Old movies you think shouldn't be missed--please post here.

I just watched "The Best Years of Our Lives" and I thought it rocked!

What are some other old movies you think really rock?

Three of my favorites

Arsenic and Old Lace
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Rashomon

My Name Is Julia Ross

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Maltese Falcon
King Kong
Yojimbo
The Thing From Another World
Patton
War of the Worlds
Duck Soup
Things To Come
Von Ryan's Express

...and of course, Godzilla

I like cheese. :)

1) Dr. Zhivago
2) The Pawnbroker

:shrug:

before a certain year?

Oh that hurts. ;)

I had a hard time when they started calling The Beatles 'classic rock'. :rofl:

It's an old German movie with Peter Lorre.

Also Lonely are the Brave and Paths of Glory...two great Kirk Douglas films.

:hi:

Fantastic movie.

and

Imitation of life (1934 with Claudette Colbert)



lost

and sadly it seems a film that most people don't seem to know about.

Adam's Rib is a 1949 film written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor.
It stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and features Judy Holliday in her first substantial
film role. The music was composed by Miklós Rózsa, except for the song "Farewell, Amanda", which
was written by Cole Porter.

The film was well-received upon its release and is considered a classic romantic comedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Rib

Howard is a delight in fop mode. His "Sink me!" keeps me in stitches.

Do I even need to say why?

Another of my favorites of all time is Captains Courageous. Stars Spencer Tracy, Freddy Bartholemew, Lionel Barrymore, Mickey Rooney, John Carradine and Melvyn Douglas.

Just 3 of hundreds.

Yeah, I'm a Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart fan.

The Big Sleep (Humphrey Bogart version)
Ben Hur
Bridge on the River Kwai
Casablanca
Cat Ballou
Clockwork Orange
Cool Hand Luke
The Day of the Jackal (Edward Fox version)
The Deer Hunter
The Dirty Dozen
Dr Strangelove
Dracula (Bela Lugosi version, although the recent remake is quite good)
The Eagle Has Landed
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain
The Exorcist
Fiddler on the Roof
Firefox
Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More / The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Gigi
The Godfather / Godfather II
The Great Escape
The Guns of Navarone
High Noon
History of the World, Part I
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original, 50s version)
Key Largo
King Kong (1933 version)
Lawrence of Arabia
The Lion in Winter
Magnificent Seven
Maltese Falcon
A Man For All Seasons
The Man Who Would Be King
Moby Dick
My Fair Lady
Ocean's Eleven (original Rat Pack version, although the remake is pretty good)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Pale Rider
Patton
Psycho (Janet Leigh version)
The Quiet Man
Rear Window
Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version)
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Rosemary's Baby
The Shining (Jack Nicholson version)
Some Like It Hot
Soylent Green
Stalag 17
Sunset Boulevard
Taxi Driver
The Thin Man (all six in the series, actually)
The Third Man
The Time Machine (the original, not the remake)
To Catch a Thief
To Have and Have Not
Trading Places
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Vertigo
Where Eagles Dare
The Wizard of Oz

I have a bunch of DVDs. I ran out of of space for all those jewel boxes, so I bought a half dozen of those CD / DVD albums that hold a couple of hundred each, at eight per page. Which really reduced shelf space, but necessitated some method for being able to find the damned things, by album and page number. So I wrote a database tracking program which also prints out a couple of different lists. I grabbed one of the lists, mentally eliminated lesser movies, and post 1980 movies, and typed it in to my post. That's why they're alphabetized, more or less.

Do I have The Third Man twice? I don't see the second one?

silly me.

I did leave most of the comedies off the list because they tend to reflect contemporary society when made, and so they don't age well. Thus, don't survive a don't-miss pre 1980 cut. But as I flip through this list I'm not seeing any Woody Allen. And I really can't explain why. Hmmm. Food for thought ....

Annie Hall :shrug:

I thought I had it, but I don't. I'm sure I'll come across it somewhere, probably on Amazon the next time I'm moved to go on there, and reduce it to possession.

kind of jealous, I am. :)

I never actually set out to collect. They just sort of accumulated. Like so many things. It was after I couldn't find a couple that I knew I had, and bought others a few that I turned out to already have, that I realized I needed to get some sort of handle on them.

I guess I'm not that big of a fan of his stuff, other than Annie Hall. Which he wrote too, apparently.

it is after '80.

and Bananas.

Peter O'Toole-1971 :thumbsup:

Throne of Blood, Ran, Seven Samurai


Arguably the greatest "foreign language" director who ever lived Akira Kurosawa.

Metropolis, Nosferatu and Sunrise are three silent films that must be seen also.

After all these years, still gives me a serious case of the willies.

"Chilll-dren?"

I'm sorry the director, Charles Laughton, didn't live long enough to find out how well-regarded the film would be in time.

