Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Did anyone hear that an English version of the film was found and restored recently? Of course, the copy I have is in German, but I can understand that, so it won't be much of a problem.

It's hard to imagine there was a time when nobody had a problem with "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." Maurice Chevalier was always a damn fine singer, though; "Ev'ry little breeze seems to whisper Louise" and all that...

Has there ever been a more quotable film than Duck Soup? Honestly, almost every comeback in that film is flat out funny—I never laughed out loud so much before. It's my favourite out of the Marx bros films (granted, I've only seen four).

We've retreaded the topic of overrated classics, and I'd like to put in my two cents: I found The Public Enemy so overrated. I completely understand the importance, and Cagney is great, but...I just didn't like it. Same goes with Little Caesar; I couldn't get past 10 minutes. I guess I just really, really like Scarface; it's the one and only gangster film for me.

Edit: Paul Muni is the man; he just has this ferociousness throughout the entire film.

edited 27th Nov '15 6:51:55 PM by LongTallShorty64

Maurice Chevalier was wonderful. I've enjoyed him in more than one musical. But goddamn, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" is so very very creepy. It's interesting, the things that could pass muster back in the day that would never ever fly now.

As for The Blue Angel, in those days quite a few movies were shot in multiple languages. Dracula1931 was famously filmed twice at the same time—the Bela Lugosi version in the daytime, then a Spanish-language version on the same sets after Lugosi and company went home. I've never seen the Spanish-language Dracula but supposedly it's better than the Lugosi version.

Paul Muni was probably the best actor of the 1930s. Scarface. The Life of Émile Zola. And if you want to see a film that packs every bit as much of a punch now as it did 80 years ago, go watch I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Some movies from the studio era, one can write off as dated. Some other movies, one can appreciate from a historical perspective. But I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, that movie is every bit as powerful now as when it ran in theaters.

BTW, many classic movies are available on the internet for free or for a pretty reasonable fee. I just looked up I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang on Amazon video—available streaming for $3.

edited 27th Nov '15 9:10:18 PM by jamespolk

Yeah, I recently watched the first animated movie of the Fleischer studios...it is part of the public domain now.

It's also not particularly good. But an interesting watch for an animation fan.

I've seen I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang which probably has one of the most gut-punching endings ever. Such a well made film. I think it was the first to expose the hardships and the abuse of prisoners as a negative thing.

I've seen a bunch of Betty Boop cartoons and Popeye ones that are in the public domain. I was so surprised about how freaky they were. Like the Minnie the Moocher cartoon starring Betty and Bimbo (with Cab Calloway!) is beyond what a kid could take these days, yet this was for mass entertainment in the 30s. There's another I don't remember what it's called but it has Bimbo being trapped in a cementry and being hunted by ghosts because he stole a chicken. So very scary for a cartoon.

Freaky I can handle....that movie is just...well, it is hard to describe. It has a great basic idea (telling the Story of Gulliver's Travel from the perspective of the inhabitants of Lilliput) but the execution is so bad. I don't know what is worse, the way rotoscoping was utilized for Gulliver, the generic love story they added (it might be the worst I have ever seen on screen) or the way they stretch out the thin plot. Believe it or not, informing the king that a giant is laying on the beach takes up one third of the movie.

I don't know if we should discuss animation in here, given that there's a whole board for that.

Yeah, it's best to see if there are threads on classic animation movies in the Western Animation subforum or something.

Alright, no more animation talk here.

But as mentioned upthread, Paul Muni was a fantastic actor of the 30s. Wonder why his fame started to fade. I did read in a book called Five Came Back that he was very demanding and rather rude to directors. Maybe that could've been a factor to his dip popularity in the 40s.

You guys have any contenders for the best actor of the 40s? Of couse, it's subjective, but give your opinions. I pick James Stewart which seems like a cliché, but damn, he's just so great. So naturalistic for a time when the acting style wasn't quite asking for that yet.

I remember reading about Paul Muni a long time ago...the concern at the studio was that he was almost too good of an actor, in other words, too much of an actor and not enough of a movie star. He would disappear in his parts completely. Watch him as Emile Zola and the chain gang guy and Scarface, and they are like different people.

Think about the circumstances in which I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was made. That title uses the present tense for a reason. Robert Burns was still a fugitive from Georgia justice, but Warner Bros. still made a movie about him. They even brought him out to California to talk to Paul Muni. It's one thing for an independent filmmaker to make a documentary like Citizenfour, but just try to imagine, say, Sony making a scripted drama advocating for Edward Snowden in which they actually approached Snowden to act as a consultant. Wouldn't happen in a million years in 2015.

And man, what an ending. "I steal!"

That's really interesting stuff.

I guess that sort of makes sense; he wasn't really a traditional movie star, because his acting ability was what really mattered.

It's so strange sometimes to hear about old films being so modern, sometimes more modern than now. Whenever I hear non classic movie fans talk about old movies, they always think they're old fashioned, out-dated, and hell, some are. But not the majority. I could argue that a lot of those films really didn't pander to their audiences like some films do now when it comes to social-issue films or racy stuff(not to bash modern films: some great stuff being made). I know that we're cherry-picking the films we like and that have a good reputation, but there seems to be a lot more good than bad. Maybe its because they made so many movies back then. The chances that they'd make a good film were higher?

