So i've been on a kick of watching through some older "gems"

>>80872188
No, you're just a pleb fag.

>>80872188
Depends on what films you watched.

>>80872188
Back then, movies where something that got you out of the house and then the man of the house would savagely rape his wife afterwards. Baby BOOMERS indeed.

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>>80872188
>>80872396
>>80872419
>everyone says Citizen Kane is the best movie ever
>it's from 1940
>watch the beginning of it
>it actually looks amazing

>>80872449
why would you assume anything else

>>80872419
Well some of my 1950-1960 faves are Rear Window, Dial M For Murder and 12 Angry Men, Bridge On River Kwai is also pretty damn good but then stuff like Seven Samurai, Casablanca, every fucking Chaplin movie feels so fucking overrated.

Try these out:
>Metropolis (1927, 2010 restored version)
>The Wizard of Oz (1939)
>Casablanca (1942)
>Rashomon (1950)
>North by Northwest (1959)
>Cool Hand Luke (1967)
>Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)


Movies on average are a lot better today, but each decade of the past 100 years had some amazing films that should be watched for posterity and expanding your tastes.

Barry Lyndon is probably the best visual/cinematographic film of all time. Metropolis is also up there.

>>80872574
Also to add, the first three movies I mentioned in that post feel more like a theater play more than an actual movie, but they're well written and dialogue driven with great sense of suspense so I love that shit.

>>80872592
thought Casablanca and Rashomon weren't anything special, still haven't gotten around to watching the last three in your list, but plan to.

>>80872188
That's because Hitchcock was hot fire and revolutionised the whole studio system from the inside.

It is often said that the studio system was like a well oiled machine that put out movies, a chain of command in which the producer was more important than the director or writer. It is also said that Holywood cinema (which I guess is what you're watching since there is no such a thing that could be called "non-existant cinematography" in any other way) was mostly driven by psychology and the works of the actors, so be wary of that (more than shocking visuals, have a keen eye on how commonalities are expressed and managed, like positioning and camera placements; this is key) when you watch a film from that particular time and that particular place.

Also, watch more mute films (from all over the world, check the french, check the germans, check the italians). If you don't like Chaplin (I didn't know that could happen, honestly!), check out the other great clown of the time: Keaton (his Sherlock Jr. and the General are masterpieces) and Harold Lloyd.

Check out Seven Samurai's and Kurosawa's images more closely, though. There's a lot going on there.

>>80872606
>feel more like a theater play more than an actual movie,
I would agree that 12 Angry Man is a theater play with an excellent use of camera positioning -because it is. But Rear Window is nothing but cinema. Look out for the more nuanced play on perspective that Hitchcock uses: it's pure cinematography, a master class.

If you're interested in Hitchcock, a great and basic read is the Truffaut interviews with him, which are most elucidating of his process. They are not stage plays at all, train your eye.

>>80872188
check out The Third Man, great tension, humor, visuals, and music, and Welles at his idiosyncratic best

>Am I just burned out since modern cinema (let's say 1990-present) gives a much greater package of what a movie should be?

You wouldn't think this if there hadn't been so many steps movies had to take before getting there. The two movements most responsible for contemporary are within twenty years of each other, and they themselves are built on the backs of other, sometimes foreign, waves in cinema.

This is a good argument to check out cinema just for its history, but I'd argue that it only adds CONTEXT, which isn't totally necessarily if a movie is able to stand on its own merits. Breathless was like that for me, where I was unimpressed on my first viewing, appreciated it a little more on my second (after learning a little more about its context and influence), and on every viewing afterward I see it for the masterpiece that it is (which is a good way to chart your development into movies: revisiting shit).

If I had to recommend some stuff from 1940-1960 just to help convince you that these titles hold up just as good as anything else, I'd some pretty accessible, tried and true, bona fide shit: Double Indemnity, Shadow of a Doubt, The Long Voyage Home, In a Lonely Place, and the Cranes are Flying.

