Will the young'uns ruin movie history for the rest of us? Neal Gabler thinks so, I do not.

As a film geek who has been into movies, perhaps to an unhealthy degree, since childhood, reading this article by Neal Gabler at the LA Times about how the current youth generation thinks old movies are old and boring and useless really breaks my heart. But does it surprise me? Not at all. The premise of the article concerns The Amazing Spider-Man, which rebooted a franchise whose third installment hit theaters just five years ago. But in that five years, some kids might say that it was about time Spidey got a reboot -- because the other movie was "old." And I feel like Gabler only interviewed people who spoke to really stupid children. Let's explore this, shall we?

Full disclosure, I was led to read this article because I just finished a book by its author, Gabler's Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (awesome, by the way). And while I enjoyed that book deeply and feel that Gabler's research uncovered a wealth of fascinating information, I feel like a smaller, "internet-column-scale" version of that effort could have gone into this before writing off an entire generation of moviegoers.

That isn't to say that this is a bad article (because it is interesting), and I wouldn't deny that so-called "millennials" are a bit jaded to older movies, but can't we also consider that teenagers and young adults who aren't die-hard film geeks have never been into movies as much as die-hard film geeks are? No matter what generation they're from? Gabler mentions a high school teacher who said he won't teach The Godfather in his class anymore because of "lack of interest." His students were bored by it. By The Godfather. For one thing, your argument is invalid. High school students think everything sucks, to say nothing of worrying about going to college and taking SATs and such, and there was probably at least one kid in that class who secretly loved that movie and is now plotting a film career. I guarantee it.

I know that the younger generation of moviegoers also has different tastes and expectations when it comes to entertainment. Gabler makes that point, saying that every successive generation thinks the quality of their movies is better than those released during the preceding one. And yes, the special effects of the second Star Wars trilogy are better than the second. We cannot deny that, no matter how bad those movies sucked. But then he worries that film history will ultimately get flushed down the toilet by these dirty little punks, and no future generation will have the same appreciation for classic cinema ever again, and "classic" will refer to movies released all of one week ago.

With all due respect, and there's a lot of it, I think rumors of cinema appreciation's death have been greatly exaggerated.

I give you: Netflix. Netflix provides access -- with the cost of a monthly membership -- to decades and decades of all kinds of movies. Old ones, new ones, less old ones, less new ones, with something to match someone's mood no matter what kind of mood they're in. Let's create a hypothetical kid: we'll call her Jessica, because I went to school with about 12 of them. Jessica is 17, owns a smartphone, though she doesn't pay for it. It's hooked up to Netflix, which is also paid for by her parents. Boom -- free movies on her phone, as far as she's concerned. Since her favorite magazine features writers who are from Generation X, she reads a reference to a movie called Clueless. (The reference may or may not include the sentence "Where the hell is Alicia Silverstone these days?") She hops on Wikipedia, and after falling into a Wiki-hole for seven hours, she wonders if Clueless is on Netflix, just out of curiosity. By jove, it is! She watches it on her phone -- and it's her new favorite movie. Even though it's "old," it has a story she likes, and the clothes are funny, and there's a makeover in it, and it's slightly creepy because Brittany Murphy died when she was 32.

What else did Brittany Murphy do, and was there any sign at all that she'd end up dead at 32? Girl Interrupted. Is it evidence? No, but Angelina Jolie is in it, and she won an Oscar for it! That's really fancy! Jessica then reads about the Oscars (after plugging in her phone, because the battery is starving now), and she finds out that Jolie's father, Jon Voight, won an Oscar, too! Jessica isn't the type to watch Coming Home, though, but she sees that he played a gigolo in Midnight Cowboy, and that is one group of sexy, sexy words.

And that is how Jessica found Midnight Cowboy and was introduced to the 1960s Decade of Amazing Films. It was like that other movie Jon Voight was in, that movie from "like a million years ago," National Treasure, when he found that vault underground in New York City with all that freaking gold! Because on Netflix's list of recommendations, there was The Graduate. And Anne Bancroft kicked so much ass in that movie. Then Jessica found out that Anne Bancroft was in The Miracle Worker, a play about Helen Keller that she was forced to read in seventh grade, but if there's a movie, then she doesn't have to read the book again! And it's in black and white, which seems weird, but now Jessica can tell her friends who won't stop talking about 16 and Pregnant that she watched Anne Bancroft wrestle Patty Duke, who is the mother of Sean Astin, who was in The Lord of the Rings movies, which were all "way too long," but had Orlando Bloom in it, and he's hot. If you like old guys.

Jessica and her peers might not fully appreciate classic cinema right now, and many of those kids will not have the same curiosity as Jessica and never will. But if you show anyone something that contains even a scintilla of something they might find interesting, enough of them will come around and say they cannot go a Christmas without watching Miracle on 34th Street.

In the meantime, these punk kids aren't going to obliterate classic cinema as long as people like me and Neal Gabler are around telling them to get off our Technicolor lawn.

• [NelC]

   I am old, and I’m somewhat saddened by the idea that some of my favourite movies are older than a lot of adults around today. But then, some of those movies I watched on Sunday afternoons are older than me! Hardly seems possible, but it’s true.

  Anyone who doesn’t like old stuff just because it’s past some arbitrary cut-off date deserves the media they pay through the nose for. For the rest of us, there’s Netflix.

  • [billstewart]

    Of course some of your favorite movies are older than a lot of adults around today, at least if any of your favorite movies are older than you are.  In fact, more and more of your favorite movies will be having that as time goes by.  Wait till you start having friends who are adults who are young enough that they could have been your kid :-)

    As far as this hypothetical “Jessica” goes, some years back my wife and I had some computer work done by somebody named Jessica, and “People named Jessica are old enough to be fixing our computers?”  (Because fashionable names changed, and there hadn’t been that many Jessicas when we were born, but some years after that there were suddenly lots of them.)

