Monochromatic adoration
I'm always a bit taken back when people tell me they "don't watch black and white movies". To me that makes as much sense as saying "I don't listen to music recorded in mono" - it's basing your enjoyment of something beautiful on something as random as technological development.
But then I shouldn't be so stuck up about it - I wasn't a fan of old movies from the moment I popped out into the world. I hardly ever watched black and white movies until I chanced to catch Casablanca on the big screen when I was fourteen or so, and I realized that monochrome isn't something you have to look past, it isn't something you have to forgive about older movies, it can be one of their strenghts.
Tastes vary of course, but I'm always frustrated when I meet someone who proclaims they can't stand black and white movies based on having watched Modern Times and Schindler's List. I started thinking about it, and as I'm taking the weekend off before tackling my next exam, and it's been a while since I made a pointless list, I can do what I love best - waffling on about movies.
So here you have it, Nine black and white movies to win you over.
Why nine? Because there were all too many movies fighting over tenth place and I couldn't stand to choose between them, and making an even longer list would take me days.
I've even done my best to steer away from guilty pleasure movies or those that I like mostly because I'm lusting after the actors - these are movies that I just think are amazingly well done and engaging and timeless. Nine of them.
09. The Third Man (1949)
..."Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."
It's funny, when it's been a while since I last saw The Third Man I only ever seem to remember the second part of the movie when we learn the identity of the titular character, but when I sit down to see it again I always get sucked into the plot despite myself. Author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten, whom I've yet to see deliver a bad performance) works his way through the skeezier parts of post-war Vienna to clear the name of his dead best friend Harry Lime, and imagines himself quite the macho detective - though he eventually finds out the real world doesn't work like that.
This movie is amazing when it comes to the visuals, it couldn't possibly have worked in anything but black and white. Shadows doen't work like that in reality, but the stark contrasts sets the entire mood of the pictures - people are swallowed by the darkness in a way I'd only seen in my dreams.
08. Duck Soup (1933)
"You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are."
Duck Soup was the first Marx Brothers movie I ever saw and I had definitely never seen anything like it - the image of Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) answering the telephone while lounging in his cracker-covered bed, an image that is never explained, has been ingrained in my mind ever since. Duck Soup is comedy anarchy. Which isn't to say it's completely nonsensical - in fact it's a clever satire on international politics - it just doesn't stop to wink at the screen going "wow look how hilarious and screwy we are", instead the Marx Brothers (including the criminally overlooked Zeppo) continue in their own furious pace and it's up to you to keep up with them.
I'm still amazed at what a range of comedy they did as a group - my favourite is of course Groucho, he was the one who had all the clever monologues and snappy repartées, while Chico endeared himself to me through my weakness for cheesy puns. But it was Harpo who was my first Marx love, channeling a zanier sort of Chaplinesque character, a mute clown full of selfrigheous justice. I can't think of any comedy group who could compare on those same terms.
07. Top Hat (1935)
"You mean to sit there and tell me that that girl slapped your face in front of all those people for nothing?"
"Well what would you have done? Sold tickets?"
There are certain things that has an eerie ability to calm me down when life gets too complicated and difficult for me - things like fuzzy socks, Bing Crosby - and Astaire and Rogers gliding across a ballroom floor. Like a certain someone I know reads this blog has told me, "When you watch one of their movies you can just relax and tune out, you know nothing wrong will happen". Sure, the wafer-thin plots are often repetitious, you can't expect any last-minute twists or life-changing morales, but that isn't the point. Astaire/Rogers movies create a glamorous world where breathtaking gowns and ballroom floors the size of aircraft carrirs and people suddenly bursting into Irving Berlin songs are commonplace, and it's so wonderful to visit that world.
But that's Astaire/Rogers movies in general, what's so special about Top Hat? It is in my opinion simply the A/R movie that works the best - the songs are wonderful, the dialogue is cute and witty, the sets, the costumes - it all works, it all fits together. And it's the movie with 'Cheek to cheek' and I dare you to not be charmed by Astaire grinning wide and struggling to hit the high notes.
06. Pygmalion (1938)
"If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate."
And from the perfect world of Top Hat we enter the slightly more dysfunctional Pygmalion. Now, I grew up with My Fair Lady so when I discovered the effeminate and lanky actor (and possible English spy, but that's an endless riddle) Leslie Howard and then as a result got my hands on Pygmalion, I did not have high expectations. After all, this movie would be what you had left if you removed the music and the big budget from My Fair Lady, right?
