"Classic" Movies that Haven't Aged Well

Breakfast at Tiffany's. Mickey Rooney's role especially. And Holly is nothing but a hooker. Like a hooker can keep up that kind of rent in NYC?

The first movie that comes to mind is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is often listed as the greatest animated film ever made but I think that's due to more to its significance in film history rather than the quality of the movie. It has its great moments like Snow White running in the woods (imagine a rated G movie this decade having the evil villain wanting to cut out the heart of a young girl. Good luck!)and the queen's transformation but everything else isn't great. The pacing is abysmal and the two main characters both sucked. Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia, Bambi and Sleeping Beauty all improved upon Snow White.

Five Easy Pieces. Tiresome 70's navel gazing cinema with an annoying central character. Only the graceful Susan Anspach comes off well. Karen Black comes off as hammy next to her.

Certain early talkies are very hard to get into. Pre-code films are fun, especially if they are very racy, but in the case of racist and homophobic moments on film, they can be amusing if clever, but tacky if mean spirited. I've met a few Asian characters who were straight out of Mickey's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and a few slow moving black's, but I don't stereotype the Willie Fung and Willie Best characters as all Asians and blacks. Sometimes those seemingly stereotypical blacks were the voice of reason and had bigger hearts than the leading characters. Every time I see a film where Louise Beavers is happily serving well to do white people, I think more of the fact that she's an angel on earth rather than the fact that she's subservient. Of course, her support to them is often what saves them in the end. Until Rhett came along, Mamie (Hattie McDaniel) was the only one strong enough to tell Scarlet off, even though Scarlet often pretended not to listen. It was clear though that Scarlet loved Mamie more than her own mother.

Caddyshack. It seemed hilarious when I was a kid. Now it's puerile.

A lot of movies from the seventies seem really pretentious and dated now. I don't like any of the Sidney Lumet films I've seen.

R6 I tried watching California Split last time it was on TCM and couldn't get through it.

I still like Five Easy Pieces. Watch it once every few years.

Citizen Kane was tiresome, to me anyway.

R7, I haven't even seen that one. Thanks for warning me :-). I didn't like Serpico or Prince of the City (yes, technically an 80s film, but it feels like a 70s one).

Dr. Strangelove

R10, what do you feel is dated about Dr. Strangelove?

A lot of Oscar Best Picture wins: The Deer Hunter; Driving Miss Daisy; Dances With Wolves; American Beauty, etc.

They now seem unconsciously racist or misogynist, even to an embarrassing degree.

Crash was a bad movie when it was released and it looks even worse now. It's theme: "we're all racist and bigoted, let's just love one another!". What a trite piece of crap!

Alain Resnais' films. I'm sure that in the 60s Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad were the epitome of hip. But now their emptiness and over-reliance on style are impossible to ignore.

Douglas Sirk movies. I get some people feel they are satire but the director himself denied that they were. They are melodrama to the max.

R14, I actually think Last year at Marienbad has held up incredibly well. It's style makes it feel modern.

R13, the other Crash was brilliant though!

R17, true! It was. I don't hear anyone talking about it now though. It's one of those movies that seems long forgotten now.

Glad the resident Social Justice Warrior has weighed in.

Suspiria also looks ridiculous today. It has a few great moments, but it tries so hard to scare you that it just comes off as flat. Inferno, Phenomena, Opera and Tenebre are all much better.

R15, the style is fine, but there's too much of it and too little underneath it.

I sort of disagree on Breakfast at Tiffany's. I still think it is a charming, highly watchable period piece. And George Peppard is possibly more beautiful than Audrey Hepburn.

Although, I totally agree with poster on Mickey Rooney. It's a near perfect film except for every godawful sequence that features him. I know it'd be considered heresy, but I really think the movie could be reedited with his scenes completely left out.

DEBBIE DOES DALLAS

Dog Day Afternoon. Such a big deal when it came out and was lauded as a classic for decades afterwards, but nobody even talks about it now.

Just as well because the pacing is terrible and Al Pacino’s acting is completely hammy.

R7, I saw CALIFORNIA SPLIT on TCM as well and thought it was OK - I don't know that anyone considers it a classic. The "classic" Altman films that I dislike are MCCABE & MRS. MILLER and THE LONG GOODBYE. Both films have mumbly leading men playing basically uninteresting characters, and only come alive when other actors (Julie Christie, Sterling Hayden, and incredibly, Nina van Pallandt) are onscreen. Both film also reminded me how much I dislike both Warren Beatty (too self-involved as an actor) and Elliott Gould (too smug and smarmy). Plus both film are boring as hell.

Give me the Altman of M*A*S*H, NASHVILLE, THE PLAYER, THIEVES LIKE US, 3 WOMEN, GOSFORD PARK, and VINCENT AND THEO.

R24 I love DDA! It moves me deeply

R20, I agree that SUSPIRIA looks ridiculous, but I've never seen an Argento film that wasn't. PHENOMENA is IMO much more ridiculous than SUSPIRIA, and it's not even scary. INFERO is so badly written it's hard to tell what it's about. Never seen TENEBRE, I don't remember much about OPERA other than the killer forcing the leading lady to watch the murders.

I must admit though that when I saw SUSPIRIA in the theater in 1977, it scared the crap out of me, mostly due to that Goblin score keeping me on edge.

ALL of the movies with Elliott Gould have not aged well, and I include MASH.

Regarding Altman, R25 and everybody, two non-classics that are excellent: THREE WOMEN (1977) and A WEDDING (1978)

A lot of Sidney Lumet's films don't age well because he tended to let actors do whatever they wanted instead of reining some of them in (like Pacino, though I do like him in DOG DAY AFTERNOON).

I recently watched a 1960 film of Lumet's called THE FUGITIVE KIND, based on Tennessee Williams' ORPHEUS DESCENDING (not a good play to begin with). Starred Marlon Brando (in a relatively passive role that doesn't suit him at all), Anna Magnani (the one decent thing in the film, in spite of her thick accent), and Joanne Woodward overacting as a local wild girl. Terrible movie really, and a waste of a good cast.

I love The Fugitive Kind - it's a Tennessee Williams campfest!

R29, I did mention 3 WOMEN in my post, and while I don't think it truly succeeds and it's an obvious borrow from PERSONA, it's fascinating to watch. The performances are superb from top to bottom. A WEDDING is nicely done I think, but not that memorable.

The Parallax View: A strange combination of confusing and tedious.

The Greatest Show on Earth: This giant, stinky hunk of Limburger took home the Best Picture Oscar!