• [Michael Sheehan]

  Neil Gabler gets stuff wrong almost as often as right (cf. Michael Barrier’s deconstruction of his inaccurate Disney book). And I would like to know what “advanced degrees” he holds in “film and culture,” as his bio states. As far as I can tell, he has an undergrad in political science and a graduate degree in law. Anyone?

• [Romeo Vitelli]

  The world changes though.  Movies that seemed fresh and relevant decades ago aren’t necessarily so fresh today.   Even classics like Casablanca seem dated at times and even racist.  Does anyone else cringe today at hearing Ingrid Bergman’s character referring to pianoman Sam as “the boy at the piano”?

  • [Joe Buck]

     Yes, Romeo, she says that, and no doubt 50 years from now people will cringe at the things we say. But it is still a great movie, Sam’s a great character, and despite that line, she treated him with more respect than was common at the time.

  • [mccrum]

     A few years back, around the holidays the family and I thought we’d watch White Christmas with Bing Crosby and really get into the spirit of it all.

    About the end of the second act Bing Crosby goes into his dressing room.  Someone tells him the name of the next number.  He pulls out some black makeup.  He then starts putting it on his face.

    Yep, there’s a blackface number in White Christmas.  I don’t just cringe when I think of that movie, I cringe when I hear that song on the radio.

    • [Joe Buck]

       Right, but Astaire actually intended this as a tribute to Mr. Bojangles. It was not the traditional racist minstrel number.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/arts/dance/30astaire.html for a discussion of this.

      • [mccrum]

        Oh, my film-history teachin’ wife and I had a long discussion about this after the fact and what the film actually intended, and I understand that it was a style, no offense was meant, and was supposed to honor those who were banned from performing these same songs in the same style in movies.

        However, those of us just wanting to watch what is considered a holiday classic can be really taken aback by the juxtaposition of it in the middle of a movie titled “*White* Christmas.”  I doubt that number is in the television edit.

        • [tiamat_the_red]

           I haven’t ever seen that number and it’s my family’s favorite movie.  They must have pulled it from some of the releases.

      • [burymylovely]

          I’ve seen White Christmas like 50 times. There is definitely no black face in it. I believe you’re thinking of Holiday Inn, which White Christmas is actually a remake of. A reboot really since its the same star, same songs and a lot of the same people involved.

        I actually watched Holiday Inn because I knew it was the first iteration of that story. When I saw the blackface I almost fell out of my seat. So I’ll likely never revisit that movie and just stick with the later version that doesn’t do things that make me nauseous. Plus White Christmas is better made anyways.

        • [johnnylloydrollins]

          even though you just read above that the blackface was done in tribute and not in any way mockery?

    • [penguinchris]

      I love classic films, including musicals, and I think Bing Crosby is a great singer and entertainer (Danny Kaye, too). However, White Christmas is simply not a good film. I could barely stand to watch the whole thing.

      It starts out strong with that incredible performance of the title song at the beginning, but is just awful the rest of the time. Most big-time 50′s musicals and comedies are far better.

      I fail to see how it became considered a holiday classic. I’m not sure it even actually is, I think people just like the song.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        If you want to see a great movie musical, the first thing to do is to see it at the Castro Theater. Kiss Me Kate was exceptional, what with Ann Miller dancing crazy fast while singing:
        Any Tom, Dick or Harry,
        Any Tom, Harry or Dick.
        A dicka dick,
        A dicka dick,
        A dicka dick,
        A dicka dick!
        A dicka dick,
        A dicka dick,
        A dicka dick…

        • [Teller]

          Hmm. How many S-of-M singalongs you done there? I’m betting 10.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          None. I never even saw that film until I was in my mid-40s.

      • [burymylovely]

         My family watched it at Christmas every year. Its funny, charming and has great stage pieces. Vera-Ellen had some fabulous dance numbers, I wish she was in more movies. Sure its no Singin’ in the Rain or West Wide Story, but I don’t see its popularity as inexplicable. I’m sorry you didn’t like it.

    • [princeminski]

      Gabler’s right. Jesus.

  • [penguinchris]

    What’s amazing about Casablanca is that it isn’t dated. I watch a lot of older films. A lot. Many are dated and often essentially unwatchable today. But Casablanca took its form to perfection (and defined the genre up through the 50′s into the widescreen era), and it is both a document of its time and timeless.

    Personally I find it to be remarkable for not being particularly racist considering the setting and the various groups of people in the film. Calling Sam “boy” in that one line is the only remotely racist thing I can think of from the film, and I really don’t think the line was meant in that way. If you think the character of Sam by itself was racist, the actor who played him, Dooley Wilson, played essentially the same character – with the same mannerisms – in the film Stormy Weather (also in the 40′s) which had a 100% black cast of musicians and dancers basically playing themselves. That’s just who he was, not a caricature or stereotype.

    Your larger point is right, though, many classic films really don’t hold up over time. But most of the better ones do if you give them a chance, and Casablanca is the key classic film that pretty much everybody enjoys if you can get them to watch it.

  • [Shashwath T.R.]

    I beg to differ…

    It’s racist in that the whole of the society it was set in was racist. Calling someone “boy” wasn’t really a measured insult that someone would use in that time and space. It was unthinkingly racist, not overtly so.

    If it didn’t have that, it wouldn’t be a realistic story. It would be a Bowlderized, sanitized version made to not hurt everyone’s sentiments. And that, I think, would remove something from its appeal for me – mid-80s born, grew up in the 90s, and it’s probably my favourite…

    I think of all movies, Casablanca is still very relevant.

• [OldBrownSquirrel]

  “the special effects of the second Star Wars trilogy are better than the second”

  Huh? 2 > 2?

• [hellishmundane]

  wow that la times article is painful to read.  Like an English 101 essay.  Just out of curiosity what age group is he referring to when he uses the term millennials?

  • [princeminski]

    The illiterate age group.

