Opinion Piece - The Joys of Old Films

With all this time we're spending inside watching films, you may be running out of films a bit. Okay, maybe you aren't, there's an almost limitless amount of films to watch, but with a lack of new films coming out, you're probably running out of current films to watch. Fortunately, there is a whole world of old films for you to investigate and fall in love with. I can already hear you, "old films are boring, I don't want to watch them". Believe me, I've heard it all before, I once had a friend say he wouldn't come and see The Lighthouse with me because it was in black and white, even though the film is from 2019. But through this post, I want to try and encourage you to sample some old films. Whether black and white, silent or even full blown technicolour, there's a whole wealth of enriching, thrilling and hilarious films that the years before the sixties brought us.

Let's start at the beginning. Silent films are the hardest to recommend and I'll be completely honest, they don't always float my boat, but there's plenty of exceptions to that rule. Most famous of all the silent films are those in the genre of comedy and broadly speaking, all have aged with grace. Three figures have emerged from this era. First, Harold Lloyd. I have seen only one of his short films but he demonstrates something all these actors do, which is a dedication to pure slapstick over any risk to personal health. Most famous of the bunch is Charlie Chaplin, who pushes the comedy further than Lloyd but also, as The Kid and City Lights demonstrate, never fails to incorporate plenty of heart. My favourite though is Buster Keaton. He's most famous for his civil war comedy/action film The General, in which Keaton literally risks his life, scene after scene, just to create slapstick sequences that have never been equalled, all in a gorgeously brisk 79 minutes. I'll be honest though, it's topped by a short film he did called One Week. In this film, Keaton and his new wife attempt to build a house over the course of a week. There are things in this film that, recreated with CGI, you would say are unbelievable but Keaton does them for real and every time, the stunts are hysterical. If silent comedy doesn't do it for you though, there's some delightful weirdness to indulge in too. I'm a sucker for A Trip to the Moon, one of the most famous silent films. If paired with the right music, it's  a whimsical journey, in which a bunch of wizards battle aliens and a prime example of early cinematic ingenuity. However, on a film course, I was introduced to a film I'd never heard of called The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra. It's an early example of surrealism and truly brilliant in its strangeness. As far as niche film goes, it's up there, but give it a look if you get involved in this world. Best of all this though is that because of how old these films are, most have expired licenses and are therefore available free on YouTube! It's a super easy and cheap way to get started on shockingly accessible films.

This kind of formula is timeless, [...] though modern Hollywood don't have James Stewart.

In 1929, synchronised sound finally hits the mainstream of cinema and a whole new means of storytelling is opened up. Some of my favourite films of this period are the romances that came from it. Mostly, they come in the form of screwball romances, first demonstrated by It Happened One Night. It's the blueprint for "will they, won't they" comedy and while it feels old fashioned in some of the gender politics, the comedy remains divine. 6 years later comes The Philadelphia Story, in which we have not just Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant flirting but also a young and sensational James Stewart. You don't need me to tell you that this kind of formula is timeless, modern Hollywood comedies still lean heavily on love triangles as a plot, though they don't have James Stewart. Tangentially similar, we can drop the "screwball" part of the genre and lean into full, aching romance with Brief Encounter. Again, "couple falls in life over a brief period of time" is a genre that has persevered and in the original example, it's just as good as it has ever been. I cannot recommend it highly enough. This era of black and white films has enough darkness to indulge in if that's your thing too. If you like a contained thriller, 12 Angry Men will blow you away with incredibly tight dialogue, whereas The Night of the Hunter will gracefully break your heart across a fascinatingly murky runtime. The period has plenty of great colour films too, God knows The Red Shoes can always deserve more love, but of the monochrome school, those are just some of the best of the bunch.