I prefer newer movies also. Holding a camera fixed on a scene for 5 minutes doesn't automatically make a movie great. It's the extreme opposite of 100 cuts in a 1 minute fight scene and just as boring.

Tarantino makes fun films, and overall Hollywood still makes the best movies in the world. I don't know why people get snobbish about cinema, it's one of the lowest artforms, constructed by some of the shallowest people and the screenplays are often failed authors trying to eek out a living.

If you want science fiction read some Greg Egan or William Gibson, or go read the classics from the Golden Age. (Spoiler: the newer sci fi is better).


No Sci-fi movie will ever come close to your imagination and a good author to tease it out of you. The same is true for all the other genres, rarely is a movie better than a book, painting or poem. Movies are about excitement, popcorn, and feeling like a child again. They aren't about deep introspection or some philosophical statement on the condition of humanity or the planet, people who make pretentious shit are idiots who couldn't hack it as scientists, philosophers or politicians.

Now movies against movies is just like this anon says: >>80872883
something that took many different influences over a dozen decades, cultures, and geniuses that crop up every now and again and break through an imaginary wall to make a magical film that stands out ahead of it's time. There are some films everyone should see, for historical context and to understand why modern movies are the way they are.

But people who claim only movies made before certain date are any good are morons. Every year films get better visually, and it's primarily a visual medium. You couldn't even tell where they used CGI on Logan, and it looked great.

>>80872449
Right? It's fucking great. They actually invented a lens for it so everything stays in focus. Objects in the foreground, background, everything.

>>80872188
>>/cringe/

>>80873107
>sci-fi fan calling cinema "low art"

Pretty fucking rich my dude

>>80872188
Watch the early work of Sidney Lumet, he practically shat out constant kinos in his early era.

>12 Angry Men
>Fail-Safe
>The Pawnbroker
>The Hill
>Network
>The Offence
>The Fugitive Kind

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Watched this one from the 50s, I found it pretty entertaining. Of course you shouldn't be looking for explosions and special effects

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>>80872188
>more suspense in a thriller movie today

You clearly haven't experienced The Wages of Fear to make a claim like that

>>80873107
>Movies are about excitement, popcorn, and feeling like a child again. They aren't about deep introspection or some philosophical statement on the condition of humanity or the planet, people who make pretentious shit are idiots who couldn't hack it as scientists, philosophers or politicians.

Can't agree with you there or in anything you said (except the first phrase in the last paragraph). Great directors are usually quite not literary and just want to express ideas through images. To say, for example, that Chris Marker couldn't "hack it" as a writer is to not understand him. Same goes for Fellini, Tarkovski, Griffith, Vertov, Welles, Chaplin, etc, etc. It is also ridiculous to minimise all cinema to Holywood's studio system and then make grand statements about the whole of it, also ridiculing the alternatives; that's pretty inane.

>>80873185
im not a sci fi fan, im simply saying sci fi is the most overused film genre and it's never lived up to the source material. if you aren't aware it's the 21st century and every single human person with a brain dreams of seeing earth from space at least once before they die.

Again, if you're going to be a snob about something then go read Proust or Tolstoy, and bemoan modern industrialism and the decline of capitalist democracies, why are you devoting any amount of time to literally lowest tier propaganda for appeasing the masses.

Or did I trigger you because you're a brainlet with a passion for cinema? (because you cant into anything serious).

>>80873107
>rarely is a movie better than a book, painting or poem.

You couldn't be more wrong there.
Film is unironically the highest form of art.
It actually contains all the other art forms in all the filmmaking elements, from architecture, fashion, design to music, photography, the writing and performances.

With film, you can express your idea in just one single frame through framing and composition, the performance, production design, sound
etc, while in for example books you have to use multiple sentences just to set up the scene and for the viewer to grasp what's happening. Reading linear words is not efficient and it relies too much on the readers imagination, film is just much more efficient.

