Unappreciated masterpieces?

[lolly_loisides]

Thank you Lizzie for your movie suggestions, I've seen some of them, but will track down the others.

I'm pleased so many people like Breaker Morant. Here are a few more Australian movies you may not know of
Newsfront (1978) set in the late 40's to the mid 50's, it follows a group of cameramen that filmed the newsreels you'd see in movie theatres.
The Picture Show Man (1977) is about a travelling film exhibitor in the 1920s who tours country New South Wales with his son Larry and pianist Freddie. This film is particularly dear to me as my father in law sourced all the projection equipment used in the film & was a consultant on the movie.
In the wake of the Bounty (1933) Worth seeing as it's Errol Flynn's first film appearance.
Kokoda Front line! (1942) is a movie length newsreel & an outstanding documentary.

 

[DNO]

No American under the age of about 45 has lived in a world where "old movies" were presented as routine entertainment -- without the need to "curate" or "contextualize" them "for modern audiences." Nowadays, whenever "old movies" are shown there has to be some kind of guest expert/teacher on hand to explain why they are the way the are, in hopes the viewers will "excuse their shortcomings" or whatever. The movies are presented as dusty artifacts of a lost world, not as something that's supposed to be, first and foremost, entertaining. And that's the easiest way to turn something that should be enjoyable into a chore. No wonder modern kids aren't interested.

Even TCM falls into this trap. I know Robert Osborne is a noted film expert, and he seems like someone who'd be fun to go to a show with --- but sometimes I wish he'd just shut up and show the damn movie.

Absolutely right. Movies are made to be enjoyed. I found that the students had simply never been exposed to the older films. You have to present the movie to them as a movie, not an artifact, not something representative of a period or style....just a movie to be enjoyed. To do otherwise was to risk making them as interesting as math (with apologies to math lovers everywhere).

 

[rjb1]

"No American under the age of about 45 has lived in a world where "old movies" were presented as routine entertainment -- without the need to "curate" or "contextualize" them "for modern audiences." Nowadays, whenever "old movies" are shown there has to be some kind of guest expert/teacher on hand to explain why they are the way the are, in hopes the viewers will "excuse their shortcomings" or whatever. The movies are presented as dusty artifacts of a lost world, not as something that's supposed to be, first and foremost, entertaining. And that's the easiest way to turn something that should be enjoyable into a chore. No wonder modern kids aren't interested."

I show "old movies" in my Manufacturing Processes class (Mechanical Engineering) to try to get across in an interesting way how some of the relations between labor and management and between humans and machines have evolved in the past century. None of the students - zero - have ever seen a black and white movie and even less a *silent* black and white movie. It would be better if they would find them and like them by themselves, but they haven't and are not likely to.
Showing "Metropolis" or "Modern Times" gets the ideas across better than having them read a chapter on the subject. One of my own favorites is the pre-war Popeye cartoon, "Lost n' Foundry" in which Swee'Pea gets lost in a factory full of deadly devices.
I think (and hope) I may be doing some good since at least they laugh at the appropriate places. (There is some entertainment going on.) When I started doing this I was worried that it all would be so alien that they wouldn't even do that.
It's not the best situation, but maybe a few or one or two will decide to watch some "old movie" on their own.

 

[Stearmen]

No American under the age of about 45 has lived in a world where "old movies" were presented as routine entertainment -- without the need to "curate" or "contextualize" them "for modern audiences." Nowadays, whenever "old movies" are shown there has to be some kind of guest expert/teacher on hand to explain why they are the way the are, in hopes the viewers will "excuse their shortcomings" or whatever. The movies are presented as dusty artifacts of a lost world, not as something that's supposed to be, first and foremost, entertaining. And that's the easiest way to turn something that should be enjoyable into a chore. No wonder modern kids aren't interested.

Even TCM falls into this trap. I know Robert Osborne is a noted film expert, and he seems like someone who'd be fun to go to a show with --- but sometimes I wish he'd just shut up and show the damn movie.

Do you mean routine entertainment, like Dialing for Dollars? All jokes aside, that is where I saw a lot of classics that you do not see today!

 

[Fading Fast]

No American under the age of about 45 has lived in a world where "old movies" were presented as routine entertainment -- without the need to "curate" or "contextualize" them "for modern audiences." Nowadays, whenever "old movies" are shown there has to be some kind of guest expert/teacher on hand to explain why they are the way the are, in hopes the viewers will "excuse their shortcomings" or whatever. The movies are presented as dusty artifacts of a lost world, not as something that's supposed to be, first and foremost, entertaining. And that's the easiest way to turn something that should be enjoyable into a chore. No wonder modern kids aren't interested.

