Reader Anne-Kari recently suggested that we talk about
Favorite and least favorite movies within specific genres (drama, b&w, scifi, comedy)?
So that’s what we’ve been doing all this week. I’m not sure that “black-and-white” constitutes an actual genre, but since Anne-Kari included that, we’ll end on that note:
What are your all-time favorite and least favorite black-and-white movies?
I am personally limiting myself to films made after color began to used in a widespread manner, so that the use of black-and-white was an artistic choice, not a necessity. (You need not do so. But if you do and need some help, here’s a list of black-and-white films produced since the 1970s.)
I must choose the magnificent The Artist, for which its black-and-whiteness isn’t merely an artistic choice but inherent in its genius. Michel Hazanavicius conceived a film that had to be shot in black-and-white in the 21st century — it simply couldn’t exist if it hadn’t been.
For worst, I’ll pick Woody Allen’s Celebrity, which makes a self-deprecating reference to “one of those assholes who shoots all his films in black-and-white,” and even that cannot excuse the choice of black-and-white in this instance.
Your turn…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
Best: The Artist, Village of the Damned, Harvey, Brief Encounter, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Duck Soup, Sons of the Desert (and various Laurel and Hardy shorts), The Elephant Man, It’s a Wonderful Life, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Schindler’s List, 12 Angry Men, Psycho, Some Like It Hot, Young Frankenstein, The Third Man, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Strangers on a Train
Worst: the kind of acknowledged ‘Golden Turkeys’ I’ve mentioned previously.
I’m repeating myself now but, hey, that’s what happens when you rely on your own IMDb ratings to jog your memory.
I really, really liked The Artist, too. Good Night, and Good Luck and Ed Wood surely deserve a mention, as does Young Frankenstein. I recall La fille sur le pont from 1999 being pretty good. And let’s not forget gems like Down by Law and Eraserhead. Most of Kurosawa’s classics are in black in white, but I respect rather than love those.
My most hated is undoubtedly 13 Tzameti, a piece of elegant but nihilistic shit that apparently called for an American remake – they probably changed the ink black ending too, like George Sluizer inexplicably did with the remake of his own classic Spoorloos, but frankly I don’t give a damn.
“Odd Man Out” and maybe “High and Low”.
I love the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan films. A Gentleman’s Agreement is wonderful. Shirley Temple’s The Little Princess. So many great films not shown on TV anymore for the crime of being black and white.
And no Christmas would be the same without the Alistair Sim version of Scrooge.
I was going to post La Jetée under science fiction, but maybe I’ll put it here instead.
I posted it in Science Fiction. It’s there. You’re good. (I double posted Wings of Desire here and Drama…even though I was wondering if the angel element wouldn’t keep it out of Drama.)
SOOOOO glad to see someone else has seen it!
*big grin here*
Btw, how did you get the e avec accent aigu?
Alt-E + letter. (Accent grave Alt-` + letter; diaeresis or Umlaut Alt-U + letter; accent circonflexe Alt-I + letter; C-cedille Alt-C.)
Thanks.
I think I want to see this La Jetée movie. Too bad stupid Blockbuster Online doesn’t have it. I’ll have to look elsewhere.
edit: I see some versions on Youtube. Hmm.
I saw it at the Vancouver Art Gallery. IIRC, it was part of an exhibition on surrealism.
Favorite: 12 Angry Men, Dr. Strangelove, Maltese Falcon (I usually don’t like noir but there it is), Some Like it Hot, I’m totally forgetting some.
Least favorite…. well, least favorite is relative, because most B&W movies are pretty old and most really bad old movies have faded into obscurity (the ones that haven’t are usually either enjoyably bad sci fi/horror type stuff or overblown Hollywood schlock and the latter type is usually in technicolor) but….
oh, man, this pains me. This pains me like you have no idea… but…
The Killing. The Stanley Kubrick one, from the fifties.
I’m sorry but it was unbearable.
Oh, and also, Eraserhead. I’m sorry! It was way too student film for me. I’ve seen the climax of it on Youtube (the baby thing) and it made me cry out of sheer terror, but watching the entire movie it was just way too boring to get to those parts.
And I like David Lynch! I even liked Lost Highway. I don’t even get it.
Under your initial conditions: Ed Wood, Clerks, Schindler’s List, Sin City
Bad: Under the Cherry Moon is pretty awful. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is a 10 minute joke spread over 90 minutes. I’ve never understood the appeal of Pi.
I do not consider black-and-white a ‘genre’. However, choosing from that Wikipaedia list, I can tell you the following about post-1970 black-and-white films.
LEAST: Europa. Whadda piece of crap. And Eraserhead. Yeah, I know, it’s really cool and underground…but although it didn’t bother me as much as his later stuff, it prefigures all the things I dislike about David Lynch’s filmmaking and vision. Under the Cherry Moon…and I’m a die-hard Prince fan, too. But, damn! that was horrible.
My Most Liked of What I’ve Seen: Edited to remove Silent Movie, I just checked and it was in color…I really remembered it as being in B/W!, Paper Moon (I really loved that movie when I was a kid…eventually I got over my father issues, I guess), She’s Gotta Have It, Wings of Desire (it was in B/W when the angels are the center of the scene), Schindler’s List, Cowards Bend the Knee, Raging Bull, and Life According to Agfa (last a great film, haven’t met anyone from the US who’s seen it. It is Israeli.)
I still haven’t seen Killer of Sheep. I may just have to buy the dvd at Kim’s. Gotta watch it.
AAaaaand…editing again to add Citizen Kane even though most films at that time were in B/W, Welles used the chiaroscuro as an aesthetic statement so it belongs in a “B/W as Genre” list and a slovak (I think) movie that translated as If I Had a Gun. Boy under occupation of Nazis, wants to be a Resistor. I loved the way it was filmed. Saw it twice in a Film Studies elective in 8th grade and have remembered it ever since.
