I recently decided to watch some of the films I’ve never seen from the second golden age of cinema, ie the seventies.
In pursuit of this goal, I have contrived to watch Easy Rider (1969) and The Shining (1980).
Easy Rider is a nice film, lovingly made. OK a lot of it is dialogue-free panning shots of the American landscape set to stoner rock, but that’s quite pleasant. The main dramatic interest is the contrast between the laconic but quite conventionally mannered Wyatt and the perma-monged, expressive and edgy Billy. Fonda is great, he never really found another role even half as good. It’s kind of lost something over time, but still good.
The Shining was scarier than I expected but at the same time slightly disappointing. You can kind of guess most of the plot twists but it still works. The “here’s Johnny” bit isn’t as good as expected. Room 237 is scary as fook. 4.5/5, the only problem being I’d expected it to be a super-5.
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A Town Like Alice. I've decided I need to watch more classic films recently too so glad to hear suggestions.
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I saw "The Way We Were" recently. It was shit.
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I might try Dog Day Afternoon next
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DDA is superb.
I reckon Easy Rider only really resonates if you’re from that stoner trippy generation.
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Sunset Boulevard (1950). For some reason, only watched it about a fortnight ago.
There are actually very few iconic Golden Age films I haven't seen. Another which I must do is All About Eve (1950). Oh, and there's West Side Story (1961) but probably cba with all that shouty singing tbh.
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But WSS is a musical
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I found it quite amusing that the lead characters were given the day job of motorbike stuntmen - after all that’s a pretty cool job which doesn’t really speak of soul-bludgeoning routine - the escapist road trip fantasy would have seemed more natural for, say, two guys who worked in carpet sales.
They do ofc meet a disillusioned lawyer along the way. No doubt whatsoever, Nicholson’s George Hanson would ROF.
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would like to see American Graffiti
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AG v good too imo. Great soundtrack.
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Dux, I only just watched Sunset Boulevard as well. Thought it was ace. I love a black and white film (I watched the Sir John Mills version of Great Expectations quite a lot as a kid!)
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It's wonderfully over the top, but more than just a melodrama. There are some proper film noir elements in there.
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The problem (such as it is) with watching classic movies like this for the first time now is that they lose some of their impact as what made them new and fresh has been copied a million times since. Same goes with music and literature I guess.
doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile mind.
I would commend “the conversation” to follow on from OP
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If you can stomach black and white it is worth watching the old hammer horrors : Boris karloff as the mummy and Frankenstein, Lon Cheney as the Wildman and the mummy as well. Some of these are properly scary.
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School For Scoundrels
(About which you have heard so much you might believe you have seen it already)
lots of fun
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Has anyone watched the infamous 1930s film Freaks? That is some seriously fascinating black and white noir!
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School for Scoundrels is brilliant! Not sure it can in any way be described as a classic though!
Freaks is very unsettling.
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wtf
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One day I will have to watch Citizen Kane ,which illuminati rave about, all through
Watched about 5 minutes of it about 20 times, but each time decided that life's too short
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I feel the same way about Triumph of the Will tbf
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Thinking back, the other minor gripe with The Shining is that Jack's character isn't really developed at all. Alright you learn a little of his alcoholic backstory but you just get the perfunctory job interview and then he pitches straight into going mental. I thought, given that the film is a slightly unnecessary 2.5 hours long, they could have given Sane Jack a bit more airplay. Still enjoyed it tho.
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Also, the "Indian burial ground" schtick - how many times does that crop up in American cinema? See also Poltergeist (roughly contemporaneous). It's almost like white America is plagued by subconscious ancestral guilt, or something.
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Wang's Upon a Time
10 Oct 19 12:30
If you can stomach black and white it is worth watching the old hammer horrors : Boris karloff as the mummy and Frankenstein, Lon Cheney as the Wildman and the mummy as well. Some of these are properly scary.
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Wang! Walk of shame twice in 2 days for YOU.
Those are Universal monster movies, not Hammer.
