Wonderful thread that prompted memories of some pretty mainstream films, from Britain and America off the top of my head, I watched in my youth that stand out from the mid-'70s backward.
Most well-known but all solid films exploring interesting themes, ways of presentation, telling great stories or all three!
Double Indemnity (Excellent film noir)
The Big Sleep (Excellently excellent film noir)
An American in Paris (Surreal musical that smothers the eye)
A Touch of Evil (More noir)
Manchurian Candidate (Angela Landsbury - scary!)
Marnie (A most morally ambiguous - and slightly nasty - Hitchcock)
Bonnie and Clyde (Beatty, Dunaway, ultraviolence - kerching!)
Husbands (A wonderful character study with excellent actors)
Performance (A trip from start to finish and great scenes of pre-gentrification Notting Hill - see also “A Long Good Friday” and Docklands…)
The Last Picture Show (Exquisite study of the difficult shift from adolescence into adulthood)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Refreshingly unsensational and much-needed representation of gay relationships)
Cabaret (No explanation needed IMHO)
Nashville (A sardonic study of the music industry)
The Long Goodbye (An update of film noir set mainly in daytime LA)
‘F’ is for Fake (Fascinating study of fraud, truth and artifice)
Chinatown (Yet more film noir…sensing a theme in taste…)
Network (Just amazing and sadly prescient).
Fanny and Alexander (a beautiful study of a family dynasty, and growing up in the face of adult’s decisions)
On another day there could be a completely different list, such is the wonder of cinema!
And while they’re not old time cinema this thread made me remember the films of Hal Hartley that seemed so cool in the late-'80s but rarely seem to be referenced these days…
It was the opposite for me, walked out of Port Authority c1990, saw the steam rising from the subway grilles and was like THIS IS CAGNEY & LACEY
Of course the thing the TV never captured was the smell - it absolutely stank
The Long Goodbye is one of my favourite ever films. I was a little bit obsessed with it in my teens actually… bit weird but there you go. This scene, that constantly moving camera, those beautiful colours, Elliott Gould’s wisecracking. Gorrrrgeous!
This 15 part documentary on history of film brilliantly weaves together a lot of the movies and genres mentioned above, plus flicks from Africa, Iran, Italy, etc. Created and narrated by Mark Cousins who introduced the Moviedrome films on BBC back in the 90s. Not sure where available in UK but on Amazon and Apple in US.
I’m reminded of PT Anderson’s Inherent Vice. The sort of “unspoiled” post-war LA of the 70s that doesn’t really exist anymore. And of all the Altmans, this is easily top three.
through today’s lenses it’s a bit toxic masculinity and entitled white male ennui but once you move beyond the creeper angle it’s possibly the funniest movie ever made.
