What are your favourite old movies?

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Secondhand Lions
Metropolis

And many others already mentioned here…
 
Fourth list from me:
  1. Stella Dallas. Incredibly tear-jerking tale of mother Barbara Stanwyck’s self-sacrifice to ensure daughter Anne Shirley’s happiness. A seven-hanky film if ever there was one. Thanks to meltzerboy2 for reminding me of this one.
  2. Harvey. Worth it just to hear Josephine Hull yelling about white slavery. ‘He was a white slaver! I know he was! He was wearing a white suit; that’s how they advertise!’
  3. Throne of Blood (Japanese title: Cobweb Castle). Kurosawa’s samurai re-imagining of Macbeth. Mifune’s ‘death-by-a-thousand-arrows’ is unforgettable.
  4. The Women. Clare Boothe Luce’s play about New York society women with an all-female cast. Heroine Norma Shearer’s husband is stolen by shopgirl Joan Crawford, while catty Rosalind Russell cheers on the chaos. Overly long, but lots of fun.
  5. Sleeping Beauty. My favorite Disney film, with my favorite villain Maleficent, and a magnificent score by Tchaikovsky.
  6. An Affair to Remember. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet and fall in love on a cruise, then destiny intervenes. Great mix of sophisticated comedy and tear-jerking pathos.
  7. It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart gets to see what the world would have been like had he not been born. Along with Fanny and Alexander, my two favorite Christmas films.
  8. Johnny Guitar. The strangest, most eccentric Western ever filmed, with Joan Crawford as a saloonkeeper and Mercedes McCambridge as her nemesis.
  9. Now, Voyager. Bette Davis is an ugly duckling who blossoms under psychiatrist Claude Rains’ tutelage. Paul Henreid is the man in her life, and Gladys Cooper is her cold, sadistic mother.
  10. The Birds. One of Hitchcock’s two outright horror films(Psycho is the other). Birds rise up and menace a small Northern California town. Arthur Machen’s novella The Terror treated a similar theme with even more frightening results.
 
blackforest said:
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 movies[until Dylan Farrow spoke out.]
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Don’t forget that Mr Allen has never been convicted of anything in court. As a matter of fact, after several investigations of Dylan’s and Mia’s allegations, all charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. There is also considerable disagreement amongst the couple’s other children concerning the truth or otherwise of the allegations. The whole thing is a big mess, and it is just possible that Mr Allen is completely innocent, and has been convicted in the ‘court of public opinion’ entirely without justification, based on gossip, hearsay and innuendo.
 
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Love your lists! You definitely have a great appreciation of the classics, and not only the American ones.
 
Thanks meltzerboy2! As a boy, I was exposed to a wide variety of film from all eras and cultures by my father. Later, an older friend of mine, unfortunately now deceased, continued my cinematic education. I’m still learning today, at the ripe old age of fifty-five! 😊
 
Anthony Mann westerns…

Bend of the River
The Far Country
The Furies
The Naked Spur
Winchester '73
 
Budd Boetticher westerns…

Buchanan Rides Alone
Comanche Station
The Tall T
Ride Lonesome
 
blackforest said:
I used to love Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. Watching in my adulthood makes me realize that the kid was a sociopath.
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I was already in my adulthood when that was first released. I enjoyed it then and I still enjoy it now!
 
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I’ll divide these into several classes (and no films that were completely condemned by the Church will be included)
This post is part I. Will be back with follow-up parts.

For all ages: The Sound of Music, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, David Copperfield (1935), The Thin Man, Random Harvest, A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Goodbye Mr. Chips (both 1939 and 1969), Libeled Lady, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Bringing Up Baby, A Day in the Country, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, 42nd Street, Swing Time, Modern Times, the Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Top Hat, Wuthering Heights (1939), The General (1926), Peg O’ My Heart

Teens and up: Sunset Boulevard, The Passion of Joan of Arc, A Star is Born (1937), Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, The Best years of Our Lives, Dodsworth, Charade, The Nun’s Story, Love Me Tonight, Gone with the Wind, Duck Soup, Stage Door