They are good, mind you, including the Abbot & Costello Meets The Mummy one.
I'm ignoring your Wildman/Wolfman slip, btw.
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a perfectly normal human being
10 Oct 19 13:19
Thinking back, the other minor gripe with The Shining is that Jack's character isn't really developed at all. Alright you learn a little of his alcoholic backstory but you just get the perfunctory job interview and then he pitches straight into going mental.
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Which is Stephen King's major gripe with the film. He also says he thinks it makes the wife/mother too much of a victim, although having read the novel I don't really see how he thinks that's radically different from the source material.
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She's the lynchpin, and in many ways Duval's is the key performance, given that Nicholson gets little character development to work with. I agree with your take tho - difficult to see how she could be played other than as a victim. As the only major character who's a non Shiner, she is kind of the audience's avatar.
The best scene I think is the one where all the characters are having their own personal nightmares - Jack literally having a nightmare about hurting his family, Danny exploring the delights of Rm 237, and something nasty going on for Wendy too. That was the peak of the film's power. It actually got a bit less scary toward the end.
Tell you what, the "Shining noise" is pretty much the scariest sound I've ever heard, with the exception of the Darwin Cyclone Tracy warning siren. Kubrick really throws the whole horror film soundtrack toolkit at the wall.
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Looking forward to Doctor Sleep? I preferred that novel to The Shining.
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I actually very much am, although I haven't read the book. Probably my most anticipated film release recently apart from Joker, which I haven't seen yet because travel schedule.
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Never seen The Shining. Stephen King doesn't exactly grab me as an entertaining choice of viewing of an evening....
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Found Triumph of the Will a bit understated tbf
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In terms of staying with you in a lingering nasty psychological way, The Shining is actually one of the "nicer" Stephen King films... although it's weird how Shawshank turns into a feelgood movie in the last 10mins.
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most classic films are shit if you watch a film with the expectation of 'i must watch it, it's a classic'
never rated The Shining, the book is much better
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I can count the decent films made since 1965 on my fingers tbh.
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D'accord
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Lemme guess ducks, does one of the fingers have 'Battle of Britain' tattooed on it?
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3-ducks
10 Oct 19 14:42
I can count the decent films made since 1965 on my fingers tbh.
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Cool Hand Luke
Toy Story
The Odd Couple
Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Italian Job
Godfather Part 2
Terminator 2
Empire Strikes Back
Dirty Harry
Ghostbusters
The Thing
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There's 11 already.
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Terminator 2 was for a long time my fave film ever and is still top 5
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Watched the Hustler a year or so ago. Color of money was a follow up i saw at the cinima but only just got round to watching this even in black and white paul newmans eyes shine.
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Of that list Pelham 123 and the Italian Job are good shouts.
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Bad Day At Black Rock.
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If you haven't watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, you have missed out.
Some other classics I've seen that are worth a watch I think:
Casablanca
The Deer Hunter
Some Like it Hot
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Hud for early Newman
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The Big Lebowski
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Scott Pilgrim should make the list of decent recent films.
for certain values of "recent".
It captures 90s gigs and dating perfectly. To a tee.
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fook, hanners is from norfolk??!?
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Heh
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Watched Chinatown. Terrific. Dunaway: HAWT.
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Does the Lost Boys count? Watched it for the first time a few weeks ago.
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No, it’s cult rather than classic. Wickerman is a cult classic, for comparison purposes.
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I have never made it through Citizen Kane
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… bump from the deep freeze.
I watched Citizen Kane last night. It’s on bbc iPlayer and about 2 hours long.
I’m not sure what to make of it. It was a bit of a grind. However I suspect it was probably the first film to do a lot of things, maybe new camera angles etc. Perhaps it is also the first US media mogul story? To be honest, it felt like I’d already seen it before, the number of tv shows and films that have paid homage to it. I think you could stitch the entire film together from simpsons references.
It felt very similar to “love story”. Completely revolutionary at the time but now so copied it has become cliche.