I guess so R31 given the nasty, bigoted supporting characters (if Victor Jory had a mustache, he'd twirl it), but for campfests, SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER is much more fun.

Speaking of a "giant hunk of stinking Limburger" - THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, camp value notwithstanding.

Another Best Picture Oscar WTF - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. It feels like 80 days worth of movie.

R29, did you like Short cuts?

R27, I loved Inferno because it completely throws away plot logic and doesn't try nearly as hard as Suspiria. What could be crazier than drowning in a pond in central parks while rats are eating you alive? Oh right, having a guy run out of his house and STAB you while all that happens. The ending is the worst part of the movie, i'd give it 3.5/4.

R36, I think SHORT CUTS is a superbly made film, but I found it to be incredibly misogynistic and misanthropic. I'm sure that was intentional given the source material, but the scene where Julianne Moore emotes while bottomless struck me as just crass. Now THE PLAYER has a lot of unpleasant characters as well, but I felt Altman had earned his right to stick it to Hollywood after the way he was treated.

R32, A Wedding is very good, especially if you're related to people like that.

Jurassic Park

I'm R29, and I did NOT post R39

Close Encounters of the Turd Kind. And most other Spielberg movies. The man isn't an adult and shouldn't be directing movies, period.

A Streetcar Named Desire, doesn't appear to have aged well at all. A few years after the film was released Marlon Brando said in an interview that it looked dated, so I guess even for it's time it was over the hill.

"Give me the Altman of M*A*S*H, NASHVILLE, THE PLAYER, THIEVES LIKE US, 3 WOMEN, GOSFORD PARK, and VINCENT AND THEO. "

I'm not the first to mention M*A*S*H, but it deserves a more serious ripping than the first guy gave it.

I thought it was hilarious and irreverent when I first saw it as a teenager, now Hawkeye and Trapper just seem cruel, and hideously unfair. They're horrible to anyone they see as being on the side of the military establishment or who isn't as cool as they are, even if they're a decent person, they publically humiliate Hot Lips Houlihan just because she's a career army nurse.

When I was an idiot kid they seemed delightfully anti-establishment, now they look like a couple of adult male Mean Girls, picking on the uncool.

R44 Hawkeye and Trapper from the movie are pretty much what a lot of adult males are today.

Unpopular opinion here: Brokeback Mountain. I tried to watch a few months ago, it really does look more like The Gay Cowboy Movie. (I can't be the only one on here who thinks this).

R46 the first time I watched BBM I felt it was one of the most joyless movies I'd seen in a while. Even the scenes of them on the mountain alone felt like it was completely lacking in happiness for the moment. Maybe it was the acting or directing or script, I don't know.

I tried to rewatch The Grifters. I couldn't get through it.

Citizen Kane owns this thread.

And, another vote for Five Easy Pieces.

"Modern Times", with Charlie Chaplin's then-wife (?) Paulette Goddard (looking very fetish-y) in the leading lady role, an "orphaned Gamine" who's supposed to be about 14 or 15.

"Modern Times" definitely views as quaint now. And I agree with you about Paulette Goddard. Chaplin's "City Lights" holds up much better.

I loved Breakfast at Tiffany’s when I first saw it as a teen, but now Audrey Hepburn’s character seems fey and unbelievable. She’s supposed to have been a hillbilly, but there’s not one glimpse of small town left in her, even when she’s been drinking. Also George Peppard is humorless and controlling. I guess I’m a grumpy old person, but the whole “free-spirited” thing seems very forced and artificial. I can see how the movie has been a blueprint for young women and the dumb sugar baby trend. They think prostitution is so whimsical and glamorous.

Anna Nicole Smith would have been the perfect Holly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, wouldn't she? *Sigh*

R44, I could not agree more about M*A*S*H. Incredibly misogynistic in a way that the TV show (whatever its other faults) was not. Also, the Frank Burns character is not portrayed as a lovable buffoon but as a weak, desperate man in a very dark place. Duvall gives him such humanity that the last thing you want to see is two country club assholes picking on this mentally unstable person.

R53, it makes sense that Marilyn Monroe was what Capote had in mind for the part.

Of the Newman-Redford movies, I much prefer The Sting, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has taken on such a "classic movie" status, no one will admit they don't like it for fear they'll be ridiculed.

I saw Butch Cassidy in a re-release in 1973, and always thought it was a glorified TV show, so I was never a fan. A few months ago I sat through it with two friends who used to salivate when they saw this "masterpiece" on TV 30+ years ago. WELL! Both of them came away with "a what was I thinking?" comment. As young adults they loved what they were told they must love...as seasoned moviegoers they agreed that Butch Cassidy had not aged well.

The Blue Angel.

I agree with R6 even though I became a movie nut in the 1970s. The worst for me is "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"--the whole rage-against-the-man culture is rather facile. The performances by Nicholson and Fletcher are remarkable, true, but the overall moral is heavy-handed.

^^^ And it contributed to the predicament we are now in of never putting mentally ill people in institutions unless they’ve killed a few people.

R58, I think the 50s, 60s and maybe early 70s are the peak of film. I rarely watch anything made before the 50s and I think it marks the beginning of truly modern film.

Okay, it's not a classic ("The Secret of My Success") but "Working Girl" is considered one I guess. Both films are about two ambitious people who try to climb the corporate ladder (Michael J. Fox in Secret and Melanie Griffith in Working Girl). They're supposed to be likable and hard workers and the characters we identify with, but they prove to be even more calculating and underhanded than the so-called villains in their respective films (Richard Jordan in SOMS and Sigourney Weaver in WG). Fox's character in Secret is so entitled.

In fact, I would argue that Sigourney's character in WG, Katherine Parker, has become much more sympathetic over time.

I guess the messages of these films didn't age well.

Bump.

Of the Oscar Winning films of the past 30 years, I think "Dances With Wolves" is aging badly. It is overly long and episodic, and when you think it is about to end, it opens up a brand new plot. In fact, it's aged so bad that I couldn't think of the name off hand and had to look it up.

R63, I feel like the seventies was the last time the oscars consistently rewarded actual classic films. Goodfellas losing to Dances with the Wolves is just the typical oscar BS we have come to expect for the past few decades.

Working Girl was kind of a mess when it was released, but it was filled with pleasures and effective sentimentality, and it has aged perfectly. It was always a B-picture, a "women's movie".

Raging Bull is probably the most overrated movie ever made. I think Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Bringing out the Dead, Casino have all aged better than that movie. It looks great with the black-and-white cinematography but the movie is just fat De Niro acting like an ass threatening to beat people up. There's only about 10 minutes of that I can handle.

We're practically ready to burn every copy of GONE WITH THE WIND now, it's so dated and racist and sexist.

