What are your favourite old movies?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rozellelily
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
My third post on this thread:
  1. Kwaidan. An absolutely gorgeous collection of four Japanese folk tales, all of which are concerned with ghosts or spirits. This film has just about the most beautiful use of color I’ve ever seen on screen. The pace is quite slow, but worth your patience.
  2. Sabotage. An often overlooked Hitchcock offering. Sylvia Sidney is married to movie theater proprietor Oscar Homolka, who, unbeknownst to her, is in reality a member of a gang of anarchist-terrorists who are bent on bringing London to its knees. An extended sequence of a child unknowingly carrying a bomb through the London streets will make you scream from the suspense.
  3. Madame X. Lana Turner is blackmailed into abandoning her young son by her cruel mother-in-law. Many years later, on trial for murder, the unhappy mother is unknowingly defended by her own child, now an attorney. Bring several hankies; you’ll need them.
  4. The Innocents. Based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Deborah Kerr is a naïve governess hired to look after two children at a remote English estate. She slowly comes to realise that the children are in danger of possession by the ghosts of their former caretakers. With the 1963 version of The Haunting, these are the two scariest films ever made, not least because it is unclear whether the ghosts really exist or are merely figments of the innocent governess’ imagination.
  5. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Max Reinhardt’s glistening, magical Hollywood Bowl production, beautifully transferred to film. With Mickey Rooney as Puck, Jimmy Cagney as Bottom and Victor Jory as a menacing, antlered Oberon. Olivia de Havilland’s first film.
  6. Love and Death. IMO, Woody Allen’s masterpiece. A spoof of heavy, serious Russian literature which manages to be uproariously funny and rather sad simultaneously. The philosophical conversations between Allen and Diane Keaton have to be seen to be believed.
  7. The Red Balloon. A French short, this was required viewing when I was a kid. Pascal Lamorisse is a young boy in Paris who is befriended by a sentient red balloon, which follows him everywhere. Haunting and unforgettable.
 
Last edited:
i like Sabotage also. very good film. i always get Sabotage confused with Saboteur and which movie is which.
i would like to see The Innocents. The Haunting withJulie Harris scared the life out of me when i was a teenager!
 
Last edited:
Madame X, starring Lana Turner, is the ultimate tearjerker, rivaled only by Stella Dallas, with Barbara Stanwyck. Men too will cry watching this one.

In regard to Woody Allen’s masterpiece, it’s hard for me to pick just one. Annie Hall, perhaps? Or Crimes and Misdemeanors? Love and Death is certainly up there.
 
7_Sorrows said:
The Long Long Trailer - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Click to expand...
My Grandma Betty, who passed away back in 1992, loved this movie.

I have never seen it. Even though she recorded it for me off cable way back in the day. (and of course, I no longer have the tape - ditched all my VHS)
 
7_Sorrows said:
i would like to see The Innocents. The Haunting withJulie Harris scared the life out of me when i was a teenager!
Click to expand...
The Innocents is not quite as bravura in its scares as The Haunting, both of which I saw at about the age of eight or so. What I like about both films, amongst other things, is the extremely high quality of the acting. Julie Harris’ portrait of a woman slowly going mad in The Haunting is an Oscar-worthy performance, never surpassed and certainly not equaled until Geraldine Page’s knockout portrayal in Woody Allen’s film Interiors.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
Madame X, starring Lana Turner, is the ultimate tearjerker, rivaled only by Stella Dallas, with Barbara Stanwyck. Men too will cry watching this one.

In regard to Woody Allen’s masterpiece, it’s hard for me to pick just one. Annie Hall, perhaps? Or Crimes and Misdemeanors? Love and Death is certainly up there.
Click to expand...
Funny you should mention Stella Dallas. I thought of that one after I posted the above. I’ll have to save it for my next list.

I know what you mean about Allen’s masterpiece being hard to decide on. In many ways, I think his purest and funniest film is one of his earliest, Take the Money and Run. The absurdity and belly laughs in that one are irresistible.
 
