The Black and Whites

As beautiful and perfect as the B&W photography is in Rebecca, I'd say Vertigo is at least its equal in Technicolor. Now I don't think Vertigo as an overall film is anywhere close to Rebecca's quality, but in terms of film photography and advancing the medium, Vertigo is a breakthrough revolutionary masterpiece, while Rebecca is wonderful, but nothing terribly new in terms of what came before.

And while I'm sure you knew Hitch made many films that weren't shot in black-and-white, your casual statement and conclusion that "he never really used color" is just plain false and, well, silly. You can admire his B&W work without dismissing the color. I do it all the time.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

I guess some of the contibuting factors to my favortism towards B & W's, would be that most of these movies, I watched at a young age. All movies were fasinating, ya know? I just adored every actor, and payed no attention to direction, abilities, writing, I just absorbed it all, and loved it for whatever it was. When I watch them now, all those same reactions flood in; I'm absorbed all over again.

i've missed you guys! and now i read all this Hitchcock talk and i miss you even more! i favor Rear Window and Psycho, Vertigo, Rebecca, Suspicion......and Stranger's on a Train, Dial M for Murder.....i guess i love so many of his films- except that there are a few i know well, but don't rewatch because they make me feel too tense.......like the Man Who Knew Too Much and Holden't fave - North by Northwest (tell me Holden, why do you like that one the best?). it's that "racing the clock" feeling i can do without, and hitchcock is good at that.

i'm really liking some film noir classics these days; i've seen them before, but have pulled out those i have on tape because they are "hittin' the spot"...that would be the "movie buff spot?" not the other spot.
...Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly is great! starring Ralph Meeker and a very young Cloris Leachman. another favorite film noir of mine (i've mentioned it a couple of times before) is Murder My Sweet with Dick Powell as Mike Hammer.

WE CAN'T LET THE B&W THREAD DIE!!!! classic movies lovers unite....hey holden, help me out here? LBJ? are you a classics lover as well as appreciator of the beauty of the early stars?
in a recent post to the beautiful women thread i mentioned a couple of stars who BECAME beautiful to me as i got to know them so to speak....Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis are not initially beautiful women. and there are some male movie stars from the early years who i initially didn't want to like or accept....like Clark Gable...i rejected his arrogant raised eyebrow smirk. but i fell in love with him, his characters, his style. Tyrone Powers also became pretty good looking to me. did anyone else see the resemblence to Ty Powers in George Clooney in O Brother....??

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on dance seul, on dance seul.....

Here's some of my favorites in no particular order of favorite.


Alfred Hitchcock
Wrong Man, The (1956)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Psycho (1960)
Stage Fright (1950)
Notorious (1946)
Saboteur (1942)
Suspicion (1941)
39 Steps, The (1935)
Lady Vanishes, The (1938)
Rebecca (1940)

Stanley Kubrick
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Lolita (1962)
Killing, The (1956)

John Frankenheimer
Train, The (1964)
Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)

Bogart
Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
Big Sleep, The (1946)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Casablanca (1942)
To Have and Have Not (1944)

Sidney Lumet
Pawnbroker, The (1965)
12 Angry Men (1957)

Orson Welles
Citizen Kane (1941)
Magnificent Ambersons, The (1942)
Macbeth (1948) .
Lady from Shanghai, The (1948)
Touch of Evil (1958)

Akira Kurosawa
Seven Samurai (1954)
Ikiru (1952)
Rashomon (1950)
Yojimbo (1961)
Sanjuro (1962)
Stray Dog (1964)
High and Low (1963)

Frank Capra
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

John Ford
Stagecoach (1939)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Thing From Another World, The (1951)
Third Man, The (1949)
8 1/2 (1963)
White Heat (1949)
M (1931)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Hud (1963)
Knife in the Water (1962)
Breathless (1961)
Asphalt Jungle, The (1950)

some of the movies that were made in the 70's and on that I love that were filmed in B&W.

Young Frankenstein (1974)
Manhattan (1979)
Ed Wood (1994)
Man Bites Dog (1992)
Chan Is Missing (1982)
Elephant Man, The (1980)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
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Wong Amat Tower Condos Pattaya

lot's of bogie films have been on cable lately; last night i watched To Have and Have Not. i've seen it many times and it's always terrific. this is Bogart and Bacall's first film together and you can sure see and feel the chemistry;Bacall is just lit up and smokin'! and bogie is so cool. anybody know who the piano player is?
i think this is my favorite Bogart flic. he is one person i would love to have been able to meet/know. i know he has a son, and i assume it was with Bacall - anybody know?

Talk about a generation gap. The piano player in To Have and Have Not is none other than Hoagy Carmichael, who was a very famous jazz singer/songwriter/musician in his day, and turned up in a few films too. His most enduringly famous compositions are probably "Stardust", "Skylark", "Lazy River", and "Georgia on My Mind" (thanks to Ray Charles' covers). He wrote dozens of 'em. Other than To Have and Have Not, his most visible film role is in the post-War classic The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) where he plays Uncle Butch, the piano-playin' bar owner.

Betty Bacall and Bogie had two children together, Stephen and Leslie. Stephen is an author, writing two mysteries and a memoir/biography called Bogart: In Search of My Father.

Bacall also had a son with her second husband, Jason Robards Jr. His name is Sam Robards, and he's a working actor. His most visible recent role was as the father who adopts David in Spielberg's A.I.. My favorite from him was as Chris Peterson's (Chris Elliott) best friend Larry Potter on the short-lived but often brilliant FOX sitcom "Get A Life" back in the early '90s.