The Towering Inferno (1974). Soooo dated!

The English Patient

The English Patient was a complete piece of shit when it was released. How could it get worse than 0/100?

The Wizard of Oz. Awful, mind-numbing garbage.

Raging Bull. Overrated Scorsese movie with De Niro's predictable schtick. Pretentious crap masquerading as great cinema.

Here's two unpopular opinions about The English Patient:

1) it actually was a good movie, though not as good as the book

2) the worst thing about it was bleached-blonde Kristin Scott Thomas, who was totally miscast

R22

The other thing I'd like to point out about BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS is that it is one of the few old classics that goes over well with younger audiences of today. Show them something like SEVEN YEAR ITCH and they'd be bored shitless except for the quick clip of Monroe's dress flying up.

Pussyeater is a good movie

That's because The Seven Year Itch is terrible, r73. The only thing worth watching is Marilyn and its not much of a role or a script. We tore it apart in a similar thread last year.

Seven year anal itch is good too.

Driving Miss Daisy and American Beauty I think are still terrific. Still love GWTW and have known about it's skewed vision of the Old South since I was 12. Wizard of Oz remains pure magic with some of Hollywood's truly greatest talents.

No one thinks Butch Cassidy is garbage like I do?

"ALL of the movies with Elliott Gould have not aged well, and I include MASH."

Looks like Barbra Streisand stopped by to comment...

Maybe I just grew out of his movies, but I don't think Mulholland Drive has aged very well. I find myself bored of it when I try to re-watch it. The rhythm of the movie is weird compared to his other movies. You can tell by watching it that it was originally made for tv.

I think Barbra and Elliot are still friendly -- he was seen at one of her concerts.

Streisand was always pulling for Elliott Gould, she wanted him to succeed so she wouldn't have to 1) Pay for his endless analysis sessions with a shrink (during marriage) 2) Bail him out financially when he flipped his lid on movie sets (after divorce)

I was going to say "The Net", but apparently i'm wrong.

R78

I didn't like it at the time either. That music which didn't fit in well and it basically was a 2 hr excuse for Newman to show off on film about his latent feelings for men.

Burglar

TRUCK STOP II

I guess it's because they're all dead and nobody really wants to whack off to dead guys.

R68, another one was Earthquake.

Guy is married to the boss’ daughter, a childish woman in her late fifties, maybe? She is a spoiled, whiny daddy’s girl that has ridden Daddy’s coattails all her life. Her husband, Charlton Heston, hates her. He meets up with a single mom, young enough to be his daughter, who says she’s not looking to place any demands on him and isn’t asking for any ties. This makes her cool, unlike the old wife.

In real life, at that time, a single mom with a kid would be looking to plant her hooks in a guy like that. The idea that a hot young thing with a little kid “doesn’t want anything” is asinine. Why else would she be going with Grandpa Heston? That’s a male director and male writers’ fantasy. A lot of the dialogue is obviously written by guys, in between writing out child support checks to their embittered ex wives.

And he would never leave his wife, because his job depends on her father. In the end, he has to save the infantilized, screechy harridan of a wife, reluctantly and begrudgingly.

Which is another stereotype - any older wife that gets cheated on with a younger woman deserves it, because she is a crazy bitch with nothing going for her. The marriage’s failure is 100% on her, 0% on him. Although he’s the one that’s cheating, he’s right and she’s wrong. Even the wife’s father seems to respect his son in law more than his own daughter.

You can just see the writers saying, this is based on my bitch ex wife. The older wife is portrayed as a villain twirling the ends of her mustache. There’s absolutely nothing good about her. She exists to ruin everybody else’s fun. That’s a really 1970s concept. She’s like the old cliche, “take my wife, please.“

The only good thing is when the young woman’s lover goes after his wife, and she moves on, not knowing what happened.

Walter Matthau, playing a background character, a “funny drunk.” That’s also gone the way of the dinosaur, although Matthau does a wonderful job with it.

Hocus Pocus was listed as Halloween Classic...saw it last night. Fun characters, idiotic plot and resolution.

"Except for Anthony Hopkins, "Silence of the Lambs" is a mess. Jodie Foster's fake suthun accent; confusing editing; comical supporting actors. And the offensive 'killer tranny' plot is cringe-inducing.

No wonder it's been so ripe for parody through the years.

Sleepless in Seattle.

She’s a creepy stalker.

You’ve Got Mail is way better.

#87 = Betty Broderick, posting with the contraband smartphone she hides in her vagina.

R89, it's not even Jonathan Demme's best movie. I would say Something Wild is much better (and I've heard Stop Making Sense is amazing).

I remember liking Demme's "Citizen's Band" a/k/a "Handle With Care" with Paul Le Mat and the wonderful Ann Wedgeworth many years ago. It's hardly ever shown nowadays though. Even though its CB radio is very dated, it was a lot of fun I recall. Yes, "Something Wild" is very good, too.

Also, "Melvin and Howard" with Jason Robards, Paul LeMat and Academy Award-winning Mary Streenburgen, who is really charming and funny.

correction, Steenburgen

"The first movie that comes to mind is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. "

Not really. It's as fresh and entertaining as it was when it came out, maybe not to YOU, but I think most people would agree it's still amazing. And the animation is wonderful.

"I thought it was hilarious and irreverent when I first saw it as a teenager, now Hawkeye and Trapper just seem cruel, and hideously unfair."

Yes, the "heroes" of that movie are insufferable assholes. I found the movie funny when I was a teenage too. But now I think it's dreck. So much about it is awful and stupid. Hawkeye, who, played by homely, unwashed looking Donald Sutherland, is supposed to be a chick magnet. A character named "The Painless Pole (he's Polish) " thinks he might be gay and wants to commit suicide, so his buddies get him drunk and enlist one of the nurses (Nurse "Dish") to fuck him good in order to snap him out of it. The "prank" they pull on "Hot Lips" Houlihan would be classified as sexual assault today. Father Mulcahy is "Dago Red" and a black character is "Spearchucker Jones." Racist, sexist, homophobic...what a movie! But back when it was made all that happens in it was considered humorous.

R96, lol really? The animation is still wonderful? Hardly. It looks mediocre even compared to the Disney movies that came out a few years afterwards. And I know very few people who DON'T notice how irritating Snow White's speaking voice is.

I find "Snow White" extremely creepy now, because the heroine is drawn to look twelve years old, and at the end, a fully grown man kisses her and carries her off in his arms.

Funny, every depiction of Snow White outside of the film itself makes her look more grown up, but in the film itself... she looks twelve. Or younger.