MrZoom said:
40.png
7_Sorrows:
The Long Long Trailer - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Click to expand...
My Grandma Betty, who passed away back in 1992, loved this movie.

I have never seen it. Even though she recorded it for me off cable way back in the day. (and of course, I no longer have the tape - ditched all my VHS)
Click to expand...
i hope you get a chance to see it someday.
a funny, sweet and innocent movie. classic Lucy!
 
meltzerboy2 said:
Madame X, starring Lana Turner, is the ultimate tearjerker, rivaled only by Stella Dallas, with Barbara Stanwyck. Men too will cry watching this one.

In regard to Woody Allen’s masterpiece, it’s hard for me to pick just one. Annie Hall, perhaps? Or Crimes and Misdemeanors? Love and Death is certainly up there.
Click to expand...
more than Imitation of Life. that one was really a tear jerker for me and Gone With the Wind also!
 
The Best Years of Our Lives was on the other day. One of my all time favorites. Bette Davis considered it the best film ever made.
 
Rozellelily said:
Either “normal” movies or Christian themed.Any language.
By old,I mean anything 1900-1999
Click to expand...
I’m going to try to restrict myself to movies made before I was born, which eliminates about 30% of your date range. To me, old movies are from the 1950s or earlier, or maybe 1960s, or just possibly 1970s (but that’s a stretch). It’s hard for me to think of a movie that I might have seen in the movie theater when it was brand new as an old movie. 🙂

Here are a few of my favorites:
  • Almost anything by Alfred Hitchcock, especially from the 1940s through 1960s. Some notables: North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Vertigo, Rope, I Confess, The Lady Vanishes, To Catch a Thief, Torn Curtain, Rear Window, The Birds
  • It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
  • It’s a Wonderful Life
  • Planet of the Apes (first movie only – I hated the sequel, and thought it ruined the first one to an extent)
  • Witness for the Prosecution
  • Duck Soup
  • The Forbidden Planet
  • 12 Angry Men
 
Ah, Witness for the Prosecution–a good one despite the implausible, over-the-top ending. But it is, I believe, the way Agatha Christie wrote it. I would add ANY movie with Charles Laughton in it.
 
Last edited:
So many good films mentioned here! I don’t know if The Ghost and Mrs. Muir has made the list but I always love that movie and am excited when I catch it on TV.
 
blackforest said:
Clue (“Open the door, open the door!” “I can’t open the door without a key!” “Never mind the key! Open the door!”)
Click to expand...
I’m eating right now and almost spit out my food when I read this line – one of my all-time favorites that’s often repeated in my home. 🙂
 
kill051 said:
Love and Death. IMO, Woody Allen’s masterpiece. A spoof of heavy, serious Russian literature which manages to be uproariously funny and rather sad simultaneously. The philosophical conversations between Allen and Diane Keaton have to be seen to be believed.
Click to expand...
Can a celebrity’s personal life kill your love for their talent? This happened to me with Woody Allen. I used to be a tremendous connoisseur of his moviesuntil Dylan Farrow spoke out. And learning about Bill Cosby just killed me. 😦 Sorry, this is a bit of a threadjack.

I do love a lot of Woody Allen movies - Bullets Over Broadway and Oepidpus Wrecks, his short film in New York Stories, are both wonderful.
 
The In-Laws (the original)…There taking off without us! That’s standard procedure…serpentine Shel serpentine!
 
Last edited:
meltzerboy2 said:
Ah, Witness for the Prosecution–a good one despite the implausible, over-the-top ending. But it is, I believe, the way Agatha Christie wrote it. I would add ANY movie with Charles Laughton in it.
Click to expand...
The movie follows Agatha Christie’s ending pretty closely (i.e., the major twist at the end, regarding the motivation behind a certain witness’s testimony), but then the movie adds an additional twist after Agatha Christie’s ending. I like both the short story and the movie, though this is a rare case where I think I actually like the movie better than the book.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top