• [RaidenDaigo]

  Plenty of millenials love old movies because they are witty and everybody has style. Plenty of kids also like the horror movies of the 80′s because they look more real. I think its more of an exposure problem from parents and educators.

• [xzzy]

  Special effects really ruined older cinema for me. I grew up watching mountains of westerns and ww2 movies from the 60′s and 70′s and as kid I was convinced they were the best thing ever. Then the CGI/high def revolution came around and completely soured me on all of them.

  It’s not that the old movies are bad.. they had fun characters and plots, but eventually I got to a point that I really noticed cowboys almost never shoot straight and war movies routinely pasted in the exact same stock footage.

  It’s not that modern movies are any better about getting their realism straight, but they’ve certainly gotten a lot better at producing a believable illusion.

  I also find old movies hard to enjoy because the audio is usually pretty terrible. Probably my fault for going to too many loud concerts, but I have to wear headphones to be able to separate conversation from other noise.

  • [clarkie604]

     I don’t think the point is that all old movies are good.  The point is that there are some really great old movies.  Some old movies are so great that the illusion is better than state of the art special effects today.

  • [penguinchris]

    If you just care about movies with action scenes then yeah, modern films will satisfy better. And like the other reply says, not all old movies are good – in fact most are terrible.

    If you watch older films that don’t rely on action scenes, they often blow their modern equivalents out of the water. 

    That includes war films, too… there have been good war films in the past few decades but nothing can top The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai (and Lawrence of Arabia if you count it as a war film) for sheer greatness. Similar-era films that are more action-heavy – including true classics like The Guns of Navarone – do not hold up as well. But that’s the case with modern action-heavy films as well. And of course there are exceptions… I believe it’s still true that Clint Eastwood kills more Nazis in Where Eagles Dare than his total body count in all his other films combined – in other words it’s primarily an action film – but it still holds up great (though there are some relatively dodgy effects shots compared to modern effects).

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      If you watch older films that don’t rely on action scenes, they often blow their modern equivalents out of the water.

      The tornado in the Wizard of Oz is as good as anything from ILM. And it’s done with a bag.

      • [TimmoWarner]

         I have long held that the tornado in The Wizard of Oz is the greatest special effect ever put on film.

        • [Scurra]

          Personal anecdote: I went to see The Wizard of Oz at the cinema for the first time a couple of years ago.  The audience was a complete mix of people, from families to pensioners to cinebores.  A lot of the audience had never seen a black-and-white movie before, and were clearly surprised when it started.   And yes, the tornado is incredibly effective.
          But oh boy, every one of us reacted audibly when Dorothy opens the door into colour…

      • [Genre Slur]

         not to mention the contributions of Ray Harryhausen. I’ve lent my collection to younger friends, and they have been blown away. Mind you, they smoke up, so perhaps there’s a bias…

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    In the last month, I’ve rented five films from the 30s or 40s.  And Iron Man.  Charlie Chan in Reno is definitely more entertaining than Iron Man.

  • [billstewart]

     It was really strange when the Christopher Eccleston version of Dr. Who came on.  Part of the charm of the series was that the special effects were so low-budget that they didn’t try to get in the way of the story.  For instance, some episodes with the First Doctor appeared to be using big paper-mache rocks because real Styrofoam would have cost too much.

  • [Shashwath T.R.]

    To quote The Bard:

     But pardon, and gentles all,
    The flat unraised spirits that have dared
    On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
    So great an object: can this cockpit hold
    The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
    Within this wooden O the very casques
    That did affright the air at Agincourt?
    O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
    Attest in little place a million;
    And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
    On your imaginary forces work.
    Suppose within the girdle of these walls
    Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
    Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
    The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
    Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
    Into a thousand parts divide on man,
    And make imaginary puissance;
    Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
    Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
    For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
    Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times,
    Turning the accomplishment of many years
    Into an hour-glass:

    Henry V – the Prologue…

    Also watch Derek Jacobi perform the prologue in the 80s version…

    • [princeminski]

      Yeah, and Arnold’s take on “Hamlet” in THE LAST ACTION HERO!!!! Gnarly. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a MASSIVE EXPLOSION!!!! I think I’m gonna show CASABLANCA to my Humanities class this week. Serve ‘em right.

  • [Tchoutoye]

    Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I recall that, in a previous era when I was young, realism wasn’t that important. Sure we would notice badly done effects but they weren’t a decisive factor. It was like own imagination overcame technical inadequacies.

    Now, when I read comments of millennials on IMDb,  characters seems to be relevant merely as pawns for the special effects to throw around. And plot twists are the raison d’etre of the film, whereas the emotional development of characters are considered boring unless they are portrayed as exaggerated caricatures.

    I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like that in my day when film viewing was a more communal experience, not just with peers, but with parents as well. Individualised, multitasked and on-demand viewing is not the best method to develop the ability for patient endurance. Perhaps all that sugar in the obligatory snacks plays a role too.

    But then again, G.W.F. Hegel and Edgar Wind could be closer to the mark:

    Art has “worked itself out” and Plato’s sacred fear has left the modern experience of art. The modern audience has acquired an immunity to the chaotic force of art, and so art has “lost its sting.” Such immunity is caused by “diffusion,” a proliferation and increase in accessibility of art, which was accompanied out of necessity by a “loss of density” in the viewer; that is, the only way any person is able to take in such a wide variety and vast quantity of art is to absorb each work of art on a more superficial level. Audiences crave an ever-greater quantity of art as their “receptive organs” continue to “atrophy.”

• [Joe Buck]

  My 14 year old daughter is a huge fan of old movies; she particularly loves Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn, but has seen a lot of the classics from the golden age of Hollywood (Frank Capra movies, the Thin Man, Hitchcock and so on). We live in Silicon Valley so we have the Stanford Theater, where you can see the classics on the big screen, and there’s also the Niles Film Museum that runs great silent films with a live organist on Saturday nights.

  See loved Iron Man and the Avengers too, as well as all the Pixar films.   It doesn’t have to be either/or.

