What are some of your favorite Black and White films?

Here's one of mine, The Rules of the Game, directed by Jean Renoir, who was also the son of Renoir, the famous painter.



How about you? :hi:

and about 100 others.

"Blandings" :pals:

Do you mean recent movies that could have been color and the director chose B&W?

Oh yeah, 'Quiz Show'...

:hi:

*faints out of sheer love*

:loveya:

...either that or the 'yodeling song' from Raising Arizona :D

When I see yours. Nyah.:loveya:

It's still so relevant.

One of my favorite films ever.

To that, I would add "Sons of the Desert" with Laurel and Hardy. A bit more on the light side. Delightful film.

"Fail Safe" "Dr. Strangelove"

"Young Frankenstein"

"Psycho"

"Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"

"Bringing Up Baby"

For starters....

:)

François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player. Sad and funny at the same time.

Other B&W favorites:
M
The Lady Eve
Night of the Hunter
The Passion of Joan of Arc
and many more

Just one fantastically shot scene after another. Too bad Charles Laughton never directed another film. He obviously had an artist's eye.








The last one, with Lillian Gish sitting in the dark with the rifle across her lap is one that an older friend of mine remembered despite not having seen the film for forty years.

The Big Sleep
The Maltese Falcon
Casablanca
Anything with Audrey Hepburn
Citizen Kane

RL

Casablanca is the best movie ever. Everytime I watch it I'm mesmerized and engrossed.

I was thinking about older films, and then remembered that one. It was beautifully shot.

Breathless:



Band of Outsiders:

I love Jean-Luc Godard.

Great movie.

Way ahead of its time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032143/
of course

an affair to remember

and

The Birds
and

The Philadlphia Story
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032904/

Imitation of life....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation_of_Life_(1934_film)

if you have NEVER seen this movie
I URGE you to see it
the one with Claudette Colbert


lost

I don't know why I forgot
REBECCA
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032976/
wow

...the recent Criterion edition was pretty amazing...



98 out of 113 Amazon reviewers gave it 5 stars, and rightly so.

:toast:

"Beauty And The Beast" is my choice also. The B&W photography is superb. I saw it as a kid back in the 1940's and was glad to see a Criterion disc become available. Recommended to any film buff.

Casablanca.

Just on my never ending list of movies I want to see

Back to the topic

Let me do foreign and non foreign fav black and white (This will also be an incomplete list lol)

Non Foreign

Dr. Strangelove (Possibly my fav film ever)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

The Manchurian Candidate

Roman Holiday

Foreign

Rififi

Seventh Seal

Rashomon

Battle of Algiers

I watched it for my French Cinema class...Super awesome, it is :)

:hi:

Cool maybe once I start drawing a paycheck again it'll make a nice edition in my D.V.D collection.

It has a few foreign films ahead of it though :).

Miracle On 34th Street.

It really reached a high point, visually, after Citizen Kane, and into the film noir period, where amazing things were done with lighting effects, and high contrast. It will never be seen again, because that level of film craft is almost unaffordable anymore.

I thought that Good Night and Good Luck was quite impressive. The range of the gray scale is just amazing, as well as the amount of detail. People who think color is everything just don't think with a photographer's eye.

The best print I saw was Throne of Blood, his version of Macbeth transposed to feudal Japan. Amazing stuff.

but unfortunately I didn't get to see it all the way through.

And it underscored his later work in color. The first fifeteen minutes of Kagemusha is like a celebration of color.

any Buster Keaton movie
Nosferatu
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Faust
Night of the Living Dead

Most great movies are black and white. The best examples of film, like many art forms, come from the early days which were packed with innovation - it's much harder to innovate now, and much easier to make derivative films, so we're less likely to get good ones.

Probably my fav silent film.

:thumbsup:

and Ford was a huge influence on Kurosawa

Ford did many of the great early westerns, and essentially made John Wayne into a star, not easy to do.

with Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and Timothy Bottoms. Made in 1971. Could have been filmed in color, but the Texas countryside south of Wichita Falls was too beautiful and did not create the mood that Bogdanovich wanted. So, he made it in black and white.

is a very effective anti-war film.

I think is black and white. Its theme certainly is.

and LOTS more...

Also Dr. Strangelove and Inherit the Wind

Great films!

Whenever I have to answer the "favorite film" question, that one always pops into my mind first. I read the book later in college and couldn't get over how true it was to the movie.