I understand why you’re doing it, but black and white movies can be made for any genre. I suppose they could have fit into any of our previous categories. Anyway…
Favorite:
Bela Lugosi Dracula
The recent Frankenweenie. Loved it.
Seven Samurai
Tokyo Story
BTW, I actually thought The Artist was just OK. Fun to watch, but lacking any real depth.
Least:
Can’t think of one.
Stalag 17 remains my favourite movie of all time. I first watched it as a kid, where “black and white” was an automatic strike against it.
I think that my favorite would have to be Some Like It Hot. It’s so well played that the ridiculous premise seems perfectly legitimate. It’s also one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.
Favorite: The Third Man
Honorable Mentions, so I can refer to others I love:
Citizen Kane
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Manhattan
The Last Picture Show
Gilda
Least favorite: Eraserhead. Yes, it’s gorgeous, but too student film, and too gratuitously culty.
Favorites- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Some Like It Hot, The Confidential Agent, various Laurel and Hardys and Harold Lloyds.
Can’t think of a B&W movie I hated for its B&W-ness- that is like asking what is your least favorite color film.
The best, IMNSHO?
Young Frankenstein
The Artist
The Kid
Ed Wood
The Philadelphia Story (except for one awful, unforgivable scene)
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Psycho
Duck Soup
I can’t come up with too many ‘worsts’, but as others here have mentioned:
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Celebrity
Under a Cherry Moon
I think it’s notable that most of the ‘worst’ are relatively recent, as in way past the b&w era, only in that the undoubtably large number of totally craptastic b&w movies of the era have fallen over time out of the general public knowledge. Movies like Citizen Kane are eternal while C-grade movies of the same era are utterly forgettable.
Which means, I hope, that some of the horrifying slop I’ve endured in the last 20 years will be equally forgotten by time…
Oh and MaryAnn, not to push my luck or anything, but do you think we could try one encore to this subject and ask people their best/worst list for that most daunting of movie genres, Romantic Comedies? We all know how bad they can be, but how about the few and far between gems?
Easy: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
‘scrooge’ (1951 w/ alastair sim) is probably my favorite. then ‘the seventh seal’ and ‘good night, and good luck’.
and i, like my esteemed commenter colleague MarkyD, cannot think of a deserving least favorite.
So I had a big argument ready from the question on the home page, about how you can’t compare B&W films from the B&W era to color-era B&W films, based on color alone. Then I saw the additional explanation after the jump, and things got more interesting. I have to agree that The Artist is up there at the top, both because it was a great story well told and elegantly shot, but also because it used the conventions and tropes of B&W-era films – both for impact and for laughs.
The Wikipedia list was a surprise, because I’ve seen a decent number of them, but I didn’t remember many of them as “Black and White.” They were just good movies. It’s particularly true of the ones in “partial color.” Dead Again and Momento have been long-time favorites, but I’ve never thought
of them as B&W films. I’d also completely forgotten that Clerks was B&W.
Best: The Hidden Fortress.
Worst: The Artist. When it was over I wanted my money back.
In the original perameters, Young Frankenstein and Ed Wood are great.
For older films: the Kid, Metropolis, It, the Bride Wore Red, Trankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Bringing Up Baby, Captain Blood, Duck Soup, City Lights, Animal Crackers, The Big Sleep, 7 samurai, Secret Agent, Follow the Fleet,The 39 Steps, The Gay Divorcee,
Jamaica Inn, The Lady Vanishes, Casablanca, Rebecca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre…OK, I just like old movies!
It’s hard to pick any bad ones, honestly. They are always so charming.
I also like it when they put colors on black and white films the way they used to do — not colorize them, but just put sort of filters on the movie. Blue for night scenes, yellow for day, green for the forest, etc. I’ve seen it in the Thief of Bagdad, the Douglas Fairbanks Robin Hood, and the Sheik. It’s surprisingly good at creating atmosphere.
My favourites:
It’s a Wonderful Life, Ed Wood, To Kill a Mockingbird, Eraserhead, Cleo from 5 to 7, The Last Picture Show, Raging Bull, Manhattan and Dr. Strangelove
My worst:
Plan 9 from Outer Space. I know it makes people’s “So bad it’s good” lists sometimes, but the film is just downright dull and boring. I can appreciate that everything is so poorly made. I did laugh when actors starting tripping on props and that Dracula dude was replaced in obvious fashion, but I honestly found the whole thing to be a giant snorefest.
No mention of Night of the Hunter? Mitchum makes this horrible animalistic growl when he’s chasing the children that chills me to the bone
and the Killing was a great flick too
Love:
Modern Times: a film about American labour that manages the tough challenge of being both entertaining and insughftul at the same time.
Seven Samurai: Enthralling from start to finish. Hollywood take note: as this movie demonstrates, the action of an action movie is only engrossing to the extent that the viewer feels that something is at stake and has grown attached to the characters.
Hara Kiri: Profoundly affecting story that also works as social commentary from post WWII Japan regarding the relation between the warrior class’ reckless disregard for the people’s suffering as a result of their disastrous expansionist policies during the war years.
The Great Dictator: Chaplin’s speech at the end gets me every time. Plus, it was prescient in its sendup of Hitler, though it could be argued that the atrocity of the regime is underplayed here.
Dr Strangelove: Great sendup of Cold war paranoia and military machismo posing as intelligence, fitting satire illustrating the underlying insanity of the logic of the nuclear age.
Hate:
It’s a Wonderful Life: Sappy sentiment is a poor substitute for thoughtful insight.
The Artist: I don’t really hate it, but I cannot emphasize enough how overpraised this middlebrow film is.