• [tosh]

  a parallel can be drawn with music. Just because the output has increased, and the variety greatly increased to commercially cater for all tastes, does not cancel out the same volume of great material being made. Simply because saccharine pop dross like beiber, or swamp-tech-dub-garage post-hardcore dirge-gaze is in existence does not mean other music, or appreciation for it, ceases to exist. The same goes for film. 

  • [Genre Slur]

    Hey don’t diss the dirge-gaze. Eyvind Kang is killer. To be serious, you make a nice point. I think clint mansell referred to the recent (post-software) aural output of our culture as ‘sparklingly average’.

• [harold miller]

  I think we saw this happen in music before film.
  Being someone who has always loved music based upon its effect on me, and not its popularity, I’ve been puzzled from a young age by most people my age. These are people who buy a CD (or download now) and after a few months or a year will never again listen to it, until it becomes some in-joke for those who remember it. Bell Biv DeVoe, anyone?
  I recall being 11 or 12, so this would’ve been 1991 or so… At my older sister’s birthday party at a pizza parlor, I slid a quarter into the jukebox and stood there a moment waiting for my selection to play. As “Funky Cold Medina” began to fill the room, I overheard a couple of teens laughing and mocking. “Oh god! This song is so OLD!”

  It is becoming worse with each portion of the younger generation. Movies now. I agree with Gabler here, to some extent. TV as well. That wretched Zooey Deschanel sitcom was on the other night when I was out. I counted - 5 scenes in 2 minutes. Five entire scenes played out in 120 seconds.
  Of course, Gabler goes the route of generalizing a bit too much. Of course this trend is not at all accurate for many millennials. And whichever generation I belong to, being just over 30, I am one who loves film regardless of age. One great advantage the millennials enjoy is the access to those older films. So many available digitally as public domain or on Netflix or Mubi, and still on DVD… Many take advantage of that availability. Many do not.

• [Jim Saul]

  I suspect he has no idea how much his students love old movies.

  They just hate watching them in class.

  Because they love watching them late at night, when they are stoned.

• [jandrese]

  A little old already, but still relevant. 

  Kids don’t like the same things their parents do, it’s been that way for all time.  

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Next year, the film version of Gone With The Wind will be closer in time to the Civil War than to the present.

    • [princeminski]

      Holy shit!

• [wawb]

  My daughter wants to see the new movie Step Up: Revolution, and I thought about how this is her generation’s Gene Kelly Musical. At first I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to see Step Up Revolution, until I remember the joy I got from watching Singing In The Rain, or even Mary Poppins and the Chimney Sweepers flippin around the rooftops.

  Ok, so a bunch of street tough crunkers is a huge leap from Dick Van Dyke. But a musical is a musical. I have to wonder if her interest in Step Up could work backwards to a Fred Astair movie… Or could I possibly like Step Up if I once liked dance/musicals…

  • [penguinchris]

    I really don’t think anybody has topped Singin’ In The Rain. There have been good efforts in every decade since, including in recent years, but nothing really comes close. Get your daughter to watch that one at least. Broadway-style musicals like Mary Poppins can mostly be skipped IMO… it’s the Astaire/Rogers style musical (which is what Gene Kelly’s musicals are mostly following in the footsteps of) that really holds up well. “Step Up” sounds like it’s about dancing and not about broadway musical style songs and I bet your daughter would be blown away by some of Astaire’s and Kelly’s moves.

• [mmcpher]

  I took a long ride with my 20 year old son a few weeks ago, and we talked about movies.  We share some of the same tastes in current releases, but I was surprised by his disinterest in anything made more than a few years ago.  He could never recall seeing a Humphrey Bogart movie and had only a dim awareness of him at all.  But that’s him at 20.  By the time I was his age, I had been a movie coo-coo for a long time, and devoted to movies made decades before I was born, and stretching all the way back to the silent era.  

  My son has a keen visual sense, can pick out filmed nuances that I sometimes miss.  He is an avid video gamer.  He tracks and appreciates complex plot-lines, compelling characters and dialog.  He just hasn’t yet discovered John Ford, or John Frankenheimer, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, etc.

  Contrary to Gabler’s article, which almost seems to accept the premise that technological advances in film translate necessarily into superior films, I remain confident, both in my son’s eventual ability to discern and appreciate the art of film, and in the enduring qualities of the great films of the past.  My youngest daughter recently discovered the Beatles, who supplanted Bieber. 

• [Lawrence Bullock Cht]

  Oh yes, my, my my. So important to know these things. And the people who were alive in the twenties were sure the talkies wouldn’t last. If they could see us now. My, my, my.

• [greenberger]

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, there’s a lot of broad generalizations being flung around. First off, it’s always going to be the case that the lowest common denominator will appeal to the widest group of people- take every major release that comes out as an example (and yes, that includes all your beloved superhero-geek franchises.) And there will always be the few exceptions who slowly discover their own unique path through culture and start falling in love with “old” art. For me, it was used record stores and video rental shops. For kids today, we have wikipedia. Whatever. 

  The only real “issue” here, if there is one at all, is whether, in a general sense, more kids are becoming less receptive to “old” things, to a point where a future American culture ceases to value its own cultural history. I doubt anyone’s article or blog rant is really going to provide conclusive evidence towards a reliable opinion. My 2 cents would be that we are definitely getting more impatient with things, thanks to technology, and so in that sense, giving something a chance is becoming more and more difficult, because your own brain conditioning is such that you can’t even conceive of sitting still for more than 20 goddamn seconds before you’re “bored”. 

  On the other hand, technology allows us to preserve every minute artistic contribution digitally, to sit here on the internet until someone stumbles upon it for their own delight. So maybe the future is just a splintering of subcultures, rather than one mass culture, each one championing whatever it is it finds important. Better in some ways, worse in others.