Now that doesn't mean everyone uses the medium to it's maximum potential, but it has a far greater potential than any other art form.

>>80873401
That's a whole lot of complete gobbledygook to infer from literally nothing you fucking moron.

Lifehack: if you want to talk seriously about any of the arts you'll need to learn how to communicate in an even slightly coherent way.

>>80873107
>Hollywood still makes the best movies in the world
lmao

>>80873409
Jesus, what's with cataloging forms of art and you people? "Highest form of art" "lowest form of art", it's ridiculous.

For example, film, by its visual and temporal nature, can hardly get into the density of comprehended (as in, not merely absorbed) information that written data does easily. It can't really portray the quantities of detail that a painture will by itself because of its temporary nature and the limitations of its material production. And the levels of suggestion music can have over the imagination go far beyond the visual.

My point is that film, by being "impure", isn't higher or lower, that's a ridiculous notion. It is merely different.

>>80873401
>Or did I trigger you because you're a brainlet with a passion for cinema? (because you cant into anything serious).

weeeew hahahaha

Watch Cash McCall.

>>80873601
>film can hardly get into the density of comprehended information that written data does easily
How? Not only can in can into the density, it can detail it even further. One written line in a script can be 5 seconds or 5 minutes long in a film, depending on how does the director want to interpret that line.

>It can't really portray the quantities of detail that a painture will by itself because of its temporary nature and the limitations of its material production
How? You can stay on a long shot as long as it is needed, and the change in framing and composition of a camera movement like a dolly in or out can even emphasize certain aspects of the picture. Just like you can see the brush strokes of a painter you can see the directors vision through blocking, framing and composition, the performances and the production design

>And the levels of suggestion music can have over the imagination go far beyond the visual
Are you forgetting that films have audio too? That you can have the same "suggestive" as you call it musical piece accompanied with equally suggestive visuals?

>>80873338
The people you mentioned are midgets in comparison to Shakespeare, Joyce, Hemingway.

Homer is still read to this day, almost 3000 years after those poems were originally sung. Do you seriously think ANY of the people you listed will be remembered 3000 years from now? Are you fucking high?

>>80873409

>relies on the readers imagination
so then no piece of modern art is not art to you?

Film is the newest form of performance art, a subset of art. The written word performed as poem or song is the oldest and greatest form of art, because of it's simplicity. Nuance is added by the observer or simply enjoyed without any complication.

When you're thinking right now, is it predominantly in pictures or words?

It's potential for reshaping the human psyche is unparalleled, and it makes a particularly powerful weapon in the hands of one inclined to use it. But it's already dying after about 130 years, replaced by digital, computer effects replacing actors, and so on.

>>80873520
I feel sorry for your inability to read closely, maybe I should shoot a short film for you to encapsulate the message better;
>begin with a long framing shot of your house
>timelapse over several days
>people get up go to work, arrive home, walk their dogs, mow their lawns
>light in your room flicks on and off
>bed to computer, on a 12 hour cycle, engrossed in your digital art project
>sad music plays as we get a shot of your fat silhouette against a wall decorated with anime posters
>the camera pans around, we peek over your shoulder to blurry stills from an early cut of your youtube masterpiece
>sad music builds to crescendo
>cut to your hand suddenly scrunching up a tissue
>cut to overhead shot of you leaning back in your chair, eyes scrunched up, cum dripping from your chin
>cut back to screen, it's all black and white shots of you in a trenchcoat squinting into the distance
>... "Cinema!"

>>80873962
>it's older so it's better xDDD
>muh simplicity

The most pleb opinion there is. Bet you would hate on the invention of the electric guitar if you lived in that era.
If everyone had the same opinion like you we would still be playing music with sticks and stones and chanting uncomprehensible words at each other.

Also lmao at cinema dying, it is only starting.

>>80873962
I don't like to compare authors or speculate about "things being remembered", since it's essentialy pointless and subjective. You returned a psichologization of every director and cinema writer (and so for the medium) into an argument of validity through weight of history, which is merely philistinic in my opinion.