It's a Wonderful Life

Arsenic & Old Lace

Double Indemnity

Psycho

It Happened One Night


I love TCM & they play a lot of B&W movies. I always watch when they do the Dr.Kildaire movie marathons!

beautiful. My husband loves it, so we've seen it many times.

In addition to two others mentioned, "The Great Dictator" and "Sons of the Desert".

The dress was red, after all. :evilgrin:

makes me want to get out my old vhs tapes.

one that no one has mentioned that is GREAT, imo, and one of my favorite movies is this one:

Bob Le Flambeur

from the same writer as Rififi (and released in the same year) and directed by Melville - fada of the new wave.

and a great new one is Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch.

Les Chez Hommes des Rififi
La Dolce Vita

Captains Courageous is one of my favorite films of all time. I love the scenes of the sailing schooners and Spencer Tracy singing with his hurdygurdy. Tracy couldn't get a good Portuguese accent so he used a Yiddish one and got away with it. He won an Academy award for his performance

Dersu Uzala has become my favorite Kurasawa movie.

Yankee was, I think, the last major musical shot in B&W.

Kong is still an amazing film.

also Lady From Shanghai and A Touch of Evil. Someone already said The Third Man?

Von Ryan's Express, The Following (Chris Nolan as director before he did Momento), Good Night And Good Luck, King Kong, Metropolis, Tetsuo:The Iron Man (makes Eraserhead, another interesting B&W film, look like a Disney movie), Nekromantik (the best movie EVER about necrophilia lol), Seven Samurai.

Just to name a few. :)

...and all of the other early Alec Guinness comedies. "The Man In The White Suit" about Unions vs. Management, "The Lavender Hill Mob"'s perfect crime gone bad, "I'm All Right Jack" another one about Unions. Funny stuff.

Still rips my heart out every time I see it.

also anything with Buster Keaton!

only because the producers didn't want to spend the money on color film since they were convinced the Beatles phenom would be over before the film was released. Also, the studio just wanted a soundtrack album-hence all new material.

One of Hitchcock's best, IMO.

Breakfast @ Tiffany's, too. :bounce:

"Daddy? I need to use the shithouse." :rofl:

"I don't know what scruples are but I know if you got em you stole em from somebody else."
"I want my money."

With Jack Nicholson. :)

so many from the late 30s! 40s had some great ones too!

"Phantom of the Opera," "Nosferatu."

All four are monumental films and must-sees, in my opinion.

A Trip to the Moon
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/trip_to_the_moon.php

Battleship Potemkin
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3911190018049425705

M
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7434905497229204028

Ikiru
http://www.archive.org/details/Ikiru1952

Rashomon
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/rashomon.php

Un Chien Andalou
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/un_chien_andalou.php

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-411719693227284081

Cabinet of Dr. C remastered as of 2-2008
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5085932543487369191

Nosferatu
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5040772531463923959

The Kid (Chaplin, 1921)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7825676509326646750

The General (Buster Keaton, 1927)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=186236766696676907

The Man Who Knew Too Much
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5327906762941139479

The 39 Steps
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3180115995112033502

The Lady Vanishes
http://www.archive.org/details/lady_vanishes

Freaks
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6355110065089064433

His Girl Friday
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4106601821039556265

The Front Page
http://stage6.divx.com/The-Last-Stop/video/1947160/The-Front-Page

Plan 9 From Outer Space
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7038656109656489183

Night of the Living Dead
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7177846697947194748

Reefer Madness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZdhcNegZgU

Of Human Bondage (Bette Davis, 1932)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3110348279625560246

Scrooge (1935)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8221265332979402418

The Little Princess (shirley temple, 1939)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4412215713074385621

All Quiet on the Western Front
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7300946306109319965

Meet John Doe
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6221921349485626107

The Third Man (this one didn't play for me... hope it works.)
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/third_man.php

D.O.A.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-546558267164717018

Scarlet Street
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8517283484983131990

Detour
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/detour.php

Beat the Devil
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9052568461937082317

Dementia 13
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8487800124892418620

Carnival of Souls
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5889611170298886879

Little Shop of Horrors
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4573806289320569974

A Bucket of Blood
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8312875302329336574

Suddenly (Frank Sinatra, 1954)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7597138111430843998

Two Women (Sophia Loren drama)
http://www.archive.org/details/LaCiociaraTwoWomen1

Fantastic Planet
The Czech/French animated film with diff. soundtrack
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3064984200803032304

The black-and-white presentation by Steven Spielberg was deliberate to make the genocide by the Nazis more realistic and relevant to the times.