  For the record, the original Star Wars trilogy  had better effects, because they were more organically woven into the film. It seemed like they actually happened that way in reality, and Lucas just happened to catch it with a camera. The new ones are so artificial, you are always aware that a computer was involved, and that takes you out of the moment.

  • [penguinchris]

    I was planning on making the same point regarding Star Wars but you said it better. The effects in the original film are better. Not because they’re technologically superior, obviously they aren’t, but because they’re more effective. We’re only now really getting to a point where CGI doesn’t distract and take you out of the film (even if just subconsciously).

    • [TheMadLibrarian]

       Glah.  Don’t get me started on 3-D.  A special effect that gives me a raging headache is worse than the cheesiest Ray Harryhausen Claymation, and don’t dis the Harryhausen!

    • [princeminski]

      When the prequels came out, I was incensed that my daughters refused to watch the original trio because they were “old.” (They’ve changed their tune considerably in the intervening years.) Then I thought about how much I loved Gene Autry’s archaic THE PHANTOM EMPIRE on television in 1955, at which time that veritable cave painting was only twenty years old. A NEW HOPE was older than that when THE PHANTOM MENACE came out. Kind of a shock.

  • [jackbird]

    On the other hand, technology allows us to preserve every minute artistic contribution digitally, to sit here on the internet until someone stumbles upon it for their own delight. So maybe the future is just a splintering of subcultures, rather than one mass culture, each one championing whatever it is it finds important. Better in some ways, worse in others.

    Sounds like the Long Tail, but applied to things that already exist rather than things that are newly created.

• [Michael Crumpton]

  My college teacher wife just showed “12 angry men” to her 1101 writing class, and they loved it.

  • [Itsumishi]

    A friend got me to watch that recently (on an old 8mm projector in another friends old church hall).  A sensational piece of cinema.

• [Gimlet_eye]

  I have a very bright and literate friend (a 50-something author of multiple books) who can’t stand to watch movies more than about 15 years old. I once met a 30-something who simply never watched a movie unless it was in color. 

  These attitudes are incomprehensible to me. How can anyone not see old movies as fascinating time capsules? Even when they are bad, they tell you things about the time they were made, what was popular, what could only be hinted at, and general attitudes. (In ’30s-’40s films, any woman not married by her late 20s was practically an old maid, and anyone in their 50s was likely a doddering grandparent.) 

  And when old films are great, they are great in ways that nobody would ever duplicate today: the fast patter of His Girl Friday, the epic sweep of Gone With the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia or A Matter of Life and Death, and on and on.

  • [Marko Raos]

    I’m 30 something and I’m very vary of any movie less than 20 years old… And I don’t bother with going to movies anymore. Dunno, I find modern film production mostly shallow and contrived especially when affecting “art.” The incessant speeding up of editing (helllo ADHD!) or conversely the pretentious “artiness” as well as steady decrease in dramatic complexity in Hollywood productions tire me and bore me to tears at the same time.
    In order to even bother seeing a new film I need at least three independent recomendations from sources I trust. However, even in the best of today’s films  the “soapification” of scriptwriting is really so pervasive I very rarely enjoy myself even then. It seems the new generation of scriptwriters grew up on a nauseous diet of soaps, reality shows and videogames* rather than literature… and it shows, even when they’re trying really hard to break away.
    (*”videogames” – I’m a gamer since the C64 days and even earlier.. I’m not saying videogames are bad but just as trying to make a game “more like a movie” is dumb so is the opposite. Games have a completely different aesthetic, being interactive form as opposed to film which is narrative and non-interactive. Attempts to mix the two have always ended badly.)

    • [Gimlet_eye]

      You’re right about the excess editing. Sometimes a lengthy shot is far more dramatic. There’s a shot in Hell’s Angels (1930) of a bomber dropping a bomb on a German munitions dump. The camera is on the bomber, looking down, and we see the bomb drop away, fall toward its target where it meets its shadow, and explodes the dump, with debris coming back up towards the camera. All one shot. It’s realistic and riveting and unlike anything anyone would do today.

      Another plague on movies today is length. Too many directors don’t know how to be concise, and we end up with (e.g.) romantic comedies that are 2.5 hours long. In the old studio days, when they wanted an evening to fit a double feature plus trailers and a newsreel and a cartoon, they edited films very tightly. It was common, as a final editing step, to take an already fairly short feature (90-some minutes at the most) and cut one frame off of the end of every shot in the movie. Those 1/24ths of a second probably didn’t add up to even a minute, but it was a level of care and craftsmanship (and, I grant, penny-pinching) that you don’t see today.

      • [jackbird]

         I guarantee you that digital nonlinear editing has enabled a level of care and craftsmanship beyond what was even remotely practical in the days of dailies, flatbeds, and negative cutting. 

        It’s the ability to endlessly tinker, rather than a dearth of editorial control, that’s the problem.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Unless you’re filming a vast book like LOTR, there’s no excuse for a film to be over 100 minutes. Peter Jackson took King Kong, which worked beautifully at 100 minutes in 1933, and turned it into a three-hour-and-seven-minute snoozefest that left me wondering if he had never seen any of the Jurassic Park films. It used CG like a compulsive shopper uses a credit card: all that matters is how huge your pile is at the end of the day.

        • [Genre Slur]

          My guess was that king kong was Jackson’s binge-eating response to holding the cat-bird seat in hollywood. Just got it out of his system (hopefully). Oh yeah, I also think he sealed his rep. with Heavenly Creatures and the Frighteners. Two excellent takes on genre film.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          Heavenly Creatures is the most terrifying horror movie ever made. I can’t think of a film more likely to give me nightmares.

        • [HD]

          This.  Take Shelter (2011) could have been an excellent movie at 90 minutes.  But at 120?  I don’t want to say “too slow”, but rather, not well-paced.  

          Dark Knight Rises is 165 minutes?  Two hours and 45 minutes?  Almost three hours?  Holy sore tailbone, Batman.