>>80873798
About film and density:

I'm talking about data here, not only art but expression and information and how may it be conceived from the other half: text and concepts are clearly understood within people of the same language, and through annotations the knowledge can be expanded. Cinema, is limited by time, and while a lot of detail can be conveyed through the means of cinematic form, there isn't such a clear conception of that detail as in the phrase. Also, being audiovisual and timely, is more hegemonic, it is horribly harder to personally expand through it like one would with a book and annotations.

About film and detail:

I understand what you're saying, but there's a problem. I'm talking about a single frame, a single image here. A painture can be analysed through film, but it will lead to the conception of that director through the means of film (and commonly an unnecesary narration). The whole dimension of it can't be really portrayed in cinema, it needs to be present for that to happen, since cinema requires more focus and deals in time.

About music and film:

Yes, films have audio too; but audio can be something else entirely on its own. It is far more abstract than any image (absolutely different receptor that appeals to different things), and audio, when used in film, tends, naturally, to be subjugated by the image and conditioned by it.

Suggestive visuals and suggestive audio cannot be "equal". Film mix them to create the audiovisual (evidently), but the evocative force of the three are radically different.

I'm not trying to say film is "worse", but to say, overall, that it conveys things in a different manner.

>>80873107
Movies are still very much a young form of art. It is also dictatorial of you to assume that movies should only be consumed in a particular way.

>>80872446
*wife and children

>>80874612
He refused the objective truth that the written word is the superior form of art. It is what hinged out civilisation until the advent of computers and their binary language. I turned to a qualitative argument over what humans place more value over.

This is an argumentative technique, when someone refuses to accept facts or history you can still convince them with the burden of popular opinion. They are likely to believe and parrot what the majority says, so simply convince them that their position is the minority one and they will change their mind.

To the other idiot who compared it to technology, no I did not say we should go back to steam engines or horse drawn carriages. Technology progresses forward out of necessity. Art is an activity in non-essential creativity, and does not face the same pressures of being efficient or reproducible. It's the exact opposite.

How is hiding behind "everything is subjective so we can't discuss or compare anything" useful? It's a complete revisionism of the truth. There is absolutely nothing relative about art, good art is universally appreciated by all human cultures and unlike technology it can go backwards and regress to a worse state. The evidence for technology doing this is insufficient, but it is also probably the case that we could plunge back into a dark age and have to rebuild things from scratch.

My point stands, film is a crude medium for stupid people to be brainwashed by the millions into a formulaic pattern of behavior. Conditioning a population like this is useful for a small group at the top which cannot use overt control for the risk of exposure and eventual removal from power or assassination. Both the Soviets and Nazis understood and heavily relied on film as propaganda. Later the American industrialists adopted a similar attitude towards cinema. Example, the contemporary DC and Marvel movies are nothing more than an advertisement for American militarism.

>>80872188
You're a hopeless case
Enjoy your capeshit, sir

This thread went south fast. It started being about the question on how film evolved as a medium to a film is the lowest form of propaganda.

>>80873107
>Every year films get better visually,
Not really, unless you are talking about the EPIC SFX LMAO

>>80873401
>very single human person with a brain dreams of seeing earth from space at least once before they die.
that's one of the most absurd generalizations I have read in years, maybe ever

>>80873962
>The people you mentioned are midgets in comparison to Shakespeare, Joyce, Hemingway.
Let's see what cinema churns out 3000 years from now, and it will be a fair comparison.