Paths of Glory
Sword of Doom
Angel on My Shoulder
Psycho
The Defiant Ones
The Mark of Zorro
The Asphalt Jungle
Dreams

It's been replaced with BW400CN.

The T-Max, Ektaphan, and Ektagraphic, of course, are also all goddamned brilliant.

I use only Fuji for 35mm color, color slide, and my medium format color and color slide - but Kodak black and white is the tops for black and white.

and sat in the darkroom making prints. I remember the days ASA 400 film gave you grain the size of golfballs.

Times change. Now, I've gone over to the digital side.

Great combination of Italian neo-realism and film noir, all in an American movie. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis never better...

Notorious

Mr. Blandings

Twentieth Century

Adam's Rib

All About Eve


(i could go on and on...)

Sinister ideology but interesting watching to see how a propaganda flick should be made.

It comes up on my Amazon recommendations because I bought "The Birth of a Nation", which fits into the "excellent film, horrid content" category. Might make for some very concerning recommendations though if I've got "Triumph of the Will" from Amazon as well.

as sad of a historical document that it is.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5639233838609252948&q=birth+of+a+nation&total=577&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

all 3 hrs

here's the link to the google video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3317250790778505764

and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.


Tikki

La Belle et Le Bete (Cocteau's version), Rashomon...

The list could go on and on and on...

Some of mine have been mentioned before:

Arsenic and Old Lace
Casablanca
Young Frankenstein
The Night of the Hunter
Bringing Up Baby
12 Angry Men
A Christmas Carol (1951)

And then there's always...

Pride and Prejudice (1940)
The Farmer's Daughter
A Midwinter's Tale (also known as In the Bleak Midwinter)


One of my new favorites is Westward the Women, which I saw for the first time a couple of months back. I normally have no use for westerns, with the exception of John Ford's Stagecoach.

There are lots.

Harvey, Sergeant York, and most of those already listed. :D

Wurthering Heights (1939)

Lean's Great Expectations

I love B/W.

Which was actually filmed in Britain in the middle of W.W.II - they had to do many of the scenes in the middle of the night, and so the clock-face on the station was a cardboard front so it wasn't showing 4am.

'Le Haine' - I do find modern b&w films to be alluring, because it's a conscious choice rather than being forced for technological reasons.

'Sabrina Fair' and 'Roman Holiday' essentially because they both star Audrey Hepburn.

they just re-issued that as a dvd for u.s. formats this year. Also Man Bites Dog from around that same time in France.

how could I forget that one. still have my vhs copy.

I LOVE that movie... and Spike Lee's movies in general. He should've gotten an Oscar for Malcolm X.

looking up a url for birth of a nation reminded me of his take and the perspective he brought.

And Coffee and Cigarettes and Down by Law, two more Jim Jarmusch films.

Salt of the Earth (1954)... the only Hollywood film to be blacklisted. Based on a true story of a strike at a zinc mine in New Mexico. The copyright has lapsed so you can view it for free online. This was one of the first group of 100 films selected by the Library of Congress to be preserved for posterity. Way ahead of its time, it explores feminist themes as well as Mexican/American relations and labor struggles. Because the production was blacklisted and even harrassed, the production values are not up to full Hollywood standards, in particular the sound quality is not great, but the story is superb.

About the film:
http://www.hepdigital.com/salt/default.htm

imDb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047443/

Watch it for free online at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7334797883480289161
or
http://www.archive.org/details/salt_of_the_earth

Four by Chaplin:
City Lights
Modern Times
The Great Dictator
Msr. Verdoux

The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927 Lubitsch)

Man in the Iron Mask (Fairbanks silent)

Inherit the Wind

casablanca, the maltese falcon, top hat, frankenstien, king kong, raging bull, shindlers list, Nights of Calabria, Variety lights, Night Heat, Scarface, The 7th Seal, any Charlie Chaplin Movie, any Buster Keeton movie, any three stooges, any ritz brothers, And then there were none, The first part of the wizard of oz, Sands of Iwo Jima, all quiet on the western front, The Snake Pit, On the waterfront, a streetcar named desire, Charge of the light brigade, high noon, gunga din, creature from the black lagoon, I was a teenage werewolf, the blob, This island earth, the day the earth stood still...

To name just a very few that I love.

One of the essentials and still has meaning today.

And All About Eve, and Dark Victory, and Now, Voyager.

Joe Bob says Check it out!