And I'm glad that I didn't see The Night of the Hunter when I was a kid. To Kill a Mockingbird was terrifying enough...

:scared:

Normally not my type of movie but it was very well done.

with Marilyn Monroe ...."You'll never hear your favorite song again, Rose." ahh...classic

and for another take on Henry Fonda "Once Upon a Time in the West"

Young Mr Lincoln

The Grapes of Wrath (of course)

Oxbow Incident

My Darling Clementine

Fort Apache (warm up for Once Upon a Time)

Mr Roberts

May I add:

The African Queen
Tweleve O'Clock High
2001: A Space Odyssey
Roman Holiday
Bringing up Baby
Top Hat
The Philadelphia Story
The Flying Deuces, A Chump at Oxford, and most Laurel & Hardy flicks.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Day the Earth Stood Still (The original. I haven't seen the remake...)
Shane
His Girl Friday
The Wild Bunch
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Star Wars
M*A*S*H
Stalag 17
How Green Was My Valley
Airplane!
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

So many old movies, so little time...
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Maybe a similar movie should be made about the current system.

... and Judgment at Nuremberg. For that matter, anything with Spencer Tracy in it should not be missed.

The Ugly Dachshund and Forbidden Planet are two that shouldn't be missed.

I haven't since high school. I'm going to have to see it again. Thanx! :hi:

Buster Keaton's The General

Fritz Lang's Metropolis, M, Fury, Scarlett Street, The Big Heat

It Happened One Night

Fantasia

The Ghost and Mrs Muir

Notorious

Laura

The Heiress

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Rope

Forbidden Planet

The Innocents

The Duellists

Metropolis (1926)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
From Here To Eternity (1953)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Baby Doll (1956)
Paths Of Glory (1957)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Witness For The Prosecution (1957)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Alec Guiness plays about a half dozen members of a snooty English family, all of them eventually murdered by the son of a disgraced family member.

I actually think that Dennis Price is even better in that movie.

Basically any Hitchcock film and anything with Sidney Poitier.

Um, why am I coming up with films featuring the number seven...

Double Indemnity
The Lady Killers - Alec Guinness version
Anything with Bette Davis
Bullitt
Darling
Don't Look Now
Clockwork Orange
2001 A Space Odyssey
Planet of the Apes
Alien
Cabaret

Harvey
Harold & Maude
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
The Bad Seed
King of Hearts

one of my favorites!

Failsafe
The Odd Couple
The China Syndrome
Invaders from Mars
Duck Soup
Rashōmon
Yōjinbō
Tout va bien
The Producers

Northwest Passage

Little Big Man

Mister Roberts

Failsafe

Father Goose

One..Two...Three

Easy Rider

The Apartment

Jeremiah Johnson

Not a great movie, but a jaw-dropper of a historical artifact (1932).

It's basically an argument for fixing all the country's problems through fascism--fascism from Heaven.

Citizen Kane
A Touch of Evil
Stagecoach
The Searchers
City Lights or Modern Times
Chinatown
The Last Picture Show
The French Connection
Snow White
Spartacus
The Hustler
Rebel Without a Cause (or East of Eden or Giant)

Also, one that I'm not that surprised hasn't been mentioned, but which I enjoy very much: High and Low (a Kurosawa film based on an Ed McBain/Evan Hunter novel).

Ball of Fire

Arsenic and Old Lace

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

You Can't Take It with You

The More the Merrier

The Talk of the Town

The Shop Around the Corner

Between Two Worlds

The General

Yankee Doodle Dandy

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

To Have and Have Not

Marty

Odd Man Out

A Man for All Seasons

The Lion in Winter

It was a hilarious comedy about a young executive building his own house in the suburbs.

It was the inspiration for Tom Hanks' "The Money Pit".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Blandings_Builds_His_Dream_House

....and most of what came out of the U.S. studios during the year of 1939.

Just for starters.....

Definitely a should-not-be-missed movie in my book.

See post 76.

I was beginning to think no one here knew this classic flick.

This is, quite literally, one of my all-time favorite movies. (I've been grooving on "If you want to be free" on youtube all night!)

Not that old (2001), but still very good.

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

but for a very good oddity "The Girl Can't Help It" Jayne Mansfield's best performance but classic footage of Little Richard that can't be beat. He truly rocks.

Ryan's Daughter

..and, since I'm not supposed to be posting anyway, this is a double trouble.

(on edit-- Hey! 499 of my posts disappeared, dammit)

Let me start by saying that you cannot go wrong with 99% of what has already been mentioned, and start off by mentioning some generalities, rather than titles...