>>80874984
>My point stands, film is a crude medium for stupid people to be brainwashed by the millions into a formulaic pattern of behavior

Only if you watch run of the mill Hollywood garbage my dear friend. Todays most popular books are cancer too, many studio cash ins.
And can't you "brainwash" people with books or any other art form too?

you're such an ignorant cunt my man

>>80874984
>good art is universally appreciated by all human cultures
That's simply not true

Also telling us how you're 'using an argumentative technique to convince him' shows that you're just lying and trying to use rhetoric to convince someone, it doesn't make what you say true you fucking halfwit

>>80872188
You need to be able to consider the context while watching older films in order to appreciate them in any sort of way. Of course if you compare older films to the films of the 90s and so on (on a purely objective level), the newer films are going to look better. Remember that without the pioneering work a lot of the films of the. 40s and 50s did, certain films wouldn't exist today.

>>80875376
That's not really true
A lot of older films are intrinsically beautiful, not just stepping stones to current film
Lots of films are good independent of context (that's what makes them good)

Watch Ingmar Bergman films. I really like Hitchcock and like Bergman too so you might also

>>80874984
I don't understand the context of your first two paragraphs, could you explain further?

>good art is universally appreciated by all human cultures and unlike technology it can go backwards and regress to a worse state. The evidence for technology doing this is insufficient, but it is also probably the case that we could plunge back into a dark age and have to rebuild things from scratch.

This is not correct and contradicts itself. First of all, if you're placing art's value in appreciation then it's obviously going to be subjective. Universal appreciation of art does not exist and is a pretty bold lie. Joyce, one of your examples of a giant in literature, is not universally liked and wasn't when Ulysses came out.

My point about subjetivity is subjugated to the pointlessness of your original claim, which relied on: the greatest filmmakers are worse than the greatest literary figures; and historical validity, remembrance, is what makes something great, contorting into needless speculation about "no filmmaker will be remembered".

The second point talks enough about itself, the first, if not about greatness (which is very arguable and not objective) is about influence, which can be quite more measurable but difficult to measure if one doesn't have clear hindsight of future. Potemkin, the image of the West, Bambi and the Tramp, to show quite blunt examples, had clear influence not only on cinema but on world aesthetics as well of today as well.

About your last paragraph: Your point is standing on a crude simplification of cinema as an artform, evident in your very first post. As film (and any other artform) is capable of propaganda and shallow conceptions, it is also capable of subverting those.

>>80873316
>mfw I watched sorcerer first

did I fuck myself over? Can I still watch this and enjoy it?

plenty of old films are drivel just like plenty of new films.

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>>80872449
>>80872574
>>80872592
>>80872776
>>80872883
>>80873236
>>80873316
>>80873697
Thanks for all of the films/suggested viewing
Much appreciated

>>80875676
>A lot of older films are intrinsically beautiful, not just stepping stones to current film
Thanks for bringing some sense into the thread

i though North by Northwest was really boring can someone point out something good about that movie?

>>80876002
It seemed like a pretty obvious point to make. There are so many movies that I think could be released in any time period and still be considered amazing.
If Through a Glass Darkly came out tomorrow and I went to go see it, I'd still think it's one of the best films I've ever seen, context wouldn't have any effect on it

>>80875761
Sorcerer is a fine remake actually, but I think it would be better if you watched The Wages of Fear first.

Nonetheless, you will still enjoy it (even more if you enjoyed Sorcerer)

>>80873107
>le books better than films

>>80876018
Watch Saboteur. Same feel, much better.

>>80876422
If he didn't like North by Northwest than he won't like Saboteur either

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Roger Sterling's "Twilight Zone" is good old T.V.

>>80877058

Not sure if I should laugh or be angered

>>80872188
I disagree with your praise for Hitchcock. Yet, I don't really have the right to do that because I have only seen North by Northwest.

To me, it was one of the most boring films that I have seen and I have watched Magnolia and Hard to Be a For multiple times and was consistently entertained. What I believe that had left me bored was that in which you praised of him, cinematography.

I will give you that the film was edited very well bit the shots consisted entirely of establishing shots, people walking to a spot, and then them standing in that spot delivering dialogue. It was incredibly pedestrian and lacked any expression.

Hitchcock was great at introducing the mechanics of suspense to film but I firmly disagree with him being one of the greatest fimmakers.