In many ways I think this movie succeeds in a way than My Fair Lady doesn't (not to mention the British characters are actually portrayed by British actors). Without the music and endless parade of flamboyant gowns it has the time to develop secondary characters (the scenes between Professor Higgins and Mrs. Pearce is a particular favourite of mine) and I find Howard's Higgin's far more intriguing than Harrison's. It's all in all a delightful and quirky little English movie.
05. Casablanca (1942)
"I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."
I don't want you to think I include this movie on the list out of some sense of "I ought to". Casablanca just is that great a movie, and one that influenced my love for classic movies. I'll never forget seeing this in a movie theatre (how old was I? Fourteen?) with my father, and I hadn't yet quite learnt to appreciate older movies, I found them slow-paced and stilted, and I was just blown away. The plot is so straight-forward, so basic, by all acounts it shouldn't work, it shouldn't be the sort of movie I enjoy. But somehow, impossibly, it is.
I should point out Humphrey Bogart. And Ingrid Bergman. And Paul Henreid and Claude Rains and even Sidney Greenstreet, and how the lights and shadows work (the sun casting shadows on the floor through the lettering on the window of café - by all rights they should be backwards but you don't care), the way the music pulls you in (in no other movie does La Marseillaise effect me in that way), but I'd go on forever. This movie is so highly praised for a reason.
04. Some Like it Hot (1959)
"But you're not a girl! You're a guy! And why would a guy wanna marry a guy?"
"Security!"
I believe this is the only movie on this list where the use of monochrome is an artistic choice as opposed to a neccessity - apparantly Billy Wilder thought that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon would make much more convincing women in black and white. In addition to that, the monochrome works amazingly well in convincing you that this takes place in the nineteen thirties, it would definitely not have worked quite so well in colours.
But the movie itself - I don't know about you, but I've never found men in drag inherently funny. There appears to be a market out there of people who'll split their sides laughing the moment a man puts on a dress, but I've never been one of them. This movie, however, where the you see the male characters in dresses more than you see them in suits, is one of the funniest movies I know. Because it isn't the drag in particular that makes it funny, it's the snappy dialogue, it's the way it plays with tropes (gangsters!), it's the performances (Tony Curtis, bizarrely, seems to channel Cary Grant as he tries to make Marilyn Monroe seduce him and it somehow works), and most of all it's the way the movie toys with views on gender and sexuality. As many times as I've seen it, I don't think I'll ever stop being amazed at the final scene.
03. Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)
"You and the Fraziers and the Keefers and all the rest of those rotten politicians you've got in the palm of your hand... Yes, and you've got my boys too. Whatever I teach them, you... you show me up. You show them the easiest way - the quickest way is with a racket or a gun."
"Well it's so, ain't it?"
"Yes it's so... God help us."
This might be slight cheating on my part, including this movie on the list, and so near the top too; It's not perfect, in fact it's quite flawed in certain ways (the amount of screentime devoted to the Dead End kids' antics, for instance), there are gangster movies that are more consistent in quality, but I don't know any who's central plot quite grips me in the same way. This movie was made in a time where the Hollywood movie market was gluttoned on typical "rise and fall" gangster films, so Angels With Dirty Faces had to try to do it in a new way - mostly by gently questioning that perhaps the gangsters of the day weren't born heartless and brutal, but maybe, just maybe, the society they'd grown up in had had something to do with it?
The plot seems cheesy when I summarize it - two men grew up together, and because of a specific random incident one grew up to be an infamous gangster and the other a priest - when they meet again, the wonderful chemistry between Jimmy Cagney (who's never been more charming and electrifying in a gangster role) and Pat O'Brien carries the movie (they were apparantly best friends in real life). Angels With Dirty Faces is hands down my favourite gangster movie.
02. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
"I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.
Hardboiled noir detective movies from the forties. I used to believe if I'd seen one, I'd seen them all - but then I watched The Maltese Falcon. And with every subsequent viewing I realize what an utterly perfect movie it is - the immaculate noirness, the way every single character grabs you, right down to the unlucky gunsel, the way the cast compliment each other. There's not a single thing I would change in this movie. But most of all it's the cast - oh, I don't know any other movie that has such an utterly perfect cast. You couldn't have replaced a single one of them, not Lorre, not Greenstreet, and obviously not Bogart. Just see how they play off each other in the final scenes of the movie, it's delightful to watch.
The Maltese Falcon is simply perfection in movie form.
01. The General (1926)
"Occupation?"
"Soldier.
