played eight separate roles, including one female, with such aplomb? I doubt it. Just enjoy :)

I hadn't seen it until last week after reading your post. Good idea to have Guinness play all those roles. He was hilarious. I suspect Peter Sellers could have pulled it off too after watching Guinness in this movie and learning how it is done.

[FelicityR]

Whatever you personally think about Roman Polanski there is absolutely no doubt that he is a brilliant director. A few days ago we watched Rosemary's Baby and although it is now a bit dated it was in 1968 a seminal horror film, however tonight we watched The Tenant (1976) in which Polanski not only directed but played the leading role, Trelkovsky, a mild-mannered bureaucrat who moves into a dilapidated apartment where the previous resident 'had mental health issues' (I'm not going to spoil the plot) and then starts to go paranoid himself as various things happen.

 

I actually enjoyed The Tenant more because there were echoes of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in the way Polanski builds the tension, whilst slowly unravelling himself in the lead role. The one thing that I didn't know about the film until the opening credits started to roll was the lead cameraman was Sven Nykvist, the leading cameraman for many of Ingmar Bergman films.

 

I noticed, too, that there are other 'nods' to other Alfred Hitchcock films, notably Rear Window and Vertigo.

 

The last in the three film box set is Chinatown, which we will probably watch at the weekend, but The Tenant, which I had not seen before, certainly impressed me. Not for the faint-hearted though.