R99, Mary!

idk if it's aging terribly but I watched Goodfellas for the first time recently and I found it extremely boring

not sure I agree with Silence of the Lambs, I watched that movie in college a few years ago with a bunch of my friends and we all loved it

As of today, Blade Runner.

"lol really? The animation is still wonderful?"

Yes, it is. It was made in 1937, the first full length animated feature. That needs to be taken into account. Of course animation would become more detailed and sophisticated in due time, but that first effort was overwhelmingly successful. As for the appeal and worthiness of "Snow White"...well, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The American Film Institute ranked it among the 100 greatest American films, and also named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 2008. Not bad for a movie that's "mediocre."

As for Snow White's voice, I thought it was just overly cute and girlish. I have no idea how old she was supposed to be but she seemed to me to be a teenager maybe, with a cutie pie voice. ,

I love Orson Welles and "Citizen Kane", but have watched "The Lady from Shanghai" twice (hoping I would "get" it the second time) and still think the story and acting are pretty dismal. Yes, the hall of mirror scene is cool, but what about all the rest?

R103, the AFI lists are pretty ridiculous. Yes, it is a HISTORICALLY important movie. Nobody denies that. But as far being a great movie, no, I don't think so.

Probably not considered classic but I loved it when it came out - "St. Elmo's Fire". It's embarassing.

R102, that reminds me--I watched Blade Runner recently and it's really not as great as some of its defenders think it is. It is a good movie, not a great one. Visually, it's one of the greatest movies ever. But there is little depth or even a story.

"Probably not considered classic but I loved it when it came out - "St. Elmo's Fire". It's embarassing."

Ewwww, St. Elmo's Fire! That's one of the worst movies ever made, a ghastly time capsule from the eighties.

"idk if it's aging terribly but I watched Goodfellas for the first time recently and I found it extremely boring"

R101, you're either an idiot or you know nothing about great film making. I'll check two, don't talk.

R4, you must be talking about those Magic Negroes that Lee complains about.

R6 I thought Sidney Lumet’s films were quite varied, the pretentious and European high-cultural movies and the box-office-chasers.

All movies date.

R1, R4, R22 You'd have to be a hypocrite if you hate the Japanese character in 'Breakfast at Tiffanys' and you condone Justin Blackface Trudeau.

R52 Audrey Hepburn was unbelievable in Breakfast at Tiffany's because she only tookthe role because Monroe was incapable of doing it.

Blake Edwards wouldn’t say no to casting Hepburn because every money-hungry producer in the world wanted her between 1953 and 1964.

I happen to think the movie was tacky and over-long and that Blake Edwards was an utterly tasteless, heterosexist dumb pig and that every one of his movies over 30 years stunk.

"Magic Negroes that Lee complains about."

Is David Ehrenstein here? <3

^ Is Ehrenstein interesting?

Spike Lee used it in 2001.

"Amadeus". It's like everyone is on cocaine.

Because they were, R115. It was 1983/4.

For a brief period, SNOW WHITE was the highest-grossing film in Hollywood history.

Snow White is beautiful dream to me, but it feels like there are very very very dirty subliminal things going on.

The great English auteur, Michael Powell said that Disney's animated way of stretching reality was revolutionary way back in 1938.

Of course Seth McFarlane is alert to those 'dirty subliminal things', R118—

OP, what makes a "classic" movie is a completely subjective opinion so it's completely natural that our opinions will change as we become more experienced in the ways of the world.

I was an impressionable child excited by all the color and movement on the big screen in 'Lawrence of Arabia'. But now that I'm a jaded, celibate sado-masochist, I can appreciate different aspects in TE Lawrence's well-crafted, multi-faceted story.

R67, by all means accuse GWTW of being racist, but in what possible way is it sexist? All of the main women in it (Scarlett, Mammy, Melanie, Scarlett's mother, Belle) are stronger than all of the men, and I include Rhett in that. Scarlett and Belle are even successful businesswomen.

Breakfast at Tiffany's survives on some of its iconic moments, including the credit sequence, the brilliant score, and the gorgeous finale. That's good enough for me.

Oh, and Peppard as a male prostitute.

Didn't they make George Peppard straight in the movie?

"I find "Snow White" extremely creepy now, because the heroine is drawn to look twelve years old, and at the end, a fully grown man kisses her and carries her off in his arms."

Oh honey, when I was 12 I wanted an older man, too!!!

I say, more power to her!!!

I've always thought Snow White would be a better movie if they re-dubbed her speaking and singing voice, and it would be more popular with today's kids...

R125, it's kind of funny you say that. There is a Mae West quote of her sharing a similar sentiment: " Snow White made millions and if I voiced her, it would have made even more money." LOL ok Mae. Someone else voicing Snow White, yes. But not a whore.

Didn't Mae West also say something like "I used to be Snow White but I drifted"?

When Harry Met Sally

“I asked her where she was when Kennedy was shot & she said “Ted Kennedy was shot?”

Very outdated. Not to mention sharper image, karaoke, Carrie Fisher pulling a Rolodex out of her purse.

And poor old Shakespeare & Co. Books. RIP.

Yes, Peppard was straight in the film, but he was still paid by Patricia Neal to fuck her.

R114, David Ehrenstein, if he's still alive, was a drunken asshole bully at the DL for many years. He claimed to be a writer and film critic. Below is a pic he photo shopped so he could claim Liz Smith as a personal friend.

DUH, R128, all TV and movies get dated in that way. Should movies that reference vinyl records, Datsuns, Pan Am or Chesterfields be thrown out as too dated?

R130, ewww you’re summoning IT back to the boards.

Little discussed fact about David Ehrenstein: He smells awful. Ghastly body odor and hygiene.

R129 I thought the character was gay in the book.

"[R52] Audrey Hepburn was unbelievable in Breakfast at Tiffany's because she only tookthe role because Monroe was incapable of doing it. "

She wasn't the whore from Podunk that was originally written, but the fact is that Audrey's Holly Golightly was memorable in a way that Capote didn't intend.

I think he intended the story to be about a whore, but when Holly Golightly is played by Audrey Hepburn, it becomes the story of mind-boggling personal re-invention, of going to New York and becoming such a dazzling Euro-tinged sophisticate that nobody would ever believe you're from Potato Falls Arkansas or wherever the hell you're from. That's why the movie was popular, because it gave reality to the fantasy that so many people have - going to New York and becoming a fabulous new person who is adored by everyone from artists to mobsters, and who regards any contact with the old folks at home to be a 3rd-act tragedy.

How many people have tried to be Holly Golightly? How many million gays have tried to do the same damn thing? IMHO the movie wouldn't have been as memorable with Monroe, with her it'd just have been about a whore.

