Originally Posted by bigjohnwayne
Two B&W-movies featuring Frank Sinatra made a great impression on me:
From Here To Eternity
The Man With The Golden Arm
While some of the scenes are in colour I'd like to add Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo too.
Andfor mentioning The General!
My favs:
Casablanca
Maltese Falcon
The Elephant Man
Schindler's List
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Last edited by StevegSr; 06-13-2016 at 04:02 PM.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
I'll give my top 10 in order:
1. Napoleon (1927) I saw it on all three screens.
2. Metropolis (1927) Mind bending! I like to use Vangelis' "Spiral" for background music.
3. Lost Horizon (1937) Ultimate feel-good movie.
4. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) I think I've watched it over 100 times.
5. The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin fan since childhood.
6. How Green Was My Valley (1941) Perhaps my ID will give you a clue.
7. Duck Soup (1933) Marx fan from an early age.
8. The 39 Steps (1935) Hitchcock's best B/W film by far.
9. The Wages of Fear (1952) Unrelenting suspense. Best French film ever made.
10. Hell's Angels (1930) Stunning aerial scenes.
Completely NOT movie related but B&W...
This past Saturday on TCM I watched an old Bowery Boys short. MY GOD, I forgot how great those episodes were. Back in the early '70's, they ran these every SAT or SUN early afternoon. My Brother and I never missed an airing. LOVED the writing and word-play....should search-out a box set of their stuff if it exists on DVD.
It is odd. Wonder what the science is behind this is. I see it mostly in autos. It looks beautiful in one color but a total mess in another. The exact same car.
The older I get, the better I was.
I see what you did thereThe Defiant Ones
There's my black and white movie. .......
The older I get, the better I was.
I don't think it's been mentioned yet: Angels with Dirty Faces with Cagney, Bogie, Pat O'Brien, and the Bowery Boys. Probably my favorite gangster b&w movie ever. Convinced me for sure, when I first saw it when I was around 7, that I would get the chair if I became a bad guy. Can't see this movie being as grim if it were in color.
Speaking of grim b&w movies; other favorites are I'll Cry Tomorrow about alcoholic singer Lillian Roth, The Snake Pit about a woman descending into mental illness, and I Want to Live about criminal Barbara Graham who gets the gas chamber. All gut wrenching.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
I'm sure someone has done the research behind it. I just don't feel like a Google hunt right now, so I'll just make something up that sounds reasonable to me until I find out.
Color plays such a large part in the design and production of movies, that it can be as important as, and even sometimes overshadow, the dialog and plot.
Black and white was all they ever had to work with, so it wasn't necessarily a conscious imperative, it was just all they knew. But with the absence of color, it was all about the acting, and light and shadow. Not saying the acting was better as a whole back then either. But the great actors knew that they had to transcend that disconnection from reality without color, and gave more weight to their performance. When you're doing an emotional scene where blood is involved that's actually Hershey's chocolate syrup, it takes a bit of talent to pull the scene off.
Does anyone recall the title of the Kirk Douglas WW1 film directed by Kubrick?
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
Paths of Glory
Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes
I remember when it was finally restored and they showed it correctly on three screens at the ICA in London in the 80s or 90s. Twelves hours or so wasn't it?
I Want to Live! is great and Susan Hayward is great in it (Oscar winner for best actress). FYI. It will be released on blu-ray. An auto-buy for me.
The Bowery Boys were movies. Stuff like The Three Stooges and Little Rascals were not. When I was a kid they were on 11AM Sunday mornings on channel 5 , WNEW IIRC.
On Edit, Sundays 10-11AM and then switch to channel 11 at 11AM for an Abbot and Costello flick.
Thanks!
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
I used to work with a girl who just couldn't bring herself to watch a B&W movie. "I just don't like black-and-white movies."
I cut her some slack because she had a smokin' body.
But, think of all the great flicks she'll never see.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I recommend the films of Yasujirō Ozu, especially Late Spring and Tokyo Story.
Great films. Setsuko Hara, a star in both, passed away late last year.
This is on TCM tomorrow (Tuesday) night.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
That was interesting to see, but I would have preferred it was ALL spiders and not so over the top. Still cool.
But yes, the original is still king. The atmosphere of the first 45 minutes or so is just great, and it's all great.
Works for me. Can anyone name movies that are in color that should be in B&W? The Detective, with Sinatra comes to mind.I'm sure someone has done the research behind it. I just don't feel like a Google hunt right now, so I'll just make something up that sounds reasonable to me until I find out.
Color plays such a large part in the design and production of movies, that it can be as important as, and even sometimes overshadow, the dialog and plot.
Black and white was all they ever had to work with, so it wasn't necessarily a conscious imperative, it was just all they knew. But with the absence of color, it was all about the acting, and light and shadow. Not saying the acting was better as a whole back then either. But the great actors knew that they had to transcend that disconnection from reality without color, and gave more weight to their performance. When you're doing an emotional scene where blood is involved that's actually Hershey's chocolate syrup, it takes a bit of talent to pull the scene off.
The older I get, the better I was.
I don't remember any Bowery Boys shorts on TV, but I do remember Bowery Boys movies, which I liked. I liked the Blondie movies too.
Another I haven't seen here, unless I missed it:
The Birdman of Alcatraz
I don't know if these are the "best", but my two favorites are "Dead Man" and "Dr. Strangelove".
B&W made the subject matter of both even darker, not to mention how well both were filmed. The death scene in "Dead Man" is probably the best I've ever seen.
Well, if we’re doing Japanese films, what about Ran? Or Onibaba?
And if you like weird art films, there’s always Funeral Parade of Roses:
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
I'm not sure I saw European films (German, French or Italian) mentioned here.
Surely there must be quite a few that are worthy.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
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