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For those who are disappointed in Kubrick's The Shining (which I think is great) you may out of interest want to watch the version King directed himself subsequently (he also disliked Kubriks version). Horrible... it serves well to demonstrate how well Kubrick actually did with the story....
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I recently discovered the filmsof Kevin Smith
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what
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Rollerball (the first one)
Vanishing Point
Badlands
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Might watch Paris, Texas.
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The best thing about the Shining (which is very good I agree) is the Sampson’s take off “The Shinning” where Groundskeeper Willy takes on the role of the old black guy and keeps getting axed in the back the second he appears on screen
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The Third Man
I may take up the zither
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The Third Man is genuinely great and works as a comedy thriller adventure thing.
Casablanca does also, it’s all in the characterisation.
Never seen Citizen Kane or Gone with the Wind.
Was pleasantly surprised by The Sound of Music a year or two back though, better than I had anticipate (the nazi bits and the escape anyway)
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https://youtu.be/pQ3OsnkBWzM
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some good suggestions lately
saw Easy Rider again recently - stand by the above - PF was immense in it but, as a massive sixties stoner, suspect he had found a once in a lifetime role
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Citizen Kane is breathtaking. The sets are Futurist and the scope makes it almost a potted history of the States.
Casablanca might be the perfect film.
Problem with The Shining is Jack Nicholson already starts off at 9 out of 10 on the lunatic scale. There’s no room for him to go. Plus the major plot hole at the start where the hotel owners decide the best way to deal with isolation is to isolate someone.
If you want Nicholson at his best… Chinatown.
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First half of Gone With The Wind is terrific.
Second half is about accountancy.
Some other classic suggestions that I don’t think have been mentioned:
Noir: Double Indemnity
Western: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Comedy: Harvey
Epic: Lawrence of Arabia
Suspense: Notorious (I’m assuming everyone has seen Psycho, which is a masterpiece)
Adaptation: John Ford’s The Grapes Of Wrath
War: In Which We Serve, contrasted with Oh What A Lovely War
Courtroom: Anatomy of a Murder
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Chinatown. Went to it with no/low/negative expectations, it knocked my socks off.
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citizen kane is a really good film and still feels “modern” even today, but is definitely a victim of high expectations by being named as the “best film ever” by so many critics
ditto singing in the rain, which is a genuinely great film let down by the seemingly never ending “gotta dance” number right before the climax which just kills all its narrative momentum stone dead
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seconding
Double Indemnity
Her: "I wonder if I know what you mean"
Him: "I wonder if you wonder"
and Third Man. Was walking across Vienna between two meetings a couple of years ago, busy busy, eyes on a map, looked up and saw I was under the Ferris wheel, nearly jumped out of my skin.
and The 39 Steps.
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sorry to wang on about it but here is a rather good video - a virtuoso performance - and I particularly like this comment
"Somewhere far far away in a foreign land, in a traditional looking house with an ancient computer ,a man dressed like a lumberjack plays an extremely difficult piece on an extremely difficult instrument with absolute skill and precision!!We salute you sir!!!This is what youtube is all about!"
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oops this Zither "Der Dritte Mann" virtuos! / The Harry Lime Theme at it's best. - YouTube
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There’s a Third Man walking tour in Vienna. Fascinating. When you see a fat man run into a sewer pipe (actually a culvert) it is a body double because the actor wouldn’t do it. The problem they had was that post-war Vienna was so starved they couldn’t find a fat actor. They recruited instead a chap whose brother was a butcher instead.
The theme was no. 1 in the States for three months. It enabled Anton Karas to buy his own coffee shop.
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Just noticed a load of my suggestions have James Stewart in them. Which makes sense as he’s the best actor on screen there has been. His CV is astonishing. It’s A Wonderful Life, The Philadelphia Story, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Vertigo, Rear Window, Winchester 73, Call Northside 777 (a forgotten gem which was decades ahead of its time) - all stonewall classics.
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