Even TCM falls into this trap. I know Robert Osborne is a noted film expert, and he seems like someone who'd be fun to go to a show with --- but sometimes I wish he'd just shut up and show the damn movie.

This is a great point as I "discovered" old movies on local TV channels in the late 60s / 70s which came with no explanation or commentary. In addition to some of these movies being simply great entertainment, I enjoyed the "time travel" aspect of seeing clothes, architecture, style of talk and mannerism, values and other cultural aspects of another period (distorted in all the ways Hollywood distorts reality, but still, it was a window into another time). None of this required somebody explaining to me why "The Seahawks" was a great swashbuckler (it just is) or "Casablanca" a great love story (I fell love with Ingrid Bergman at about nine years old with no one needing to explain to me why I should).

When, years later, AMC (when it used to show commercial free classic movies) and, then, TMC came along, I appreciated the commentary as I was "ready" to learn about the movies I had already loved prima facie, but perhaps I would not have enjoyed that commentary nor have had the same emotional and individual response to the movies that I had when I first saw them if someone was telling me why this was important or what to look for in it.

Yes, I respect and enjoy Robert Osborne now, but like Lizzie, sometime I'm happy when a TCM movie just comes on without commentary (especially if I've never seen it) as I want my first viewing to be just my reaction, not an "educated" reaction.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My first movie crush was on Douglas Fairbanks. I was seven years old and saw "The Mark of Zorro" on the local "educational TV" channel. It was a silent movie made in 1920, and I didn't need any context or historical background to appreciate it -- all I needed to see was Douglas Fairbanks having a lot of fun. Even though it was a silent picture, the images spoke for themselves -- I'd never seen anything like it before, but it made me a silent movie fan. I was heartbroken when I found out that Douglas Fairbanks had been dead for nearly thirty years -- he sure seemed alive for me.

A few years back I projected "Zorro" to a live orchestral accompaniment, and the movie was just as good as I remembered it. And there were kids in the audience who enjoyed it just as much as I did.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Do you mean routine entertainment, like Dialing for Dollars? All jokes aside, that is where I saw a lot of classics that you do not see today!

Exactly. Here it was called "The Great Money Movie," and the station showed every movie Warner Bros. ever made -- not just the familiar Bogart/Cagney/Bette Davis stuff. I remember coming home from school one day in the late '70s and enjoying Al Jolson in "Mammy." On local TV at 4 in the afternoon, no less.

 

[Fading Fast]

My first movie crush was on Douglas Fairbanks. I was seven years old and saw "The Mark of Zorro" on the local "educational TV" channel. It was a silent movie made in 1920, and I didn't need any context or historical background to appreciate it -- all I needed to see was Douglas Fairbanks having a lot of fun. Even though it was a silent picture, the images spoke for themselves -- I'd never seen anything like it before, but it made me a silent movie fan. I was heartbroken when I found out that Douglas Fairbanks had been dead for nearly thirty years -- he sure seemed alive for me.

A few years back I projected "Zorro" to a live orchestral accompaniment, and the movie was just as good as I remembered it. And there were kids in the audience who enjoyed it just as much as I did.

You had good taste even at seven. I do not doubt that if exposed (as you did with "Zorro") that kids today, or at least some meaningful subset, would enjoy old movies, I just worry that with all the competing entertainment and the new parenting norm of scheduling your kid's "play" time down to the minute, that they won't get a chance to see them or, even better, stumble upon them the way we did as kids. If it was nice weather, my parents' idea of scheduling was to put me outside and tell me not to come back until it got dark and on rainy days, if I stayed out of their hair by watching TV, that was good too - much less randomness in the way kids are raised today which leaves much less opportunity for serendipity and accidental discovery of things.

 

[Stanley Doble]

My first movie crush was on Douglas Fairbanks. I was seven years old and saw "The Mark of Zorro" on the local "educational TV" channel. It was a silent movie made in 1920, and I didn't need any context or historical background to appreciate it -- all I needed to see was Douglas Fairbanks having a lot of fun. Even though it was a silent picture, the images spoke for themselves -- I'd never seen anything like it before, but it made me a silent movie fan. I was heartbroken when I found out that Douglas Fairbanks had been dead for nearly thirty years -- he sure seemed alive for me.

A few years back I projected "Zorro" to a live orchestral accompaniment, and the movie was just as good as I remembered it. And there were kids in the audience who enjoyed it just as much as I did.

Today they call his acting style "parkour". I would like to see his old action scenes on Youtube with modern musical accompaniment. I bet they would make a hit. 1920s Parkour ha ha ha.

