You Top 10 Most Watchable *CLASSIC* (as in Prior to 1953) Films (inspired by Cachoo)

[snoopysnake]

The Wizard of Oz
Singin' in the Rain
On the Town
A Day at the Races
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Strangers on a Train
The Heiress
It's a Wonderful Life
Gone With The Wind

[DarrellH]

All About Eve
Sunset Blvd
Portrait Of Jennie (I love this one)
Rebecca
Jezebel
Mildred Pierce
Singing In The Rain
Wuthering Heights
Stella Dallas
The Great Zeigfeld

[orientalplane]

Dodsworth (1936)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Double Indemnity (1944)
The Third Man (1949)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Hamlet (1948)
La Regle du Jeu (1939)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Letter (1940)

[gingercrush]

Making it pre-1953 makes it rather hard as that for me means no "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Psycho", "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" or "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" even though those for me are essentially classic films.


The Wizard of Oz (I think I have seen it so so so so so many times)
All About Eve
Sunset Boulevard
Jezebel
I'm No Angel
Key Largo
Jeopardy (1953 so right on the cusp)
Mildred Pierce
National Velvet
Cinderella

That was hard and I actually had a nosey at what others wrote but I guess I could have included the animated movies such as Pinnochio, Bambi, Snow White etc which are probably more watchable than some of my top ten now that I think about it. I haven't seen nearly as many classic films as I would like and ewww my only time watching Casablanca was in colour.

[Grannyfan]

I've already posted my list, but looking through the thread I see several others that I love. I think I'm the only one who listed Palm Beach Story so I'm going to put in a plug for it. Joel McCrea (great comic actor despite his association with westerns; also very sexy), Claudette Colbert, Rudy Vallee, Mary Astor. It's a Preston Sturges story and just a pure delight from beginning to end. If you love old movies and have never seen it, treat yourself sometime!

[PeterG]

The Wizard of Oz
Of Human Bondage
Born Yesterday
She Done Him Wrong
High Noon
Song of Bernadette
San Francisco
The Ox-Bow Incident

[terisalyn]

The Great Dictator (1940)
Dinner at Eight (1933)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
The Awful Truth (1937)
The Women (1939)
All About Eve (1950)
Algiers (1938)
.... three more.... damn this is hard....
Metropolis (1937)
The Petrified Forest (1936)
... and end with a guilty pleasure - Old Acquaintance (1943) - a silly movie, but I love the scene where Bette comes back into the room, calmly walks across to her friend, grabs her by the shoulders and SHAKES her, then says "Sorry" and walks back out.

[Buzz]

All About Eve - 1950
Pinky - 1949
Maltese Falcon - 1941
Imitation of Life - 1934
Casablanca - 1942
Citizen Kane - 1941
Wizard of Oz - 1939
Gone With The Wind - 1939
Strangers on a Train - 1952
Notorious - 1946

[michiruwater]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Rebecca
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
To Kill A Mockingbird
Gone With The Wind
A Streetcar Named Desire
Casablanca
It's A Wonderful Life (always my Christmas staple!)
Fantasia
Singin' In The Rain

Would have absolutely had Rear Window and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in place of the last two if the dates had been included. For me those are both definitely classics

[aftershocks]

The General (1926)
The Clock (1945)
Lifeboat (1944)
Laura (1944)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Sabotage (1936)
The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Body and Soul (1947)
Cry, the Beloved Country (1951)


Honorable mentions:
Broken Blossoms (1919); Sunrise (1927); The Public Enemy (1931); Morning Glory (1933); It Happened One Night (1934); Top Hat (1935); Mutiny on the Bounty (1935); Shall We Dance (1937); Wuthering Heights (1939); Stagecoach (1939); The Grapes of Wrath (1940); Citizen Kane (1941); The Lady Eve (1941); The Little Foxes (1941); How Green Was My Valley (1941); Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942); The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); Shadow of a Doubt (1943); Stormy Weather (1943); Gaslight (1944); Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); Since You Went Away (1944); It’s a Wonderful Life (1946); The Yearling (1946); Notorious (1946); Gilda (1946); The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946); Miracle on 34th Street (1947); Out of the Past (1947); Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947); Rope (1948); Red River (1948); The Heiress (1949); Lost Boundaries (1949); A Place in the Sun (1951); A Christmas Carol (1951); Ace in the Hole (1951)

[Cyn]

To Kill A Mockingbird was made in 1962 (the novel was published in 1960).

This is just a guess, but I suspect a lot of people think it's a much older movie because 1) the story takes place in the 1930s, and 2) it was filmed in black and white, giving it a much older "feel."

It won an Oscar for "Academy Award for Best Art Direction - Set Decoration, Black-and-White" and was nominated for "Best Cinematography, Black-and-White." I'm not an expert when it comes to the history of the Academy Awards (far from it ), especially when it comes to the many changes, additions, and deletions of categories for awards, but if I had to wager a guess, with regard to the production categories for movies, at that time the Academy differentiated between movies made in black and white from those made in color and gave separate awards for them.

With all of the film buffs here at FSU (especially members who are knowledgable about this), someone can confirm or refute this.

[michiruwater]

Yeah, they did. They separated the categories in '39 and continued separating them until '66, according ot this.

And TKAM is still a classic to me But I would include all the Godfathers and the original Star Wars as classics too if you'd asked me like a week ago before I realized this might offend some people

One day someone will tell me Titanic is a classic, though.