Adults only (and some warning, some contain graphic scenes or themes i do not approve of, but on the whole, the films are interesting and excellent): Nashville, Harry and Tonto, Chinatown, The Godfather, Running on Empty, One from the heart, Melvin and Howard, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Paris, Texas, Married to the Mob, Children of a Lesser God, Tootsie, Silkwood, Amadeus, The Fisher King, The Joy Luck Club, LA Confidential, Titanic, Fargo, Shakespere in Love, Postcards from the Edge, Out of Africa, Kramer Vs. Kramer, The Shawshank Redemption, The Silence of the Lambs, Rushmore, The Green Mile, Dead Man Walking, White Palace, Grand Canyon, Unforgiven
 
My fifth list:
  1. Pride and Prejudice(1940). Greer Garson nabs Laurence Olivier, but he didn’t really want to escape, anyway. Every single actor in this is excellent: Mary Boland, Frieda Inescort, Maureen O’ Sullivan, Edmund Gwenn, &c.
  2. Tokyo Story. Yasujiro Ozu’s portrait of an elderly couple neglected by their adult children in postwar Japan. Will break your heart. A sort of Asian remake of Make Way for Tomorrow.
  3. Stage Fright. One of Hitchcock’s lesser known works, starring Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman. One of the earliest uses of the ‘unreliable narrator’ device in a film.
  4. The Seventh Seal. Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece. A knight(Max von Sydow) and his squire(Gunnar Bjornstrand), returning from the Crusades, encounter religious penitents, atheists, witches, strolling players and Death himself before arriving home to a most surprising discovery.
  5. Juliet of the Spirits(Federico Fellini). An upper-class housewife(Giulietta Masina) struggles to keep her sanity amidst visions, eccentric visitors, prophetic mystics and intimations of her husband’s infidelities. Not for everyone, and overly long, but has its rewards for those willing to put in the time.
  6. All About Eve. Perhaps the greatest screenplay ever to come out of Hollywood. An aging Broadway star(Bette Davis) finds herself the object of scrutiny from an ambitious underling(Anne Baxter). A starry cast, but supporting players George Sanders and Thelma Ritter steal every scene they are in. Marilyn Monroe’s first film.
  7. The House Without a Christmas Tree. A young girl in the 1930’s lives with her grandmother(Mildred Natwick) and her widowed father(Jason Robards, Jr), who for reasons of his own refuses to allow a Christmas tree in the house. Not a movie, but a television presentation of some decades ago, with superlative acting and a moving, tear-jerking climax.
  8. King of Hearts(Le roi du Coeur). A soldier in World War I encounters an abandoned French village which has been repopulated by the inmates of the local insane asylum. Charming, naïve and thoroughly wonderful fable about the need for people to simply give up their egos and love one another; a lesson we could learn again with profit in these troubled times.
  9. Marlene. Actor Maximilian Schell visits the elderly Marlene Dietrich in her Paris apartment and asks her permission to make a documentary film about her. She agrees, with the proviso that she not be filmed, only audio-recorded. The result is a mesmerising account of the final days of the iconic actress, accompanied by stills and clips from her extensive filmography.
 
I’m glad you like it. I like a lot of movies that my father likes as well. And by the way, every time you watch that film, there’s always another clue to pick up!
 
We picked up a DVD of The Searchers a couple of years ago and found it very cringe worthy, for its depiction of indigenous people as savages. It was common in old movies and even in school textbooks sad to say. 😔
 
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The Long Long Trailer - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Parent Trap - Hayley Mills
Pollyanna - Hayley Mills
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Loved those too.

Lucille Ball made me laugh till it hurt. My dad used to call my mom Lucille Ball because she coloured her hair towards the red side (though in truth her chosen shade was more a warm mahogany).

I was a fan of all the Hayley Mills movies.
 
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Anyone here ever see the original Out of Towners with Jack Lemmon? Buries the 1999 remake even though I love Steve Martin.

“1174 Willow Tree Lane!”

“My wife can verify that!”

🤣🤣🤣🤣
 
The Man Who Would Be King, based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling, just borrowed the book from the library to read it for the first time!
 
Paint Your Wagon, musical comedy, Lee Marvin sings “I was born under a wandering star.”
 
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