          Yes, I’m a child of MTV, but I’m also on the south side of a half-century (remembering when MTV got to your neighborhood makes you old now).  I’ve seen the old movies, but they were old before I was born.  

          Casablanca was 102 minutes.

        • [Peter Erwin]

          “Unless you’re filming a vast book like LOTR, there’s no excuse for a film to be over 100 minutes.”

          Yes, because Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Spartacus, The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Das Boot, and Seven Samurai are all such terrible, terrible movies.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          Seven Pillars of Wisdom – 784 pages, Ben Hur – 620 pages, etc. Of course there are exceptions, but most blockbuster films today could be trimmed by 40% and would be more watchable.

  • [tiamat_the_red]

     You know, some people (like me) have other things that they’d rather do than watch any movie at all.  I’d rather read a book from the 1950s or the 1970s as my kind of time capsule.  If I’m watching a movie, odds are good that I’m tired, sick or hurt because otherwise I’d be doing something else and in those instances, I’d rather watch some recent bit of entertaining pop crap because I don’t want to think. 

    So I could see how someone might never get around to watching something in B&W, or even might actively avoid it.  You know it’s probalby not going to be the kind of simple entertainment you were looking for so you don’t bother.

• [Robert Holmen]

  As mentioned above, Michael Barrier has substantial notes on Neal Gabler’s research failures in his Disney bio. Some small.  Some not so small.

• [SpongeBorg]

  There’s a parallel to be drawn here between movies and food. Some kids just won’t eat certain foods because they think they are”yucky”. Won’t even try them. Then they get older, move away from home, become poor starving college students and get a little less fussy or a little more open minded and are willing to try new things. So just give the kids time.

  On the flip side a million years ago I worked in a video rental store (remember them?). The most frustrating customers were the ones who always asked “what’s in that’s new?” in instead of “what’s in that good”.

  • [princeminski]

    I remember one morning in my office at the museum (there’s a giveaway to my up-to-the-minute character) I was listening to a Sinatra CD while we were setting up an exhibit. One of the Junior Leaguers present said, “But don’t you like Harry Connick, Jr. ?” Harry was “new” at the time. The half-life of not getting the point is forever.

    • [Baldhead]

       Possibly just awkwardly suggesting a new artist who has a similar style? I do this all the time. “I see you like ___ have you heard ___?”

• [penguinchris]

  This topic is near and dear to me, which is probably obvious since I made several replies to comments before getting to the bottom to write my own. For context, I’m 25 and have been watching old (and new) films – up to hundreds every year (130 so far this year… yes I have a list) – since I was 11 or 12.

  I think it’s unavoidably true that interest in older films is waning, especially among young people. It’s unavoidable because with today’s amazing visual spectacles – even simple dramas and comedies are often amazing visual spectacles – expectations are high. People don’t want to watch a full-frame black and white film because they’ve never seen one before and don’t think they could possibly be interesting. I’ll admit to occasionally having this bias myself – sometimes I just don’t feel like watching an old black and white film.

  Also, even the old films that are also spectacles (like Lawrence of Arabia as a good example) are fairly slow-paced compared to today’s films. The entire style of storytelling is different in older films, and will naturally take some adjustments in order to be able to enjoy.

  In all truth, modern films are just as good as older films (to some extent… they’re certainly not better than my favorite classic films). I would say there was a drop in average quality in the late 90′s and early 2000′s, but for the past few years now we’ve been in essentially a new golden age of cinema. Even though most new releases are crap – most old films are crap too, we just don’t remember the bad ones.

  Most older films are skippable, even a lot of the classics. I think everybody should see Casablanca, and probably Singin’ In The Rain too. I could come up with a huge list of “essential” films from each decade, but those two would really cover everything from the classic era for someone who isn’t particularly interested (though if those films don’t get you at least a little interested in classic films, you’re crazy). Anyone particularly interested in certain genres will further have a few classics that they should know too, of course. 

  And if someone has any intention of being up on modern pop culture, they still need to see fairly old films like Alien(s), Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. – just to mention the obvious action/adventure films everybody knows, obviously there are many others that are deeply ingrained in modern pop culture.

• [Incipient Madness]

   I have tried to convert people to the Lombard/Benny 1941 film To Be or not to Be  with little success. They just don’t get it. I think it’s the best comedy ever made. The false beard on the corpse scene is the funniest scene ever filmed. And it was the first film ever to hint that the Holocaust might be happening, perhaps because the director and a lot of the crew were refugees from Europe. So you have a comedy about the early stages of the Holocaust which could only get away with what it did because it was a comedy. The film’s distribution got pushed back because the US entered the war in December, but it got out there, promoted in part in the smaller markets as Lombard’s last film as she died in a plane crash shortly after the film’s limited release.

  I have the same problem promoting Dr Strangelove to the younger crowd. They don’t care that it starts out with airplanes fucking to lounge music. I grew up with the threat of accidental nuclear exchanges in the 70s and 80s, so a film about accidental nuclear war in 1964 meant a lot to me. Kids these days don’t get it. Plus it’s black and white. And Maj. Kong is not an idiot, he is a competent officer who prevailed in the face of adversity at the cost of his own life. He didn’t want to ride the bomb, he just had to ride the bomb and made the best of it he could. Lt. Zogg (James Earle Jones) knew the mission was more important than his commanding officer. He learned that from Maj. Kong.

  And they don’t get the whole “love me” rock star sequence from the original Bedazzled either. But isn’t that whole sequence a comment about the PUA technique of “negging” and the women who are likely to fall for it?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    But why don’t they get these things? Back in the 60s, we got movies from the 30s without any problem.

    • [Gimlet_eye]

      Part of it is that the culture is more diverse/fragmented/specialized these days, plus there’s a vastly greater amount of entertainment/information. E.g. in the Old Days, there were three TV channels and most movies were aimed at general audiences. Now we have huge segments of those industries aimed at kids or tweens or teens or college students, which tends to keep them in little bubbles of “what’s trendy.” If you are young and there are endless hours of your favorite TV show easily available, it will inhibit knowledge of cultural history by reducing your incentive to check out anything new.