R111. I don't condone Trudeau's brownface but I also am glad it didn't results in his resignation or defeat. Similarly, Rooney's awful turn in BAT is cringe-inducing to watch (and my guess is that it was back then, especially to the Asian American actors who might have played the role with comedy, but not exaggeration), but it doesn't erase the many real good performances he gave, in films as varied as The Human Comedy, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Black Stallion, and Bill, to name a few. He could be too over the top, particularly with as ham-handed a director as Edwards (I've always thought BAT succeeds in spite of Edwards), but he could also give very skilled, deeply felt performances. He was uneven over the course of history s career, but I am never bored watching him--there is a life-force in him I find magnetic.

R134 You haven't convinced me.

You claim you don't condone Trudeau's deplorable, tasteless use of blackface as a joke. Yet, you obsess over a 50 year old example of a tasteless joke.

R131, I'd welcome Ehrenstein back in a minute. Like Rosie O'Donnell, he's mentally disturbed and fun to fight with. And we can't smell him online.

R135. What's with "obsess"? First time I've even posted about it. I don't like Rooney's performance, I wish Trudeau hadn't put on brownface. End of story--I nonetheless think we'll of both, the first as an artist, the second as a politician. You seem to be the one who can't let go of the issue--and are trying to force equivalence so.

Well of both.

Arthur (the one from the 80's) is painful to watch now that I've spent a lot of time around trust fund drunks.

R139, was it worse than the remake with Russel Brand?

Last Tango in Paris. Overblown movie that, for some reason, Pauline Kael thought was the sexiest movie ever and the start of a new kind of movie. She was dead wrong. It's very good in places but the last thing I would call it is sexy.

R120, R139 The movie hasn't changed; YOU have changed.

Deliverance. Maybe it was a bad movie at the time, but the years have made it worse. I never got why this movie was even made.

R143 Deliverance was half a century ago.

The movie's publicity put it out that Burt Reynolds would go nude and have ramming sex with other mountain-men.

It was a big disappointment.

R133, You are very right. Excellent point.

I don't think the character in Breakfast at Tiffany's is supposed to be gay, and I just read it recently

Gone With The Wind was and is a load of racist crap. It portrayed a South that never existed, and certainly not one that advanced any concept of human dignity. It’s a propaganda piece for fascism. Good riddance to its author, mowed down in the streets of Atlanta by a taxi. She died due to her injuries and delay in treatment to get to a “white” hospital.

"Deliverance. Maybe it was a bad movie at the time, but the years have made it worse. I never got why this movie was even made."

What makes you think "it was a bad movie at the time?" It was regarded at one of the best movies of 1972. And you "never got why this movie was ever made?" It was based on a best selling novel by James Dickey. I guess that's one reason it got made. "Deliverance" is a great movie and still holds up today. You don't seem very bright.

"Gone With The Wind was and is a load of racist crap. It portrayed a South that never existed, and certainly not one that advanced any concept of human dignity. It’s a propaganda piece for fascism. Good riddance to its author, mowed down in the streets of Atlanta by a taxi. She died due to her injuries and delay in treatment to get to a “white” hospital."

Boy, are you an idiot. "A propaganda piece for fascism?" That's pretty dumb. And I don't know where you came up with the bullshit about Mitchell dying due "delay in treatment to get to a "white" hospital." Actually it will be good riddance when you kick the bucket. You sound like a total ass.

I hated all these movies the first time around.

My own embarrassment is over my infatuation with Bertolucci movies. Most of them are just plain bad on repeat viewing.

The above poster who slams Margaret Mitchell should know that Mitchell was a contributor to Morehouse College to assist young black men attend medical school.

And one of Mitchell's nephews continued years later with a $1.5 million donation to Morehouse.

[quote]"Gone With The Wind was and is a load of racist crap. It portrayed a South that never existed, and certainly not one that advanced any concept of human dignity."

You should hunt down some of your teachers and give them a vicious slapping. Please look at the title of the book/movie. Mitchell is saying that the winds of change came through and now this lifestyle that is being portrayed is gone.

Ferris Bueler's Day Off was one of my favorite movies. Over the years I've tried re watching it and I can't see why I loved it so much.

R152 I grew up poor, in the south underSegregation. I don’t need your “woke”nonsense to tell me what racist trash it is.

Praising her and her family for “charity” doesn’t reduce nor diminish her role in perpetuating Jim Crow and racist stereotypes.

R154, you realize that "Gone With The Wind" is a work of FICTION, don't you? It was to be read as entertainment (that's what the movie was too; a source of entertainment, not a documentary). It's not a history textbook. But you're taking it as seriously as if it were

I want to hear what R154 thinks of Show Boat. (ha ha ha).

1) All Steve McQueen movies

2) MASH is a snobbish, fatheaded, misogynistic disgrace.

Stop arguing & hurling insults about movies with obvious trolls trying to ruin a thread by riling you up. Could you, for just once in your life, stop answering trolls and derailing our threads?

R155 Good god you’re stupid. What will you praise next, books that extoll the German point of view during the Holocaust “it’s just fiction”

How about a light hearted musical about the mass murder of Peron’s enemies and the selling of the orphans abroad? It’s just MUSIC.

When you glorify false history, you define and redefine the facts in the mind of the public.

The Graduate

I screened the Criterion Blu-Ray of Dressed to Kill to my friends.

They found it transphobic and racist.

R159, Good God you're a hysterical twat. "Gone With The Wind" is not nearly as dangerous and evil as you think it is. I seriously doubt "the public" regards GWTW as historical fact. However, if GWTW upsets you to this degree I suggest you talk it over with a good therapist.

I suggest you talk more with people who lived under segregation and experienced the toxic effects of propaganda. You’re too young or too ignorant to know anything about this period, or what glorification of this period has done,

Painting the South as a victim is exactly the nonsense Trump uses in his “very fine people on both sides” nonsense. It’s false equivalence.

Praising this trash is no different than praising any other Fascist writing.

Another vote for "The Graduate." The whole premise of the movie (college grad can't decide what to do with his life) is historically incorrect. In 1967, with the Viet Nam War raging, Uncle Sam decided what college graduates did for the next two years. Unless Benjamin got into grad school ASAP, he wouldn't have had a chance to fuck Mrs. Robinson cause the gobmint would own his ass.

Last Tango in Paris. Even before #MeToo, it was hard to watch a bloated, middle-aged Marlon Brando verbally abuse young and beautiful Maria Schneider when she could do so much better. In what world, other than a fictional one written by a straight middle-aged white man, would a woman put up with that? This was a very successful movie in the 70s. Thank god, that era is over.

