Friday, January 6, 2012

Movies

Many, many years ago, I was a huge fan of classic old movies. I would regularly set my alarm for some ungodly hour of the night so I could spend a couple of hours in the company of Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart to name a few. This was, of course, long before any sort of recording device was around. Back then, you watched a movie when it was on or not at all.
Years later, I began to collect a great number of those old classics on DVD. My collection is quite substantial, but I've just never managed to re-watch any of them.
This year I plan to watch 100 movies that date from 1932 until 1970.
I'm quite curious about how my opinion of some of them will have changed. How many will actually stand the test of time?
This week I've watched "Grand Hotel"(1932) and "Little Women"(1933) - my two oldest movies.

 
 
 "Grand Hotel" won the Best Movie oscar back in 1932. I can't believe it is now 80 years old!  Oh, the melodrama in this one! Extravagantly over-acted, except, surprisingly, by Joan Crawford, who was excellent.
"Little Women" (watched tonight) was just adorable. Still getting used to the hamming it up done by all actors. I'm sure they over- emphasised every word and action back then because they all thought they were performing on a theatre stage.
Sweet closing credit screen for "Little Women"

1 comment:

librarygirl said...

I remember watching a bit of "Bringing up baby" a few years ago and couldn't bear the shrillness/haminess. But then I don't like so many modern movies for the same reason...