I've realized there's sadly a lot of prejudices against silent movies out there, that's why I only want to direct you to the best one I know. Not only the best silent film, but possibly the best action comedy I've ever seen (and I tell you, I have a soft heart for Die Hard but it doesn't compare to The General). I've yet to show this movie to anyone, no matter how disinterested in movie history, who haven't gotten their minds blown, who haven't laughed or gasped or said "Jesus how did he do that?". I know, because that was how I reacted when I first saw it - I'd seen a whole lot of Chaplin, but upon seeing The General I was completely taken back by the realization that wow, there were other ways to do silent comedy, and ways that suited my tastes much better than Chaplin.
Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, an engineer who's two greatest loves are stolen from him in the civil war - his girl and his locomotive (named The General you see), and so he goes forth to try and win them both back. Man I have trouble telling you how wonderful I think this movie is. Not only is it good-looking and funny and exciting and touching, with amazing stunts and a lovely love story and lots of explosions and shooting, it's also such a quality movie in all respects. For one thing, and I don't know how interested normal people are in these things, but the plot mirrors itself halfway; There's not a single thing, not a single scene you could take out of the first half that wouldn't make the second half unbalanced. If you're a fan I recommend you watch the clips of Orson Welles (you know, brilliant and accomplished director Orson Welles) going on just why The General is one of his favourite movies.
If I haven't made you sick of this movie by waffling on about it and you actually decide to watch it some day, take my advice and get the ArtHaus edition with its beautiful score by Joe Hisaishi. After seeing that edition I've never been able to watch another.
To go on for a bit, I can finally post these paragraphs I stumbled over ages ago, from Louise Brook's autobiography:“Since childhood I have thought Buster Keaton's the most beautiful face of any man I have ever seen, and finally in 1962 I got an opportunity to tell him so. We were in his Sheraton Hotel suite in Rochester during the time he was making a commercial film for Kodak. I was speaking of a shot of him hiding under a table in The General: "You were so terribly beautiful in its tragic lighting, Buster, so out of key with your comic character -I can't understand why you didn't cut that shot out of the picture."
Although the tragic prophecy of that close-up was now visibly chiseled upon the purity of his face, he had evidently never considered people's reactions to its beauty. For an instant his expression was mystifyingly shaken up like a snowstorm in a crystal paperweight and then, dismissing the whole damned thing, with his little-boy walk he trudged into the kitchenette to get himself a cold beer."
That bit stood out to me, because I suddenly remembered that the scene Brooks describes was the exact moment I too first fell in love with Buster Keaton.
But then I shouldn't be so stuck up about it - I wasn't a fan of old movies from the moment I popped out into the world. I hardly ever watched black and white movies until I chanced to catch Casablanca on the big screen when I was fourteen or so, and I realized that monochrome isn't something you have to look past, it isn't something you have to forgive about older movies, it can be one of their strenghts.
Tastes vary of course, but I'm always frustrated when I meet someone who proclaims they can't stand black and white movies based on having watched Modern Times and Schindler's List. I started thinking about it, and as I'm taking the weekend off before tackling my next exam, and it's been a while since I made a pointless list, I can do what I love best - waffling on about movies.
So here you have it, Nine black and white movies to win you over.
Why nine? Because there were all too many movies fighting over tenth place and I couldn't stand to choose between them, and making an even longer list would take me days.
I've even done my best to steer away from guilty pleasure movies or those that I like mostly because I'm lusting after the actors - these are movies that I just think are amazingly well done and engaging and timeless. Nine of them.
09. The Third Man (1949)
..."Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."
It's funny, when it's been a while since I last saw The Third Man I only ever seem to remember the second part of the movie when we learn the identity of the titular character, but when I sit down to see it again I always get sucked into the plot despite myself. Author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten, whom I've yet to see deliver a bad performance) works his way through the skeezier parts of post-war Vienna to clear the name of his dead best friend Harry Lime, and imagines himself quite the macho detective - though he eventually finds out the real world doesn't work like that.
This movie is amazing when it comes to the visuals, it couldn't possibly have worked in anything but black and white. Shadows doen't work like that in reality, but the stark contrasts sets the entire mood of the pictures - people are swallowed by the darkness in a way I'd only seen in my dreams.
08. Duck Soup (1933)
"You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are."
Duck Soup was the first Marx Brothers movie I ever saw and I had definitely never seen anything like it - the image of Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) answering the telephone while lounging in his cracker-covered bed, an image that is never explained, has been ingrained in my mind ever since. Duck Soup is comedy anarchy. Which isn't to say it's completely nonsensical - in fact it's a clever satire on international politics - it just doesn't stop to wink at the screen going "wow look how hilarious and screwy we are", instead the Marx Brothers (including the criminally overlooked Zeppo) continue in their own furious pace and it's up to you to keep up with them.
