I've gotten a good response to that top 10 1940s films I wrote the other day, so I'll probably make lists for the 1950s and 1960s soon. But in the meantime, I thought it might be a good idea to make a thread where I can just put my thoughts on other old films that are worth watching. Some of these are classics that barely stayed out of my top ten, some are flawed but still pretty good, and at least one I want to talk about is an engaging mess. I'll be posting about four films today, but I'll probably revisit this thread as I watch more films and make more top 10s.

If your idea of a noir detective film involves a lot of old school witty, quippy dialogue dialogue from a clever detective, films like this are where that comes from. The script, partially written by William Faulkner, is a solid one, even if the plotting is kind of iffy. This is a very "fridge logic" film. Like it's well directed and paced, so it takes you from scene to scene in such a way that it feels like it flows at the time, but the day after I first watched this, I realized I couldn't tell you much about what the overall plot was. But if you're willing to put up with that for some great dialogue, great performances, and a generally iconic film? I recommend giving it a watch.

I got this only knowing that it was a noir directed by Orson Welles, and when I watched it with a couple of friends, we kept coming back to one question: "What the fuck is this movie?" Orson Welles does his best attempt at sounding Irish as he sails a boat full of rich weirdos who talk and act like they came out of a hazy dream rather than real people. One of those guys repeatedly tries to get Orson to murder him. Welles was clearly going for something here, but as with most of his post-Kane films, the studio butchered it, doing heavy reshoots and cutting out big chunks, and whatever Welles' intentions were is lost, at least to me. But what's left is fucking bonkers. I was utterly captivated by this strange thing, trying to figure out both what it was doing and where it was going. It's not a good movie, and it's not really a bad movie night movie, but it's a strange, fascinating film that I'm glad I watched.

This film made me wonder if I should check out more romantic comedies. Katherine Hepburn is a wealthy socialite who's about to get married, but her ex husband (Cary Grant) got invited over against her wishes, a reporter with little respect for her family or their position (Jimmy Stewart) forces his way into things, and then she has to decide whether to marry the asshole she was planning to or one of the two guys who matter. The jokes hold up surprisingly well, and you get to watch three legendary actors be compelling as hell together. Hepburn and Stewart have incredible chemistry together. If I extended my top 10 1940s films list, this would probably be number 11.

A pair of mobsters hold a diner hostage, saying they're after someone who as far as anyone else knows, is just a gas station attendant. After that, a life insurance investigator looks decides to research just who he was, giving us a frame narrative and series of flashbacks reminiscent of Citizen Kane. This is based on a short story by Earnest Hemmingway, which takes up the first 20 or so minutes of the film. And if that were a short film by itself, it probably would have made my top 10. But they decided to expand it with the reporter segment, and I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I feel like the ambiguity was part of the point of the short story and filling in the gaps makes it weaker. You can also tell that the style of the dialogue shifts to something a bit cheesier once they're out of Hemmingway's words. On the other hand, the new segments are themselves a good noir film. This is one of those films you often see on "top 10 noir" lists and the like, and it's worth seeing if you are getting into the genre.

I've gotten a good response to that top 10 1940s films I wrote the other day, so I'll probably make lists for the 1950s and 1960s soon. But in the meantime, I thought it might be a good idea to make a thread where I can just put my thoughts on other old films that are worth watching. Some of these are classics that barely stayed out of my top ten, some are flawed but still pretty good, and at least one I want to talk about is an engaging mess. I'll be posting about four films today, but I'll probably revisit this thread as I watch more films and make more top 10s.

If your idea of a noir detective film involves a lot of old school witty, quippy dialogue dialogue from a clever detective, films like this are where that comes from. The script, partially written by William Faulkner, is a solid one, even if the plotting is kind of iffy. This is a very "fridge logic" film. Like it's well directed and paced, so it takes you from scene to scene in such a way that it feels like it flows at the time, but the day after I first watched this, I realized I couldn't tell you much about what the overall plot was. But if you're willing to put up with that for some great dialogue, great performances, and a generally iconic film? I recommend giving it a watch.

I got myself a laserdisc player a few years ago to stream and preserve some interactive disks, then I started collecting anime on it, then I decided to use it to check out some of those old films I'd always heard I'm supposed to watch, but never did. I was legitimately surprised by how much I got out of this, to the point where it's starting to make me angry that it's hard to find films this old on mainstream streaming services. In any case, I'm far from a film scholar, and what I've seen isn't close to exhaustive (for instance, I haven't yet gotten around to The Magnificent Ambersons, though I have a copy coming in the mail), but over the next day or two, I want to share which movies of that decade I think are worth seeing and why.

So the back of the LD sleeve opens its description of the film with "When you double cross a double-crosser, it's a CRISS CROSS," which is exactly the kind of cheese that got me interested. What I found was a damn well constructed, well directed heist film. Burt Lancaster stars as an armored truck driver who decides its a good idea to team up with a mob boss to rob his own truck in order to win back his ex-wife, who's now married to said mob boss. Do I need to tell you it goes poorly? This sort of silly plotline played straight enough that it becomes a tragedy is one of the things that makes classic noir so compelling to me.

Three homeless men try to turn their lives around through setting up an illegal gold panning operation in Mexico, doing their best to avoid attention from the authorities, criminals, and other wannabe prospectors, only to find their greatest threat is each other. A cynical, often tense non-traditional Western starring one of the greatest actors of his day at his peak. Watching Humphrey Bogart become increasingly unhinged is just great.