Have you seen "Reaching For The Moon"? A romantic comedy starring Fairbanks made in 1931. It is one of my favorite movies. After thinking of him as an action hero all these years I was a little surprised at how good he was in it. I don't know why he didn't make more talkies, he was one of the few actors who had the talents to shine in both silent and sound pictures.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a surprisingly good picture. I think by that time in his life he was getting tired of it all and just wanted to take it easy, but if he'd wanted to he could have easily been a William Powell type of star in the talkies.

Fairbanks made a lot of modern-dress comedies in the teens, before he moved into action pictures -- his character was very much like the one Harold Lloyd would adopt, the enthusiastic young go-getter loose in the city, and the ones that have survived are still quite energetic and entertaining.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Nobody was as good at introducing old movies as Elwy Yost. If you are not familiar with his work he hosted shows like Passport to Adventure, Magic Shadows and Saturday Night At The Movies for TVOntario.

He was an enthusiast himself, and his love of old movies made it seem like a privilege to join him in viewing them.

The fact that he had seen most of them in their first run gave him a unique perspective. He could describe them as he had seen them when they were fresh and exciting.

The format of Saturday Night at the Movies was that of two movies, separated by in-depth interviews conducted by Yost. In the early years the interviews were with local film experts, but the show's producers took the opportunity to interview visiting actors when they had engagements in Toronto. As the show grew in popularity, funds were found to send Yost and a crew to Hollywood to arrange interviews with film personalities. The library includes interviews with the stars of classic films, character actors, directors, screen-writers, composers, film-editors, special-effects people, and sometimes even their children.

Some regular viewers started to plan their Saturday nights so that they could catch just the interview section if they had already seen that night's films. When Yost retired from TVOntario in 1999, a copy of the library of interviews was donated to the Motion Picture Academy.

His son, Graham Yost, is a screenwriter whose most famous credit was the hit 1994 film Speed. Speed was the final movie Yost hosted before retiring from Saturday Night at the Movies in 1999.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yllCQkGpHec

 

[3fingers]

I believe Hellzapoppin isn't available on DVD in the USA. That's a disgrace - no wonder people forget about it

Somebody on ebay is selling it. I'd like to see it but for 25.00, I think I'll wait.

 

[W-D Forties]

The Kirk Douglas Unappreciated Masterpiece about the big-city newsman and the small-town cave rescue was "Ace in the Hole".
I was about to say Ace In The Hole. A fantastic film, way ahead of its time. Why hasn't anyone remade it?

 

[Blackthorn]

The Kirk Douglas Unappreciated Masterpiece about the big-city newsman and the small-town cave rescue was "Ace in the Hole".
I was about to say Ace In The Hole. A fantastic film, way ahead of its time. Why hasn't anyone remade it?

Maybe it was perfect the first time.

 

[1mach1]

Darkman (1990)

 

[Blackthorn]

The Long Voyage Home (1940)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032728/combined

The Informer (1935)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026529/combined

 

[DNO]

Darkman (1990)

View attachment 9579

Definitely an unappreciated work. (Frances McDormand again!)

 

[DNO]

The Long Voyage Home (1940)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032728/combined

The Informer (1935)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026529/combined

I always enjoy watching Victor McLaglen.

 

[Stearmen]

No Time for Sergeants. [video=youtube;qqg4rJPUxGs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqg4rJPUxGs[/video]

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Children's Hour" is another under-appreciated movie as I almost never hear anything about it, but it is a quietly powerful movie that shows the ugliness of rumors, the ability of societal norms - aided by its putative leaders - to crush innocent people and the acceptance of homosexual prejudice in the early 1960s. And while it is great that a movie can do all those things, it is only a great movie because it does all those things in a gripping and entertaining manner.

Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner star in this story set in a grammar school run by two young women who become accused of being lesbian lovers who, then, watch as the parents of their students withdraw their children and shun the women all based on a story told by one of the students with a conflicted agenda and a pernicious motive. Regardless of this thin thread of accusation, it sets in motion events that highlight the aforementioned societal prejudices - all in a movie that develops its characters, stories and themes thoughtfully and entertainingly.

I remember being moved the first time I saw this movie - and surprised that it was even made when it was (as others have referenced in this and other Fedora threads, social protest has much longer roots than we sometimes remember) - and have enjoyed it a few times since.

N.B. There is a 1930's version of this movie "These Three" that substitutes a heterosexual, out-of-wedlock relationship for the homosexual one (the times were what they were), but it too, powerfully and entertainingly, exposes the damage that one rumor, combined with societal standards enforced by small-minded and mean people, can do.