      When I was a kid I was fascinated with dinosaurs and science fiction, but such things rarely showed up on TV or at the movies, so also I read about them or watched other things. If I were that age now, I might be so immersed in sf and dinosaur DVDs and downloads that I wouldn’t discover much else.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        I’m convinced that it’s Child Culture. When I was a lad, if you went to a party, you socialized with the adults, you ate what the adults ate. Everybody watched television together. Now, children are shunted off to watch a Disney movie and eat junk food while the adults do adult things. As a result, children aren’t socialized to become adults or appreciate things that precede their birth dates. I learned to like Bette Davis movies because that’s what was on TV and their weren’t any options, so I watched them.

        The other factor is that, despite the fact that there are now cable channels devoted to old movies, back in the 60s, all the channels ran old movies because they hadn’t all been bought up by film hoarders. Local stations survived by showing things that are now locked up in the Turner vaults.

        • [Gimlet_eye]

          Yes, Child Culture is one sort of the specialization I was referring to. Pre-’60s, pretty much all popular culture had to be what is now called “family friendly.” Once the limits were off for adult culture, specialized child culture was sure to follow.

    • [princeminski]

      This is what keeps me awake at night. Whither our species?

• [Teller]

  Eventually, kids grow up and get TCM in their cable package. That’ll fix ‘em.

• [buddy66]

  The first movie I can remember watching was in 1935. The most recent was last night via Netsux.  Art will out, whether it’s on the walls of Cave de Chauvet or my iMac screen. Who gives a shit what any generation of kids think? — unless you’re in marketing or teaching or some other form of pandering.

  • [niktemadur]

    The first movie I can remember watching was in 1935.
    lol WUT?  But seriously, “art will out” hits the nail on the head.

    Who gives a shit what any generation of kids think?
    “Generation” is ultimately a meaningless concept, I care about those particular minds of any age that look for answers in art and/or science, I think that’s what you said in other words.

    But back to film in particular, let’s say that in my early teens my favorite film was “Empire Strikes Back” (which I still love dearly).  One otherwise ordinary night on TV I bumped into a B/W, jerkily edited thing of beauty called “A Bout De Soufflé”, and I knew at that moment that my landscape had changed.

    Godard took me on a path that led movies like “Alexander Nevsky”, then I knew EXACTLY where “Empire Strikes Back” came from, and maybe that’s why it resonates so strongly with many people, Eisenstein visually laid out great rousing truths about the human condition eighty years ago, and a recontextualized, well made copy will also be a relevant work of art.

    Then there’s Kubrick, a latter Eisenstein.  In my mind, there is nothing quite like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and there never can be.  And the ending of “Paths Of Glory” has made me weep in a heady mixture of both sorrow and joy.

    And if I’m flipping channels and the Marx Brothers are on, I put away the remote because I know what I’ll be watching for the next hour or so.

    Art will out.

• [BarBarSeven]

  Nonsense. I grew up in the 1970s, but learned to love classic films by them being rerun to death on commercial laden TV. I also discovered the magic of Godzilla & Dr. Who via crappy TV.  Yes Dr. Who is not a “movie” in any way, but the point is movies & kids have never been a new issue.  Folks have been remaking films to “appeal” to the “kids” for decades. But the difference is now the rift between the price of seeing a movie online (sometimes 0 dollars) is hard to compete agains $12+ movie tickets in most places. That is what is making the world of movies alien to most kids.

  And honestly, I hated The Godfather when I first saw it back in high school.  Grew to like it after finding out Francis Ford Coppola did Apocalypse Now. And that was back when I had to rent out VHS tapes!  It’s easier nowadays & that is the reason the article that spurred this post is nonsense.

• [ackpht]

  Appreciation is highly subjective.

  I’ve given up recommending films to people other than to say “I really liked it for x reason”.

• [Anon Ymus]

  I get peeved when people make generalizations about others based on age group. I’m in my mid-20′s, but have watched old movies and shows since childhood. Whenever my school teachers said things like, “You’re all too young to know who Fred and Ginger are,” I felt they were being unnecessarily condescending.

  • [niktemadur]

    I felt they were being unnecessarily condescending.

    I’m in my forties and do not tolerate fools easily (not even myself, if you must know).  The school teachers you mention were fools.  Too late for the alternate universe elaborate retort, to watch a contemporary masterpiece like Germany’s “Das Leben Der Anderen” (“The Lives Of Others”) or South Korea’s “Oldboy”, mention it and say “You’re probably too old to know about it”.

• [BethNOLA]

  I just finished a week of classes focused on writing evaluations, where we looked at movie reviews. One student, a woman about 25 years old, kept wondering who watches old movies because, you know, they’re not good. They don’t have the special effects we have now and lots of ‘em are in black and white. 

  I get frustrated with her belief that old things are useless because they’re old. But I also see her generation bombarded with so much information, so many tons of media, and can understand her desire to just filter out what isn’t right in front of her.

  • [hellishmundane]

    “I also see her generation bombarded with so much information, so many tons of media, and can understand her desire to just filter out what isn’t right in front of her.”
    fascinating statement.  a new form of ignorance inherent to the information age.

  • [niktemadur]

    About twenty years ago, I rounded up four friends to watch what I hyped as a “must-see” film, Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate”.
    Halfway through, one of them said “What the fuck, man, you wanted me to see an episode of Perry Mason?”  Because it was in B/W, you see.

    I repeat:  that was twenty years ago.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      I repeat: that was twenty years ago.

      The point being that you’re gotten better friends in the intervening decades?

      • [niktemadur]

        Cinematically speaking, I wouldn’t say better or worse, we shared and loved great films like “The Godfather” (1 and 2), “A Clockwork Orange”, “Taxi Driver”, “Apocalypse Now”, “Blade Runner” and ironically in the context, “Raging Bull”.