Making a film about people coming back from the war in 1946 was a pretty obvious way to cash in on the zeitgeist, both in terms of box office draw and Oscar wins (and it sounds like work on it started before the war even ended), but when they pull it off this well, who cares? The story follows three men, one a wealthy banker who was a low rank soldier, a poor man who became a decorated war hero, and a man who lost his hands, but has worked through his disability enough that he doesn't really think it's a big deal anymore, but is afraid everyone else might. Over the course of the film, the banker has trouble adjusting back to the mindset of a capitalist, the war hero spirals into despair as the government and society fail to do anything to get him out of the hole he thought he escaped, and the last man pitied by his friends and family and treated as if he can't do anything by himself. It shouldn't surprise you at this point that the title of this movie is ironic, and while a big Hollywood film was never going to really question the military-industrial complex or capitalism in an real, in-depth way, nor would it let a film like this have anything other than a happy ending, this film still pulls off a lot.

Fun fact: Harold Russell had actually lost his hands in a dynamite accident on a military base. Despite the fact that he had no training as an actor, he won wide praise for his performance in this film. To the point where he got nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. Possibly because they knew that no one in Hollywood was going to hire a guy with no hands in a major, non-gimmicky roll again, and he had seemingly no chance of winning against professionals, they also gave him an honorary Oscar for "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures." After he was awarded this pity Oscar, he then won Best Supporting Actor and got a standing ovation. It's still the only time anyone has been awarded two Oscars for the same role in one film.

An insurance salesman falls in love with one of his potential clients and decides to help her murder her husband for the insurance money. Billy Wilder films tend to have stylized, cheesy dialogue, but somehow, once one of his films pulls you in, it somehow flows. Like seriously, lines like:

“It's just like the first time I came here, isn't it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.”

or

“They may think it's twice as safe because there are two of them. But it isn't twice as safe. It's ten times twice as dangerous. They've committed a murder.”

just work in context. Maybe it's because everyone tries so hard to sell it that you can't help yourself from buying. In any case, this is often considered one of the best examples of film noir, and I don't disagree.

I feel like this is probably my most normy, unsophisticated pick on this list. And maybe it wouldn't have clicked with me if I had only seen it more recently after seeing other classics of the era. But I can't deny that this is a film I can go to when I'm down and feel better, and it's held up after repeat viewings over the years. It's the antidote to Ayn Rand, and about the most anti-capitalist a film could get at the time, and that has to count for something.

I got myself a laserdisc player a few years ago to stream and preserve some interactive disks, then I started collecting anime on it, then I decided to use it to check out some of those old films I'd always heard I'm supposed to watch, but never did. I was legitimately surprised by how much I got out of this, to the point where it's starting to make me angry that it's hard to find films this old on mainstream streaming services. In any case, I'm far from a film scholar, and what I've seen isn't close to exhaustive (for instance, I haven't yet gotten around to The Magnificent Ambersons, though I have a copy coming in the mail), but over the next day or two, I want to share which movies of that decade I think are worth seeing and why.

So the back of the LD sleeve opens its description of the film with "When you double cross a double-crosser, it's a CRISS CROSS," which is exactly the kind of cheese that got me interested. What I found was a damn well constructed, well directed heist film. Burt Lancaster stars as an armored truck driver who decides its a good idea to team up with a mob boss to rob his own truck in order to win back his ex-wife, who's now married to said mob boss. Do I need to tell you it goes poorly? This sort of silly plotline played straight enough that it becomes a tragedy is one of the things that makes classic noir so compelling to me.

Three homeless men try to turn their lives around through setting up an illegal gold panning operation in Mexico, doing their best to avoid attention from the authorities, criminals, and other wannabe prospectors, only to find their greatest threat is each other. A cynical, often tense non-traditional Western starring one of the greatest actors of his day at his peak. Watching Humphrey Bogart become increasingly unhinged is just great.

Making a film about people coming back from the war in 1946 was a pretty obvious way to cash in on the zeitgeist, both in terms of box office draw and Oscar wins (and it sounds like work on it started before the war even ended), but when they pull it off this well, who cares? The story follows three men, one a wealthy banker who was a low rank soldier, a poor man who became a decorated war hero, and a man who lost his hands, but has worked through his disability enough that he doesn't really think it's a big deal anymore, but is afraid everyone else might. Over the course of the film, the banker has trouble adjusting back to the mindset of a capitalist, the war hero spirals into despair as the government and society fail to do anything to get him out of the hole he thought he escaped, and the last man pitied by his friends and family and treated as if he can't do anything by himself. It shouldn't surprise you at this point that the title of this movie is ironic, and while a big Hollywood film was never going to really question the military-industrial complex or capitalism in an real, in-depth way, nor would it let a film like this have anything other than a happy ending, this film still pulls off a lot.

Fun fact: Harold Russell had actually lost his hands in a dynamite accident on a military base. Despite the fact that he had no training as an actor, he won wide praise for his performance in this film. To the point where he got nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. Possibly because they knew that no one in Hollywood was going to hire a guy with no hands in a major, non-gimmicky roll again, and he had seemingly no chance of winning against professionals, they also gave him an honorary Oscar for "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures." After he was awarded this pity Oscar, he then won Best Supporting Actor and got a standing ovation. It's still the only time anyone has been awarded two Oscars for the same role in one film.