The Thing that I love about To Have and Have Not (1944) which is in my top 100 films is Walter Brennan I love the guy so much I think he adds the right touch and ingredients to Bacall and Bogie all that stuff about "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" was brilliant and had me laughing big time also Howard Hawks brings that snappy Dialogue to the film which I love so much.
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Ecigarette 123

what do you mean, holden? i'm a few years older than you are, and although i wasn't yet born for the debut of all these wonderful classics and the actors in them, i learned about them because of my affinity for movies of their time! i didn't know about this particular musician, but DO NOW because i asked..and could learn more about him from this point. so what is the"talk about ageneration gap" comment for? don't we all learn as we go, depending on what interests up enough to seek further information? i could see the comment making more sense for some teenager who knows nothing of classics........??????

I meant generation gap in the sense that Hoagy Carmichael is not generally known today, yet in the '40s he would have been one of the most familiar names in popular music. I meant that unlike a Bogart or Cary Grant, who have transcended generation gaps and still have some real marquee value, Carmichael has apparently been lost in the seas of time the past fifty years or so.

I wasn't directing so much at you in particular, 'cause I know you are one of the people on this board who actually watch many older movies with some regularity, but to this place and time more broadly, and lamenting how strange it is that somebody as huge as Carmichael was then could be completely unknown a couple generations later.

Calm down, put out your flaming face, all is well.


P.S. - Hoagy Carmichael is super cool, pass it on.

betty bacall? was it not lauren bacall? or is that some nickname/true name?

there was something about lauren i liked above and beyond the likes of grace kelly. grace looked too delicate, too ... snooty. ultimate ice queen. people claimed she smoldered beneath but even when she raised her chin and yelled - i couldn't see it. it was like a barking terrier.

but lauren ... she seemed made of stronger stuff. demure, pure, but sly. you FELT the wicked in her, sensed she'd kick your @ss if she had to and NOT doubt it. smokey. even gamine and gauche and young ... she was somethin' else.

reminds me of a young version of kathleen turner ... though kathleen's a tad more campy/vampy ... prolly just the roles she chose.

sigh. i'm all reminiscing about bogey and bacall now ...

Lauren Bacall's real birth name was Betty Joan Perske before it was changed for Hollywood. Every freind she's ever had called her Betty, not Lauren. She chose the Bacall part of her stage name because it was her Mother's maiden name (though she added the second 'L').

And yeah, Bacall was the bee's knees, Man. One heck of a broad.

just misunderstood your comment, holden, thanks for the further explanation and reassurances, heh heh. i've doused my angry face flames and feel like my normal smiley self.

and thmilin, i remember reading about how bacall had a lot of voice training to lower her speaking and singing voice...i think they even recommended smoking to help make it more husky. when she sings in the very last scene of To Have and Have Not......i can't help but think of her efforts to lower her voice. she sure is sultry....she culd probably kick holden's butt? just kidding H.

Nice Topic Guys, Chalk me Up as a massive fan of the B&W style and classic movies in general. I watch more classic cinema than modern and find B&W brings a style and feel that draws you into the characters.

The lighting and camera angles become so much more defined. The mood and in many cases "gritiness" of a subject is brought to light far more effectivelty with the use of a colourless frame.- eg: Noir classics like Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY or John Huston's THE BIG SLEEP would lose all there appeal in colour.

I adore what Frankenheimer did with the B&W format in the mindblowing SECONDS. Jean Luc Goddard's BREATHLESS and Jean Pierre-Melvilles LE SAMOURAI are also brilliant. Kubrick's THE KILLING and LOLITA use B&W to its full potential. Way to many films to even start a list but these are just a few that furthered the art of B&W cinema.

I am happy to see that the use of B&W is not a thing of the past. Jim Jaramusch's DEAD MAN, Darren Aronofsky's PI and David Lynch's ERASERHEAD are just a few modern gems I love that use B&W to tell there story.

Not a movie, but worthy of note was an episode of "Moonlighting" that was not only in B&W, but shot on 30's film stock and ended up costing a fortune because the makers wanted the episode to be as authentic as possible. (Eg: the whole show had to be staged and produced like a film in the early days of cinema)

Fun Topic, thanx Guys...

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******"The Majority Is Always Wrong" Steve Mcqueen in Enemy Of The People******

deckard, hurrrraahhhhh, another B&W movie fan - don't go anywhere! you listed some great ones. i'm finding that my knowledge of B&W film (untill now, unchallenged) leaves a lot to be desired...but i'm not worried; my passion for it makes up the difference........... and i'm learning from you guys.

Duck Soup
The Maltese Falcon
It's a Wonderful Life
12 Angry Men
Psycho
Dr. Strangelove
Young Frankenstein

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Ok, now, can I ask you, what was the big deal about Dead Man? I don't get it.

Dr. Stangelove is the best, but its a wonderful life is also really good, and of couse citizen kane

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"Who comes at 12:00 on a Sunday night to rent Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid?"
-Hollywood Video rental guy to me

"Ok, now, can I ask you, what was the big deal about Dead Man? I don't get it"

Hey "Steve", DEAD MAN is quite frankly one of the finest examples of B&W footage ever. Every shot is exquisetly lit and framed. The images themselves take on a life of there own.

The films B&W style just serves to further inhance the surreal plot and take you on a truly cinematic journey. The whole film is like a dream that is revisted with each viewing.

With each new screening, different nuances within the film come to light and the story takes on many differnet forms. Escpecially if you look at it from the supporting charecters POV.

The iccing on the cake is the subtle brilliance of Depp's performance and that of all the supporting players, who seem to live in this mysterious land.

Certainly not everyones cup of tea, but for anyone who wants to explore all avenues of the cinematic medium and the art of storytelling this film is must see. (For the brilliant B&W cinematography alone)

Deckard, i just rented Dead Man....looking forward to watching it tonight or tomorrow night....i felt ashamed i hadn't seen it....i just let it pass by.....but i'll fix that......it looks terrific. cheers