Old Movies Are Better
I stated in an earlier zine that most of my favorite movies are almost 100 years old. There is something about them that is comforting to me. I can get sucked into any black and white movie. The pacing is different, the sets are small, and the run times are (generally) short. I love the stars from the 30’s and 40’s; it’s fun seeing the same bit part actor play the same character in 18 different movies. I love hearing the transatlantic accent and the warm crackle of the audio. It would be great if more people revisited these movies and if the studios these days would modernize the old practices.
Let’s get started.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone tell me that if the movie is in black and white, they’re not watching it. It’s too old and there’s no point in wasting the time. To that I say: ‘the fuck, dude? Honestly, I understand. I won’t “waste the time” watching anime because I know I don’t like anime. But you know how I know that I don’t like anime? I watched anime a handful of times. I didn’t like the first one, but maybe that’s because the first one just sucked. Turns out, I can’t handle the art style, and I really don’t like the voice acting. It’s all just a bit too much.
If someone were to tell me that they tried to watch a couple old movies and they just didn’t like that it was in black and white, then that’s understandable. We live in a world of color, so it is easier to believe what we’re seeing if it’s in color. What I will never understand is when a previous (quite young) coworker said, “If it’s older than me, I don’t like it.” I laughed; they were serious. “Wait… but what about-” “If it’s older than me, I DON’T LIKE IT.”
Movies from the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s have a very specific sound and feel. There is a warm crackle due to the audio being recorded on physical media. There is a softness to the lighting. Everyone spoke with the classic Transatlantic accent, adding elements of British English to sound more sophisticated. They spoke so fast to save film. So many cocktails and the thick haze from stars chain-smoking cigarettes. And the music, oh my god, the music. I have always loved jazz and big band music. They don’t make movies like this anymore. They can’t make movies like this anymore for many reasons.
Unfortunately, a lot of pictures from the time were restored to a 4:3 aspect ratio for television back in the CRT days. This practice is called Pan & Scan and it prioritizes keeping the speaker in frame and cropping out the rest so that they could fill the entire television screen. My wife has PTSD from the many times I have argued why I will not purchase a modern movie that is not in widescreen. If the film was shot in widescreen and released in full screen, it is quite literally missing part of the movie. The director took the time to frame the shot just for some random editor to overwrite it to fill a screen? Again, I say: ‘the fuck, dude?
Sadly, in many cases, the original film was cropped for restoration. For comparison: here is the aspect ratio of CinemaScope 2.55:1 (which was used to shoot Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) vs the Pan & Scan ratio.
Do you see how much of the frame is missing? Can you understand why I might hate this?
Another sentiment I left in another zine was, “Marvel sucks.” Old movies were overwhelmingly shot on soundstages with a limited amount of space for sets. Set design is very important to ground the work in reality. Good set design is so rare in today’s movies. I blame CGI. Effects artists are legitimate artists and I could never pull off what these people can with CGI. But there is a reason why (up until recently) many directors would shoot miniatures for their large set pieces. They look more realistic because they are real. It reacts to light accurately because they really lit that sucker.
When you shoot your entire movie in a blue room, you can tell. CGI has gotten good, but every time I watch a damn Marvel movie, I’m immediately taken out of it. There is no immersion for me because that person is not in that space. They’re not grounded in any way. It’s unfair to compare Film Noir to Marvel, so I’ll compare Marvel to Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. They were never in space, but they were on the bridge of the Enterprise because they built the bridge of the Enterprise. Khan was never on Ceti Alpha V, but he was standing in those escape pods that the design team built from cargo containers and foam.
One of my favorite movies is Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. It is in color, but the biggest reason why I love it is that Hitchcock had his team build an entire city block on a soundstage. Everything in frame is actually there, even the rain! You view it all from Jimmy’s apartment window. The constraints from the set design builds the tension. The set is a big character. When I watch this movie, I am in that apartment with them. I won’t spoil the movie for you, whoever you are reading this, because you need to see it. And if you’ve seen it, watch it again. I’ll probably watch it tonight for the 80th time.
