What are some older movies that hold up extremely well?

The Mark of Zorro (1920 film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Zorro_(1920_film)

Rear Window with James Stewart and Grace Kelly
The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart.

Now, Voyager
Casablanca
The African Queen
Twelve Angry Men
To Kill a Mockingbird

The Philadelphia Story

We watched it this afternoon. There’s one racist comment and plenty of sexist content that wouldn’t be tolerated today. But (for me) the writing and acting overwhelmed that.

You’ve got some great ones on your list. The Passion of Joan of Arc is still stunning.

How old is old?

I don’t necessarily think any of these were ahead of their time, nor do I consider that a criterion for excellence; but I do think they remain eminently watchable.

East of Eden (1955)
Ikiru (1956)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945)
On Golden Pond (1981)
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Seven Samurai (1954)
Stray Dog (1949)
The Panic in Needle Park (1971)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

Several of these are Kurosawa’s. I admire his work and consider Ikiru to be his best. The Seven Samurai is better known and much more of a crowd-pleaser.

I also still like Gone with the Wind (1939), even though I don’t look to it for history or political guidance, and The Wizard of Oz (also 1939), a cultural landmark.

Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion is one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen.

Fellini’s La Strada

^^ Emphatic second for La Strada.

And you know what? I still love 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Erroll Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, corny and historically loose as it is. And The Man Who Would Be King (1975) is a thumping good yarn with a solid moral and great performances by Michael Caine and Sean Connery. One of my all-time favorites.

Easy choice…
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb:

Looking through my collection, here are some old comedies people might not have seen…

City Lights – Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard (ZOMG she’s so HOT!!)

Kind Hearts and Coronets – One of Alec Guiness’s Ealing studios flicks. Low-tech filming with high-quality writing.

Ninotchka with Greta Garbo – I never saw a Garbo film before this. Now I know why she was so charming.

@Jeruba Graham and I love “The Man Who Would be King”!

@Jeruba

I think All Quiet on the Western Front is quite ahead of it’s time mainly because of the cinematography, the tracking shots and close ups were rarely used back then. Plus the graphic violence during the war scenes was something that Lewis Milestone got away with showing. Also, the pacing was rather unconventional too.

And the irreverent, sarcastic humor in The Old Dark House holds up extremely well in my opinion

Hopefully this doesn’t sound weird, but here’s a link to my profile on Letterboxd, it’s a website where you can catalogue all the movies you watch. Would love to see if you guys can recommend me some movies, if you have the time. If you go to the section that says “Films” and sort the list by “Earliest release date“, you can see all the classics that I’ve seen and rated.

https://boxd.it/jgo3

Recommend more movies*

How about if you check out some of the suggestions and come back and tell us what you liked?

I guess I was being kind of hasty. For some reason, films such as The Mark of Zorro, Kind Hearts, The Man Who Would Be King, A Man for All Seasons and The Lion In Winter have never really appealed to me. So I thought looking at classic movies I’ve rated might make it easier to see which classics I’d enjoy more. But I’ll definitely give those movies a shot that you all listed and let you know what I think.

Nosferato. It was banned for copyright infringement. All movies where to be destroyed. Some copies survived.

The Seventh Seal was awesome. To play chess with death. Also the character asks death about the afterlife. I loved the movie.

@Call_Me_Jay I agree with your choice of City Lights, but Paulette Goddard wasn’t in it. You’re thinking of Modern Times or The Great Dictator.

The Best Years Of Our Lives.

“Before their time”? That expression doesn’t fit my tastes very well, given how many current films I think are awful, and inventing new depths of awfulness and stupidity.

I think more of films that are good, and I like quite a few silent films. Harold Lloyd films, for example.

The 20’s through 1961?

Ok, my favorites that I’ve noted:

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951)
The Ladykillers (1955)
North by Northwest (1959)
The Apartment (1960)
The Maltese Falcon
Rear Window (1954)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Man in the White Suit (1951)
The Thin Man (1934)
Casablanca (1942)
Yojimbo (1961)
The Third Man (1949)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
The 39 Steps
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
The African Queen
Seven Samurai (1954)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

@Zaku I adore Harold Lloyd films, but the are best seen on a big screen with a large audience.

Lawrence of Arabia!

@filmfann Thanks of the correction, Modern Times was the Chaplin movie I was thinking of with hot Paulette Goddard

How the West Was Won.
Ivanhoe.

I agree that a lot of movies made in the old time can get dated. That’s a problem a lot of movies have to face. So I’m going to choose the movies that contain messages that are so thought-provoking they still hold up today.

- Detective Story (1951). The message of justice vs mercy is still relevant today.
– The Fire Within (1963). It’s about a guy who questions his existence and why he shouldn’t commit suicide if life is inherently meaningless. This is a problem I think everyone has to experience at some point in their life.
– He Who Must Die (1957), about a man who was chosen to be Jesus in a play. It really begs the question whether someone like Jesus would be appreciated today if he existed.
– Winter Light (1963), by the same director of The Seventh Seal. Basically a philosophical debate of whether God is real. The ending can be interpreted in many different ways, depending on your stance on religion.

The Searchers / Casablanca / Lawrence of Arabia.

@Nomore_lockout. Good choices!

@filmfann – You are a gentleman and a scholar sir. And a man of exquisite tastes I see : ) Or, as my old pappy used to say, any feller likes Lawrence of Arabia can’t be half bad.

Really good movie suggests!!! I have watched a few from this chat that I liked the sound of and I must say Lawrence of Arabia was a brilliant watch

@Call_Me_Jay

Just watched Ninotchka and loved it! Her comedic timing was brilliant. It’s so wild that she retired from acting at such a young age with that much talent.