I'm still amazed at what a range of comedy they did as a group - my favourite is of course Groucho, he was the one who had all the clever monologues and snappy repartées, while Chico endeared himself to me through my weakness for cheesy puns. But it was Harpo who was my first Marx love, channeling a zanier sort of Chaplinesque character, a mute clown full of selfrigheous justice. I can't think of any comedy group who could compare on those same terms.
07. Top Hat (1935)
"You mean to sit there and tell me that that girl slapped your face in front of all those people for nothing?"
"Well what would you have done? Sold tickets?"
There are certain things that has an eerie ability to calm me down when life gets too complicated and difficult for me - things like fuzzy socks, Bing Crosby - and Astaire and Rogers gliding across a ballroom floor. Like a certain someone I know reads this blog has told me, "When you watch one of their movies you can just relax and tune out, you know nothing wrong will happen". Sure, the wafer-thin plots are often repetitious, you can't expect any last-minute twists or life-changing morales, but that isn't the point. Astaire/Rogers movies create a glamorous world where breathtaking gowns and ballroom floors the size of aircraft carrirs and people suddenly bursting into Irving Berlin songs are commonplace, and it's so wonderful to visit that world.
But that's Astaire/Rogers movies in general, what's so special about Top Hat? It is in my opinion simply the A/R movie that works the best - the songs are wonderful, the dialogue is cute and witty, the sets, the costumes - it all works, it all fits together. And it's the movie with 'Cheek to cheek' and I dare you to not be charmed by Astaire grinning wide and struggling to hit the high notes.
06. Pygmalion (1938)
"If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate."
And from the perfect world of Top Hat we enter the slightly more dysfunctional Pygmalion. Now, I grew up with My Fair Lady so when I discovered the effeminate and lanky actor (and possible English spy, but that's an endless riddle) Leslie Howard and then as a result got my hands on Pygmalion, I did not have high expectations. After all, this movie would be what you had left if you removed the music and the big budget from My Fair Lady, right?
In many ways I think this movie succeeds in a way than My Fair Lady doesn't (not to mention the British characters are actually portrayed by British actors). Without the music and endless parade of flamboyant gowns it has the time to develop secondary characters (the scenes between Professor Higgins and Mrs. Pearce is a particular favourite of mine) and I find Howard's Higgin's far more intriguing than Harrison's. It's all in all a delightful and quirky little English movie.
05. Casablanca (1942)
"I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."
I don't want you to think I include this movie on the list out of some sense of "I ought to". Casablanca just is that great a movie, and one that influenced my love for classic movies. I'll never forget seeing this in a movie theatre (how old was I? Fourteen?) with my father, and I hadn't yet quite learnt to appreciate older movies, I found them slow-paced and stilted, and I was just blown away. The plot is so straight-forward, so basic, by all acounts it shouldn't work, it shouldn't be the sort of movie I enjoy. But somehow, impossibly, it is.
I should point out Humphrey Bogart. And Ingrid Bergman. And Paul Henreid and Claude Rains and even Sidney Greenstreet, and how the lights and shadows work (the sun casting shadows on the floor through the lettering on the window of café - by all rights they should be backwards but you don't care), the way the music pulls you in (in no other movie does La Marseillaise effect me in that way), but I'd go on forever. This movie is so highly praised for a reason.
04. Some Like it Hot (1959)
"But you're not a girl! You're a guy! And why would a guy wanna marry a guy?"
"Security!"
I believe this is the only movie on this list where the use of monochrome is an artistic choice as opposed to a neccessity - apparantly Billy Wilder thought that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon would make much more convincing women in black and white. In addition to that, the monochrome works amazingly well in convincing you that this takes place in the nineteen thirties, it would definitely not have worked quite so well in colours.
But the movie itself - I don't know about you, but I've never found men in drag inherently funny. There appears to be a market out there of people who'll split their sides laughing the moment a man puts on a dress, but I've never been one of them. This movie, however, where the you see the male characters in dresses more than you see them in suits, is one of the funniest movies I know. Because it isn't the drag in particular that makes it funny, it's the snappy dialogue, it's the way it plays with tropes (gangsters!), it's the performances (Tony Curtis, bizarrely, seems to channel Cary Grant as he tries to make Marilyn Monroe seduce him and it somehow works), and most of all it's the way the movie toys with views on gender and sexuality. As many times as I've seen it, I don't think I'll ever stop being amazed at the final scene.
03. Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)
"You and the Fraziers and the Keefers and all the rest of those rotten politicians you've got in the palm of your hand... Yes, and you've got my boys too. Whatever I teach them, you... you show me up. You show them the easiest way - the quickest way is with a racket or a gun."
"Well it's so, ain't it?"
"Yes it's so... God help us."
This might be slight cheating on my part, including this movie on the list, and so near the top too; It's not perfect, in fact it's quite flawed in certain ways (the amount of screentime devoted to the Dead End kids' antics, for instance), there are gangster movies that are more consistent in quality, but I don't know any who's central plot quite grips me in the same way. This movie was made in a time where the Hollywood movie market was gluttoned on typical "rise and fall" gangster films, so Angels With Dirty Faces had to try to do it in a new way - mostly by gently questioning that perhaps the gangsters of the day weren't born heartless and brutal, but maybe, just maybe, the society they'd grown up in had had something to do with it?
The plot seems cheesy when I summarize it - two men grew up together, and because of a specific random incident one grew up to be an infamous gangster and the other a priest - when they meet again, the wonderful chemistry between Jimmy Cagney (who's never been more charming and electrifying in a gangster role) and Pat O'Brien carries the movie (they were apparantly best friends in real life). Angels With Dirty Faces is hands down my favourite gangster movie.
02. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
"I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.
Hardboiled noir detective movies from the forties. I used to believe if I'd seen one, I'd seen them all - but then I watched The Maltese Falcon. And with every subsequent viewing I realize what an utterly perfect movie it is - the immaculate noirness, the way every single character grabs you, right down to the unlucky gunsel, the way the cast compliment each other. There's not a single thing I would change in this movie. But most of all it's the cast - oh, I don't know any other movie that has such an utterly perfect cast. You couldn't have replaced a single one of them, not Lorre, not Greenstreet, and obviously not Bogart. Just see how they play off each other in the final scenes of the movie, it's delightful to watch.
The Maltese Falcon is simply perfection in movie form.
01. The General (1926)
"Occupation?"
"Soldier.
I've realized there's sadly a lot of prejudices against silent movies out there, that's why I only want to direct you to the best one I know. Not only the best silent film, but possibly the best action comedy I've ever seen (and I tell you, I have a soft heart for Die Hard but it doesn't compare to The General). I've yet to show this movie to anyone, no matter how disinterested in movie history, who haven't gotten their minds blown, who haven't laughed or gasped or said "Jesus how did he do that?". I know, because that was how I reacted when I first saw it - I'd seen a whole lot of Chaplin, but upon seeing The General I was completely taken back by the realization that wow, there were other ways to do silent comedy, and ways that suited my tastes much better than Chaplin.
Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, an engineer who's two greatest loves are stolen from him in the civil war - his girl and his locomotive (named The General you see), and so he goes forth to try and win them both back. Man I have trouble telling you how wonderful I think this movie is. Not only is it good-looking and funny and exciting and touching, with amazing stunts and a lovely love story and lots of explosions and shooting, it's also such a quality movie in all respects. For one thing, and I don't know how interested normal people are in these things, but the plot mirrors itself halfway; There's not a single thing, not a single scene you could take out of the first half that wouldn't make the second half unbalanced. If you're a fan I recommend you watch the clips of Orson Welles (you know, brilliant and accomplished director Orson Welles) going on just why The General is one of his favourite movies.
If I haven't made you sick of this movie by waffling on about it and you actually decide to watch it some day, take my advice and get the ArtHaus edition with its beautiful score by Joe Hisaishi. After seeing that edition I've never been able to watch another.
To go on for a bit, I can finally post these paragraphs I stumbled over ages ago, from Louise Brook's autobiography:“Since childhood I have thought Buster Keaton's the most beautiful face of any man I have ever seen, and finally in 1962 I got an opportunity to tell him so. We were in his Sheraton Hotel suite in Rochester during the time he was making a commercial film for Kodak. I was speaking of a shot of him hiding under a table in The General: "You were so terribly beautiful in its tragic lighting, Buster, so out of key with your comic character -I can't understand why you didn't cut that shot out of the picture."
Although the tragic prophecy of that close-up was now visibly chiseled upon the purity of his face, he had evidently never considered people's reactions to its beauty. For an instant his expression was mystifyingly shaken up like a snowstorm in a crystal paperweight and then, dismissing the whole damned thing, with his little-boy walk he trudged into the kitchenette to get himself a cold beer."
That bit stood out to me, because I suddenly remembered that the scene Brooks describes was the exact moment I too first fell in love with Buster Keaton.