This marks a great chance to narrow down the field a little bit, so let's go for the endlessly rewarding genre of film noir. Film noir was a genre that emerged in the forties and fifties, in which we see good people doing bad things in an unforgiving world. It's a genre that has had an impact on so much of our modern cinema and TV and I think it's pretty much the best genre around. The genre found its identity with The Third Man, a Vienna set thriller in which a writer goes to investigate the death of his friend and discovers that all isn't as it seems. If you liked your taste of Orson Welles from that, he also directed and starred in Touch of Evil nine years later. Charlton Heston plays a Mexican character, which has admittedly aged poorly, but the tension and superb plotting has only gotten better. To be honest, if the opening sequence doesn't grab you, there may be something wrong with you. The genre isn't all doom and gloom though, there's also the swooning They Live by Night. Take the setting of noir but throw in a tragic love story and you have a brand new take on the genre that will warm your heart and expand your concepts of what genre labels can apply to.

Most modern horror films don't have the terror that Psycho does.

As this period moves on though, we start to see directors emerge as their own sort of genre. No director of this period (or arguably any other) is more famous than Alfred Hitchcock. Stories of the man may show that he was a bad person behind the scenes but as a director, he's tough to beat. After working in the UK film industry and making gems like The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock moved to America and started making some of the best films ever made. Vertigo is often cited as one of the best films of all time and it's my favourite of his but to be honest, it takes two or three watches to properly understand the vibe of and I know that most people prefer a film they watch multiple times because they enjoy it, not because they feel like they should try to get it. Forced to narrow down my Hitchcock recommendations to just three, I'd start with Rebecca. It's an adaptation of the classic Daphne Du Maurier novel about a young woman, her new husband and the dark past he has. I knew little before going in but leaving, I was wholly satisfied. Also, good pub quiz fact, it's the only Hitchcock film to ever win Best Picture at the Oscars! Moving to slightly more underappreciated fare, we find Rope. Set in one location and presented in just a couple of shots, this tale of two college friends trying to commit the perfect murder highlights Hitchcock's philosophy of tension. With a dead body hidden in the apartment and a party about to happen, you're constantly left feeling like something awful is just around the corner. I love it. Finally, Psycho is truly worth a recommendation. You know Psycho by reputation, of course, but when was the last time you watched it? Have you even seen it? If not, I think you'll be impressed by how genuinely scary it is. Most modern horror films don't have the terror that this 60 year old film does and that is worth experiencing. Should any of these films take your fancy, be comforted knowing that there is a whole world of tension to uncover in the rest of Hitchcock's filmography.

Billy Wilder is a director who has never let me down.

Finally though, I want to spotlight my favourite director of the period, that being the incomparably brilliant Billy Wilder. At this point, I've seen eight of his films and every single one of them has been completely fantastic. If you find yourself on any "best films of all time" list, Wilder's films will come up again and again, deservedly so. His Double Indemnity is another film noir and in my eyes, the most definitive one of the whole genre. I have seen it maybe seven or eight times and the tension, chemistry and crackling screenplay are easy to adore every time. Wilder won Best Picture twice and while most prefer The Apartment, I think his best Best Picture is The Lost Weekend. It's the story of an alcoholic who is trying to go cold turkey but goes off the rails over one disastrous weekend. To explain it like that makes it sound very simple and it is, but it's also incredibly engaging. I know I was shocked by how far Wilder managed to push the concept and think it's a film everyone should check out. A more recent discovery I made though was Ace in the Hole. Here, Kirk Douglas plays a newspaper reporter who finds a man stuck in a mine shaft. Originally, he intends to get him out but when the scoop creates the story of the year, he decides that maybe this miner could stay in there a couple more days. It is bleak and darkly cynical but also very very funny and another under seen gem in the Wilder catalogue. As I said at the start of this paragraph, Wilder is a director who has never let me down. Try any of his many classics and you will fall in love with them.

I hope this has served as a great introduction to old films for you. One of the things I've loved while studying film is that when you stumble on a film you fall in love with, it opens doors to whole new worlds to explore. Maybe all of these films won't be for you, that's fine, but if even one tickles your fancy, I hope it'll take you down the path towards a huge selection of films you'd never heard of but now can't wait to explore. After all, we all have the time right now, don't we?