Love Story. It's a soupy, maudlin, clingy, weepy mess of a movie.

Love Story was supposed to be a soupy, maudlin, clingy, weepy mess of a movie. It was a popular novel and a more popular movie, but it was by no means a ever CLASSIC. Maybe OP should define "classic."

[quote]but it was by no means a ever CLASSIC. Maybe OP should define "classic."

Maybe you're right about classic being defined, because many people consider it a classic movie.

All of Erna’s award winning movies! Daddy and Fudge are sooooo passé now!

R164 That, too. Benjamin was supposed to be the anti-establishment crusader of his generation when he was just a whiny, selfish fuck-off who left a trail of wreckage wherever he went. Some hero.

Kramer vs Kramer.

Two completely self involved and un-likeable people who should have never met fighting over a kid who hated both of them.

Funny Girl. I tried to watch it last year and had to turn the TV off after the first 40 minutes. The script packs every single Streisand cliché in the book and her acting is so fucking mannered that I wanted Mrs Brice to slap Fanny viciously and repeatedly. It's aged terribly and is unwatchable now.

Streisand should have stuck to singing. I could never stand her one-note "schtick" of playing herself.

Capote said that Holly Golightly in the novella was not a prostitute, but an American Geisha, a girl who went out with wealthy men and accepted gifts and money in exchange for her company, pretty much what we see in the film. The upstairs neighbor/narrator was merely a struggling writer, a stand-in for Capote, not the gigolo of the movie. The Patricia Neal character was invented by Blake Edwards.

R112 - but I so LOVE the party scene

R161, fuck your friends. They are dumb.

R172 You say you tried to watch Funny Girl last year but had to turn it off because the script was full of Streisand clichés. They weren't clichés in 1968 when the movie was fresh.

We can't expect movies to change in the same way that we have changed through the years.

[quote] Unless Benjamin got into grad school ASAP, he wouldn't have had a chance to fuck Mrs. Robinson cause the gobmint would own his ass.

He could become a teacher and take grad school classes part time. I started catholic high school during Vietnam and all these male teachers started showing up. We’d never seen male teachers before. Priests were in charge of parishes & school administrations, they didn’t teach. If you went to a school run by jesuits or Christian brothers you’d have male teachers but the average catholic elementary & high schools had been run by nuns. There was a shortage of nuns, as birth control pills had eliminated large families where they groomed one son to be a priest and one daughter to be a nun. It was the Woodstock generation & girls weren’t entering any convents when they could get high, have sex and not get pregnant. So all of these young men came into the high school to teach. They were all going to grad school part time at St Johns University, were dodging the draft and hoping to get married and have a kid which would further put off becoming cannon fodder.

St. Elmos Fire AND About Last Night are very 80s.

[quote] Capote said that Holly Golightly in the novella was not a prostitute, but an American Geisha, a girl who went out with wealthy men and accepted gifts and money in exchange for her company, pretty much what we see in the film.

It’s funny because the father of a coworker of mine was on the board of a hospital & Audrey Hepburn would attend their annual gala and my coworker said they had to hire a walker for her every year. A walker was a handsome gay man who was an arm draper who could make conversation and not be boorish. He would light cigarettes for his date, pull her chair out for her, order drinks for her. In those days a woman of Ms Hepburn’s age did not go to balls & galas unattended. It simply wasn’t done.

I bet Miss Hepburn needed a 'walker' in case she slipped and broke every bone in her sadly self-emaciated body,

R177, you've rather missed the point of this thread then. No matter how fresh "Funny Girl" may have seemed in 1969 it's a crashing bore to watch now and appears dated and plodding. I also maintain that the script was bad and clichéd even by 1968 standards. The only two things different about the film were that the leading lady and the character she played were both Jewish, and this were both considered unattractive by the cultural standards prevalent in America at the time. The rest of the film is just an average, by-the-numbers showbiz tale.

Very very few of Streisand's films have actually aged well. "What's Up, Doc?" might be the only one.

[quote]"What's Up, Doc?" might be the only one

R182 I concur.

R182, are you aware that Streisand was a huge star before she was in movies? Funny Girl was the movie version of the Broadway show she starred in. A large part of the movie's appeal was seeing if Streisand had what it took to be a star on the big screen. That feeling can't be recaptured today. I agree that the movie isn't much, but you should be able to at least appreciate what was at stake.

So what if Streisand was a big recording and Broadway star before her movie debut? The topic of this thread is "Classic movies that haven't aged well" and "Funny Girl", in my opinion, is one of them. It's a dated, boring mess [italic]now[/Italic], no matter how excited you or any of the other Streisand fans might have been upon its release in the late sixties.

All of you people seem very tedious and sour. If anything hasn't aged well, I would say it is you all.

Enjoy wallowing in your misery.

Only the first half of FUNNY GIRL really works IMO, mostly due to the fact that the bulk of the best numbers are there. The rest is a chore to watch, especially when Streisand strikes dramatic poses thinking she's "acting." The original show wasn't exactly a classic either.

I watched HELLO DOLLY again after a long time and, her age notwithstanding, Streisand comes off better than I recalled. Of course, almost everyone else overacts wildly (especially the horrid Michael Crawford and E. J. Peaker), except for the lovely Marianne McAndrew as Molly - she actually comes off like a human being even if she does lip sync her numbers.

Pauline Kael was in lust with Brando, which is one reason why she loved LAST TANGO so much. It is squirm-inducing, and not something I would ever watch again. In 1973 it certainly seemed extremely daring but there was nothing erotic about it IMO.

The only Bertolucci film that I find aged well is THE CONFORMIST.

R185 = as rigid in its thinking as Donald J Trump

I think the first half of Funny Girl holds up--the emergence of star Streisand as star Brice still has energy and vitality, plus, not untypical, it has the show's best songs ("I'm the Greatest Star," "People," and "Don't Rain on My Parade") The second half always was a bit of a slog and jettisoned some of the stage version's nicest ballads ("Who Are You Now?" and "The Music That Makes Me Dance") as well as the one rousing group number ("Rat-Tat-Tat"), but then the finale of "My Man" (not available, IIRC, for the Broadway show) with Streisand in utterly anachronistic hairdo and dress, in spotlight still can thrill. I agree that Streisand's acting is far from accomplished and probably neither she nor Hepburn really deserved the Oscar that year (i might have voted for Patricia Neal, as I don't think Woodward's Rachel holds up--I've never seen Redgrave as Isadora Duncan).

R189

The second half failed because (as Spielberg would say) the story has no arc.