Also, I think the studio system had a lot to do with this. They want to make a good film? Well, they have the best screenwriting team write it, best director, best actors on the lot, character actors, the best cinematographers, etc etc. They had everything at their fingertips.

Ah, sorry, a movie is a movie is a movie for me, no matter how it is made. (Though Animation naturally has special challenges...but then, most movies nowadays are half-animated, with all the CGI which is used).

But there actually are a fair number of movies in the public domain. Not as much as there should, because in the early days, movies didn't exactly get stored routinely. Add the war, and the number of lost movies is just piling up. It is really impressive how much effort nowadays goes into finding and restoring those movies. Can you imagine not being able to watch "M"?

Which might explain why there are so many old movies which are still relevant today. In order to survive so long they had to touch the heart of people who bothered to protect them. After the 1950s more and more movies which better remain forgotten pile up.

edited 28th Nov '15 11:51:56 AM by Swanpride

Oh, we're definitely cherry-picking. The studio system was the studio system, which meant that sometimes they made Casablanca, and sometimes they made crap. I just watched the film version of Strange Interlude with a woefully miscast Clark Gable. Awful.

I do like how actors and actresses were paired up more often in the studio days when studios found that they worked well together. William Powell and Myrna Loy made 14 movies together. Fourteen!

I do like the studio's way of setting up actors together. Not much of that now. Another good example would be Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.

edited 28th Nov '15 12:36:19 PM by LongTallShorty64

The downside was, though, that you either worked within the system or not at all. If you got blacklisted, you were pretty much screwed. Granted, bad word of mouth might accomplish this too nowadays, but I think it was a good thing that the system got broken to a certain degree.

Yeah, it went down for a reason. As mentioned, the studio had many positives, but also a lot of negatives.

@86: I'm pretty sure the reason good movies from that time seem to outnumber bad ones is that enough time has passed for the bad ones to have fallen into obscurity.

Likewise, some believe that people used to be better at building stuff to last than they are now; in reality, it's just that the only buildings that remain from long ago are the ones that managed to remain standing for a long time – there's a sampling error (of sorts).

That seems logical. It's always easy to look at the past through rose tinted glasses.

EDIT: But one nice thing about the past, is that we can cherry-pick from it. I like having that ability of being able to sift through the good and bad, make discoveries of lost classics, and figure why certain films are revered. A whole movement, a whole body of work, an actor's lifetime of art, waiting for me to discover it, and I don't have to wait for the movie to come out.

edited 28th Nov '15 6:02:24 PM by LongTallShorty64

Right now I'm watching another classic era film that isn't very good—the 1936 Romeo and Juliet, which features Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer as the title couple, despite the fact that their combined age was 77.

I agree that the studio era had its problems, and I'd probably also agree that the greatest flower of creativity in American cinema was the New Hollywood era that followed it—hm, maybe we need a New Hollywood thread dedicated to 1967-1980. But things can be better and they can be worse, and I'd take the studio era over the endless sequels, prequels, reboots, comic book movies, and toy movies. The 1970s were probably better than the "classic" era as far as the good/bad movie ratio goes, but the last decade hasn't been very good.

But on other topics—speaking of "Romeo and Juliet", how did Leslie Howard have such a prolific career? The appeal of that guy escapes me. The biggest problem with Gone with the Wind is how asinine it is that any woman would be that obsessed with freaking Leslie Howard.

The New Hollywood may have given us some truly great movies, but by the end of it, you had directors who were given total creative control and made long, pretentious crap that nobody wanted to see - remember Heavens Gate, anyone?

This age of endless comic book movies and sequels and remakes is going to end, someday; what replaces it will probably be better. I can't imagine it getting worse...

edited 28th Nov '15 6:19:31 PM by Aldo930

The remake and the sequel are as old as the Greek era of theater. And in film sequels and remakes been around since 1916. They'll only leave when studios find some other thing that makes more money faster. And what makes more money than the same thing that already gave tons of money?

edited 28th Nov '15 6:24:03 PM by Tuckerscreator

Leslie Howard was famously miscast for the role of Ashley, but he's not so bad. He's pretty good at being screwed over by Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage.

Sequels of boringly retread comic books is going to die a horrible death—here's hoping—but there are some great films being made— except comedies. I have a serious vendetta against modern comedies (a few exceptions, of course).

I tend to agree. When exactly did society decide that low-brow humour is the way to go? I never got what is supposedly funny about our various body functions. I always loved humour which uses a totally normal situation and then turns it into something absurd.

That's why I like Arsenic and Old Lace so much...not that there is anything normal about having a crazy serial killer family, but setting it off with two really nice ladies who only want to help people works so well.

I think also that censorship was a major key in creativity in comedies. They couldn't directly say racy stuff, but they compensated with verbal sparring which created some of the best dialogue ever (ie His Girl Friday).

In the pre-Code era, though, things were far different.

I recall reading about one film that was so racy it was said to have brought on the Hays Code singlehandedly. One of the plot points includes a guy seducing his boss's teenage daughter.

The film is now lost, but the screenplay apparently still survives.