        What I was trying to say is that for many people, B/ W was as noisy twenty years ago as it is today.

        But your question is a good one and goes much deeper, and I dare say… no.  Same kinks and quirks expressed differently, while I’m just as kinky and quirky. Any new friend is just as cool and flawed as me.

• [JhmL]

  Never before in the history of cinema has there been more and better availability of old films; Netflix, Voddler, YouTube, Moving Image Archive and of course p2p… I’m sure the old flicks survive just fine, there’ll always be a few curious tykes willing to give the oldies a go.

• [Scurra]

  Sturgeon’s Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.  This applies to “old movies” just as much as it applies to modern music or conceptual art.  The important part is that the remaining stuff is terrific, regardless of when it was made.  (OK, so clearly some of the fun comes from arguing over exactly what belongs in that 10% because we all have different tastes, but even so…)

  • [Genre Slur]

     I have to admit I only liked this comment because I am Theodore Sturgeons’ bitch, sigh.

• [Tim Swanky Glazner]

  I had similar thoughts reading it. “Pop culture sucks” was as true 30 years ago as it is today. That is not relevant.

• [Genre Slur]

  Key Largo is excellent noir. Let’s hope hollywood doesn’t destroy it in a redux.

  • [niktemadur]

    Whenever a remake comes along, one can choose to ignore it.

    The only recent remake that intrigues me is “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” because of the good reviews, although the original BBC miniseries showed that taking your own sweet time makes for sublime viewing, I dare call it cinema.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BJ3rWva4_g

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Whenever a remake comes along, one can choose to ignore it.

      Actually, there are plenty of better remakes. Considering only well-known films that didn’t change genre between adaptations.
      ☺ Henry V 1989 is better than Henry V 1944
      ☺ Romeo and Juliet 1968 is better than 1936 or 1954
      ☺ The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956 is better than 1934
      ☺ Little Women 1994 is better than 1933 or 1949
      ☺ Pride and Prejudice 2005 is better than 1940, although neither holds a candle to the TV version with Colin Firth.

      Although Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s produced many brilliant films that would never be made today (mostly because it’s virtually impossible to get funding for drama with a female lead), book and play adaptations of the era were frequently smarmy with tacked on happy endings. Not to mention a 43 year-old Leslie Howard playing Romeo to Norma Shearer’s 36 year-old Juliet, with John Barrymore at 54 as Mercutio.

      • [niktemadur]

        I’m ashamed to say the only film I’ve seen from your post is “Henry V” (1989), I will say I’ve tried to see Zefirelli’s “Romeo And Juliet” but… it’s never physically existed here.  And I refuse to watch a full movie on my computer screen, call me old-fashioned if you like.

        Now, after films like “Following” and “Memento”, I’d love to see Christopher Nolan tackle something like “Double Indemnity”.

      • [Peter Erwin]

        And, of course, some of what we consider classics from the 1930s and 1940s were themselves remakes (e.g., The Maltese Falcon; His Girl Friday; and the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood).

• [Raff Hall]

  I love when movies include cringe moments.  It is entertaining to see what Hollywood presented as normal at any given time.  Dated, camp films are not appreciated by most teens but eventually even the lazy millennials love old ’80s pop culture so some day some of them will discover the silent films, musicals or trash of old. 

• [Jason Miller]

  Most people of any era have terrible taste, and most movies made at any given time are crappy and made to make money. It may seem like movies from “way back” are better, but that’s largely because we’re only seeing the stuff that survived. The downside of the present is we have to sift through its crap in real-time.  

  I’m fairly sure there will be just as many kids who know Bogart or Fritz Lang in 20 years as there were when I was ten – next to none, but somehow still just enough. 

• [CynthAlise]

  So I played Breakfast at Tiffany’s for a bunch of middle school girls during reading class and they loved it.  The only issue they had with it was the same one I have with almost all classics I watch: the beginning was a little slow. I found it interesting that my students and I had the exact same feelings about this movie:  we loved Audrey Hepburn and thought the scenery and plot were amazing.  It just took them a little while to get into it.

  I’d say give a few years and next thing you know, a bunch of the old movies will see this huge revival of interest.  That’s the thing about well-made movies:  they never really go out of style, because the era a movie was made in doesn’t matter as long as it tells a good story.

• [Jess]

  I’d just like to comment that as a 16 year old, I in no way judge a film by its age. I’ll admit that I’ve not necessarily watched all those films by my own choice, but it has led me to have many favourites. (And I delight in understanding references in the media controlled and produced by older generations.)
  Th thing is, I grew up in the 90′s, where technology was no where near as ‘advanced’ as it is now. And, in the end, the shows and films my parents exposed me too were the stuff that /they/ had liked as children.
  I certainly think that they isn’t as strong-er interest in old films, because new, revolutionary stuff is coming out all the time. New technology and new adaptions of old films means people don’t really need to look back.
  That being said, you should have heard the resounding groan when, in my English class in which we were studying the portrayals of criminals in fiction, our teacher explained that we /weren’t allowed/ to watch The Godfather. (We did see a couple of clips though, and we got to watch the Untouchables.)

  • [ackpht]

    Whoa there, pardner.

    “No need” to look back? “Revolutionary new” stuff?

    I sentence you to a solid month of watching only films  made before 1942.

• [John Wao]

  There are countless movies that I didn’t appreciate in my younger days or never had the opportunity to see, that I now love like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, The Third Man, Gone With the Wind, and many many others.

• [Gary Timoshenko]

  My son is eleven and he loves old movies.  My proudest moment is when he said to me “Why are old movies better?”.  
  Old movies actually are better because nobody is going to watch a crappy old movie.  We really only watch only the best old movies.
  One problem for kids is that they don’t always appreciate adult movies so with my son  we started with movies like Robin Hood, King Kong, Planet of the Apes, The Princess Bride that appeal more to kids.