Most anything by the following directors is --if not absolutely fantastic-- worth watching

1. Sir David Lean
2. Akira Kurosawa
3. Howard Hawks
4. Michael Curtiz
5. Alfred Hitchcock
6. Sir Carol Reed
7. Fred Zinneman
8. George Roy Hill
9. Stanley Kuberick
10. Sidney Lumet
11. Francis Ford Coppola
12. George Cukor
13. Stanley Donen
14. John Ford
15. Steven Spielberg
16. Charlie Chaplin
17. Frank Capra
18. William Wyler
19. Walt Disney
20. Elia Kazan

This list is a starting point. There are many more.


Some fine films that I didn't see mentioned (forgive me if I missed a prior mention)

a) The Day of the Jackal- Fred Zinneman directs a fine European cast. Edward Fox is an intellligent, ruthless hit man hired to assasinate Charles De Gaulle

b) Lover Come Back (or any of the Hudson/Day comedies). Rock Hudson and Doris Day work for rival ad agencies. The fun begins when Hudson, trying to keep a girlfriend happy, creates ads for a product that doesn't exist. The ads end up running on TV by mistake, and Day tries to steal the account.

c) Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Peter Sellers does the best multiple role work since Guinness in "KH&C". George C Scott is Brilliant.

d) Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Save money, skip Spamalot, and see the best low budget film (about $100,000 in 1973-74 dollars) ever made.

e) American Graffitti - I'd saythe best slice-of-life film ever made

d) The French Connection - A taut, brilliant crime film. Well cast, and an incredible car chase.

e) The post-war British comedies -- many of which were made by J. Arthur Rank or Ealing (The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts & Coronets, I'm Alright Jack, The Man in the White Suit, Whisky Galore!, Passport to Pimlico)

f) Our Man in Havana -- Alec Guinness, Ernie Kovacs, Maureen O'Hara, Burl Ives, Noel Coward, and revolutionary era Havana.

g) Hard Days Night & Help

h) From Russia With Love & Goldfinger (the best Bond films)

i) The Hustler & Patton (George C. Scott at his finest)

j) East of Eden

k) Godzilla

h) All About Eve

I) Boys Town

j) Dead End

k) Little Ceasar

l) Key Largo

m) The Manchurian Candidate (everyone who only knows Angela Lansbury for her Disney work or "Murder,She Wrote" needs to see this and "State of the Union")

n) The Candidate, The Great Waldo Pepper, & Barefoot in the Park (Redford at his best)

o) The Great Escape

p) Bound for Glory (should be required DU viewing)

q) 1776

r) The Russians Are Coming,The Russians Are Coming

s) One, Two, Three

t) Bullitt

u) Young Frankenstein, The Producers (original version), and Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks when he was funny)

v) Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Annie Hall, & Manhattan (Woody Allen when he was funny)

w) The Longest Yard (original), The End, Smokey & The Bandit, and Deliverance (the essential Burt Reynolds)

x) Airport, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno (the essential disaster films)

y) Cooley High

z) Z

.. I have only scratched the surface, and I tried to avoid movies that had already been mentioned: I could easily mention more films....


The Bad News Bears (see...there's another one)
Topaz (somebody stop me)
Mirage
The Exorcist
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
Heaven Can Wait
Here comes Mr. Jordan
On edit - The Misfits
On edit - Bus Stop

On another edit -- Mrs. OBD is not pleased that I left "WW and the Dixie Dance Kings" off of required Burt Reynolds viewing.

I'll also throw in "Play Misty For Me" for Eastwood lovers

Kubrik's and Sellers at their finest and the definition of black humor.

"OK, but if you are wrong, you are going to have to answer to the Pepsi-Cola company."

I think General Ripper found out about your pre-versions, and that you were organizing a mutiny of pre-verts. Now move."

:rofl:

http://www.filmsite.org/crow.html

James Murray is brilliant, and I still say this is King Vidor's greatest film..

She's mesmerizing!

The In-Laws for comedy.

Packs an unexpected punch.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042593/


And another of my favorite films noirs: Asphalt Jungle, by John Huston, with Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffee and Marilyn Monroe.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042208/

and, The Shining
Both directed by Stanley Kubrick.

"Charley Varrick" is an unspoken good film.

The Pope of Greenwich Village
Tootsie
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Educating Rita
The Last Waltz
Dick
The Birds
Pride and Prejudice (recent version)
Noises Off
MASH
Deliverance
Bonnie and Clyde
Papillon
War if the Worlds
A Hard Days Night
The Big Lebowski
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Conspiracy Theory

it's a Walter Matthau flick.

I think that's why I'm skeert of milkmen.

Could have been a different movie.. but...

:P

Judgment at Nuremberg

The first half hour or so is rather slow, but it is good set up for seeing the personality types.

But once those ramshackle trucks loaded with dynamite start creeping their way down those atrocious Central American mountain roads it is possibly one of the most gripping movies I have ever seen.