I love Wyler and Cukor and the utterly anachronistic 'My Man' finale was stolen from Cukor's Star is Born.

True, R192, but it was sooooo much better than "This is Mrs Norman Maine."

Looks like all the Streisand elderqueen fans have been triggered by the mere mention of Funny Girl as a bloated mess of a movie.

Well done, r186.

Now that I think about it--I think Robert DeNiro's turn in Raging Bull marks the point where the connotation of "method acting" changed from what it was originally intended to be. Gain 100 pounds, grunt very loudly, threaten people and BAM! You have an acclaimed performance. It's the sort of thing that DiCaprio does all the time now in all of his roles.

I agree with all of the movies listed here except GWTW. GWTW can be racist because back then it was very racist. Duh. If anything, it's authentic to the time period. St. Elmos is a stupid corny ridiculous movie. Love that soundtrack though. R36 I love "Short Cuts".

Double Indemnity. The dialog is screwy, the plot obvious, the clothes and cars are old fashioned, and who wears their hair like that? It hasn't aged well at all.

I saw Earthquake when I was kid in Sensurround. At the time, I thought the special effects were great, but now it seems so dumb, but laughably funny, esp. the "Splat" sound when the elevator crashed.

The ORIGINAL Arthur is still fun to watch. Don't attempt the remake with Russell Brand.

I'm not even a Streisand fan, but I think Funny Girl is worth watching because the first half has a lot of great scenes and energy.

[quote]I saw Earthquake when I was kid in Sensurround. At the time, I thought the special effects were great, but now it seems so dumb, but laughably funny, esp. the "Splat" sound when the elevator crashed.

It wasn't a sound. They superimposed a cartoon of blood splattering the screen.

The only things that really work well in the 2nd half of "Funny Girl" are the numbers "Sadie, Sadie" and the wonderful "My Man" finale. Otherwise, it's too melodramatic, but not really good melodrama in its writing and execution.

The first part of the film is very enjoyable, though I don't know why William Wyler didn't use the original overture, one of the best ever during the opening credits. So it features "The Music That Makes Me Dance" which was, regrettably, cut. But it's up there with "Gypsy" and "Candide" among great overtures.

Funny Lady!

R161, sounds like you need new friends. Dressed to Kill is a blast. It's so ridiculous and campy that I can't imagine anyone taking it that seriously. Show them Sleepaway Camp next and watch their heads explode.

What's Up Doc is the only Streisand film that fully holds up for me. Funny Girl has a great first half and a big bore for the second half. I rewatched Hello, Dolly recently and it's not awful. Streisand sings the score better than anyone else ever has or ever will and looks great in the costumes. She's a little too young for the role and her comedy bits don't really soar until after the title number (she's hysterical in the scenes that follow), but I've seen far worse stage to screen transitions in my life. The film's biggest issue is insisting that even the smallest character numbers need big elaborate dance numbers to go along with them.

Funny Lady didn't start out well, r202.

Hello Dolly has its flaws, but it was a victim of the time it was released. Who wanted to see a movie like that in the late 60s? The same thing happened with Sweet Charity. I really liked it and always have and think it's only gotten better with time. I always feel bad for movies like this. They were just released at the wrong time.

R203, I always thought Dressed to Kill was (like a lot of De Palma) both a tribute and a skewering of Hitchock by way of other European directors (specifically Antonioni). It's like the plot of Psycho pushed to more extreme levels. Just watch the psych scene after the identity of Bobby is revealed--it seems to be making fun of how contrived the psych scene in Psycho was (with all the bogus Freudian psychology psychobabble).

[quote]Just watch the psych scene after the identity of Bobby is revealed--it seems to be making fun of how contrived the psych scene in Psycho was (with all the bogus Freudian psychology psychobabble).

There's always something to campy and tongue in cheek about De Palma's work. He's one of the most playful directors out there. You can tell he gets off on throwing the audience for a loop and toying with them. I love him for that. It's hard to take anything he does seriously enough to throw labels like misogynistic or racist or transphobic at him.

R209, political correctness must have been huge in the late 70s/early 80s--loads of (stupid) people protested Cruising and Dressed to Kill as being homophobic/misogynist/trans-phobic. Listen,I get if you find a movie offensive--the solution is to not watch it. The end.

I don't recall any protests about Dressed to Kill.

There were protests for Dressed to Kill by mostly feminists who thought that De Palma was trying to say that a housewife having sex with a stranger was punishable by death. Guess they didn't see the rest of the movie where a prostitute becomes the main protagonist and survives the film. If that was the message De Palma was trying to send, he sure has a funny way of doing it. Plus, he treats the Dickinson character was such genuine empathy throughout. You really do feel terrible when she's killed. It's not some throwaway death. Just like Janet Leigh in Psycho, you care for her and are invested in her story and her presence haunts the rest of the film like a ghost.

I love De Palma's films. His films remain interesting for the incredible visuals, scores, audaciousness and the entertainment factor. Call him misogynistic but look at the great roles for women in his film - Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in Carrie, Amy Irving in The Fury, Angie Dickinson and Nancy Allen in Dressed to Kill, Melanie Griffith in Body Double. Whether they are prostitutes or porno stars or bored housewives, they are interesting characters. I still think Body Double is one of Griffith's best performances.

I need a link, R212. I think you have a very big AGENDA.

Funny Girl is as fun to watch these days as any day. It's pretentious to pretend otherwise.

I thought this thread was about Classic Film.

And you guys spend multiple posts talking about "Funny Girl"???? "FUNNY GIRL"?????

That is not a classic film.

Neither is "Hello Dolly".

^^^ WELL!!! Get HER!!!

FG and HD may not be classics in the traditional sense, but they are certainly GAY classics.

And honestly, isn't GAY what it's all about?

Either way, maybe the Barbra Queens should fight it out with the he-man Barbra-haters in another thread.

Pretty sure Funny Girl is considered a classic film in most corners.

R219, no.

So, Brokeback Mountain (mentioned by someone upthread) is a classic, while Funny Girl is not a classic?

A Star is Born! (1976) Nothing like Superman tees w/hot pant shorts, Jewfros, and lots of candles in Schlitz cans.

Barbra's "For Pete's Sake" is almost as funny as "What's Up, Doc?", with delicious bits by Molly Picon and Estelle Parsons, plus Michael Sarrazin was a dish.

It's still a good movie but I watched Rosemary's Baby recently (for the first time) and it seemed so dated to me.

R224, completely disagree here. I bought it recently on bluray and it's incredible how much SCARIER it was than when I first saw it years ago (when I was in middle school). The idea of a woman having all control over her body stripped from her is terrifying and not hard to imagine, especially in today's America.

R224 but the fashions are sometimes funny. But hey, it's not as ridiculous as some seventies and eighties movies are in that regard.

Has anyone ever seen Kitty Foyle! I happened to watch knowing that Ginger Rodgers got the Oscar. It's pretty terrible.

I saw it years ago, and while I generally like Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan, I didn't think the film or the performance was that good. I think it features in a major scene Kitty proclaiming "I'm free, white and single" which unfortunately like this film used to uttered out loud.

Ginger was really good in comedies, besides her musicals with Astaire; she's terrific in "The Major and the Minor" as the woman, lacking full train fare, masquerading as a little girl to ride for half-price and gets involved with Ray Milland.

She's also terrific in "Roxie Hart", the non-musical based on the play which became the musical "Chicago".

Desperate Living

"Love Story" was dreck the day it was released and has remained so.

I tried to watch Cabaret again last night - still hate it, never understood why it was supposed to be good. My parents saw the Broadway show in the sixties and loved it, they hate the movie version too. Liza Minnelli's performance is eye popping and is sooooo annoying.

R231, Cabaret is one of those movies that is more talked about than seen. I feel like more people watch All that Jazz over Cabaret. For the record, I wasn't crazy about All that Jazz.

Rolls eyes at, R12. Ok, got it.

R67, GWTW “racist.” IT’S LITERALLY ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR! You know, 1860s?!

R146. You read Breakfast at Tiffany’s and didn’t get that the male character was Capote himself? You ought to reread it. Yes, he was gay gay gay and was straightened for the movie.

And yes, Hepburn’s character was just a whore. Reread the story especially the part when her whore-friend talks about getting the clap repeatedly.

I love the film version of Cabaret. A perfect storm of Actress/Director and supporting cast.

Gone With The Wind

I remember in high school a friend of mine, who is also gay, begged me to come watch a revival of it in the theater. He raved about it and was describing his favorite scenes and when I saw it I was as taken away by it as he was. This was in the 70's.

Now I can't watching that fucking movie. Vivian Leigh was brilliant and so was Gable but dear god. . .

r222 I feel it would be wrong of me not to correct you by stating that it was not a Jewfro but a perm. Barbra's hair in real life is straight.

R232, All That Jazz falls into the "highly acclaimed 1970s movies that no on knows anymore" category. I can't remember much of it even though I saw it twice. The only Bob Fosse movie I really liked was Lenny (1974), and if I saw it today I probably wouldn't like it. As a director, Fosse wasn't the greatest looking back. I STILL HATE Cabaret.

I didn't see Gone With The Wind all the way through until recently, and I loved it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very dated. But I loved seeing the performances of Gable, Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, Leslie Howard, DeHaviland, Butteryfly McQueen all in glorious 1939 color. A long, spectacular movie with a fantastic musical score - the kind of movie they couldn't make today if they tried.

R231, I feel like more people out there would rather watch 8 1/2 over All That Jazz any day. Another demonstration of how 70s "classics" were up the asses and minds of the adults of that decade.

I love All That Jazz and have mixed feelings about Cabaret. I do miss some of the book songs (I'd love to see what Liza would have done with "Perfectly Marvelous.") and the film feels a little too old at times. There's also something odd about a Sally who's such a theatrical powerhouse. Surely, at some point, someone would have seen her and said "that's a star." I suppose having her as a self-destructive talent is sad in it's own way, but there was something so pathetic about the Sally from the stage show who's so deluded that she really believes her mediocre club performances are going to make her into a star. I always got the feeling she'd end up killing herself (probably by accident) in a year or two after the show takes place. Liza's Sally seems like she'll keep trucking - still making big mistakes, but she'll probably get where she needs to be at some point.

All That Jazz is a great film.

I've heard people in Equity auditions give terrific auditions and yet, someone inferior gets the job. So the fact that Liza as Sally is so good and still struggling isn't too hard a stretch to believe. Plus she's an American in Berlin anyway -- it's not like that's her ticket to Hollywood or Broadway.

R241, I saw Cabaret again recently and it held up better than I thought it would. I've known a number of talented, odd people who didn't become star. Liza was a Hollywood kid, would she have had the same career if she'd grown up as the daughter of a plumber from Hoboken? The filming is fascinating--things like the half-face close-up of Liza in "Money, Money".

R155 and R195, let me see if I can get this straight.

It wrong to criticism fiction for racism and distorting history.

If a film made in 1939 is true to the brand of racism current at the time, it is accurate for the time. We should not criticize it for being inaccurate to the period in which the film takes place.

^^ criticize not criticism

Do any of you numbsculls know that Gone With the Wind was a best selling BOOK? The filmmakers didn't create the story.

Does numbskull know that this is a thread about film, not novels?

Read the second sentence, numbscull R248

It's perfectly legitimate to criticize a film for its politics. It's been happening since D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." But whatever its politics, that does not render its cinematic or historical merit invalid.

I think the point of the thread is that some films are very much "of their time" vs. those which turn out to be more prescient or universal, as time goes on.

R251, precisely. Case-in-point: all of Sidney Lumet's films. I've seen three of them (Serpico, Network and Prince of the City) and I couldn't even finish any of them. They seem very 70's and not in a good way.

Off the point of pics that haven't aged well, I'm reminded of something like Casablanca, which seems truer and wiser as time goes by...

Certainly not R253. What's remotely true to life about that movie?

I think the French Connection is a movie that slips further and further away from the public's memory, unlike The Exorcist (also directed by William Friedkin). Even Cruising is more talked about than The French Connection now. The only reason I would watch The French Connection is for the live performance by The Three Degrees.

"pics"?

I could get into a long list of situations and choices dramatized in Casablanca that we still face every day, but I'll let the song do the talking:

You must remember this

A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.

The fundamental things apply

As time goes by.

And when two lovers woo

They still say, "I love you."

On that you can rely

No matter what the future brings

As time goes by.

Moonlight and love songs

Never out of date.

Hearts full of passion

Jealousy and hate.

Woman needs man

And man must have his mate

That no one can deny.

It's still the same old story

A fight for love and glory

A case of do or die.

The world will always welcome lovers

As time goes by.

I like "picture show".

Starwars. Yes, the original trilogy.

I do believe that Variety, the showbiz bible, still refers to motion pictures as "pics"

"Even Cruising is more talked about than The French Connection now"

I don't care what's "talked about" now. That has nothing to do with a movie not having aged well it has to do with the fact that the movie is not as available to today's audiences. I disliked The french Connection when it came out, now I almost love it.

R261, maybe I should give it another chance.