ClassicFlix - Only the Classics

Fasten Your Seat Belts: Cars and the Movies

Mobile. Motion. MOVE. From the start, films showed people moving at maximum speed, leading to the golden age of the railroad picture (teens and '20s), the aviation picture (late '20s through mid-50's), and the motorcycle picture ('60s and early '70s.) But cars have never gone out of style in the movies. No matter what Hollywood decade you explore, you'll find car races, car chases, car crashes, souped-up luxury cars, and comic junkers.Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops shorts (1912-1917...

Baby Boomers in the Black and White Universe

If you are a baby boomer, you are not alone. Boomers rent and collect bushels of black and white classics. They also swarm to vintage film festivals and swell the ranks of TCM viewers. We boomers made a seemingly odd entertainment choice: we've leapfrogged back several generations to savor the popular entertainment of the WWI, Depression, and WWII eras. Some of us know more about old films and their production than the original audiences.Television brought the glories of old Holly...

Magic Moments with Bette

In hindsight, it is surprising that Bette Davis was ever a box office star. For an eight year span in the '30s and '40s, she was queen of the Warners lot, and her vehicles made a lot of money. Never really a glamour star, although Variety's review of The Man Who Played God (1932) called her 'a vision of wide-eyed blonde beauty,' not a strong comedy player, although she took part in the raucous slapstick of The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), she was also a limited singer, although...

The Name Game: Monumental Movie Trivia

About 30 years ago, George Carlin came on The Tonight Show and had Johnny Carson laughing helplessly with a bit on old movies. The premise was when you see a crowd scene in an old black and white movie; odds are everyone in the scene is now dead. A bit morbid, but Carlin tapped into the back alleys of speculation movie fans love.When a film festival runs a film featuring an infant, it's a guaranteed conversation topic when the film ends. 'That baby that Constance Bennett ...

'It Only Cost a Dime:' Seniors Remember the Golden Age of Movies

When senior citizens (I like the phrase 'seasoned citizens') remember the movies of their youth, they focus on the dime it cost to enter the dream palace.I've been quizzing my elders about their movie memories since the late 60s, when the one o'clock matinee movie on TV got me hooked on the black and white era. Here are some of the stories they told me.One man who grew up in Lima, Ohio, in the Depression, told me how he saw three shows for fifteen cents. 'On Saturday, ...

Apes, Earthquakes, and Jello Horses: Special Effects Landmarks in Sound Films

Five years separate the premieres of The Jazz Singer (1927), with its brief but irresistible sequences of Al Jolson's singing, from Love Me Tonight (1932), a miracle of score synchronization, fluid camera, and optical effects. In the early sound period, the major studios hired more technical advisers and, for certain effects-filled films, began to accept higher ends in production costs and schedules.At their best, the results are startling. In thi...

Silent Wonders: Early Landmarks in Special Effects

The farther back one pursues a love of vintage films, a theme becomes increasingly clear: the speed of technology. Cinema was driven by rapid advances in photography, set design, and props. Consider first the format of commercial films: coin-operated peep shows in 1894, public exhibition of short films in 1896 (some of them clips of a minute or less), a popular narrative film (The Great Train Robbery) in 1903, a charming cartoon, Gertie the Dinosaur, in 1909, and feature fil...

Zero at the Bone: Chilling Moments in Classic Films

My article title comes from Emily Dickinson; it is how she described the feeling of coming upon a snake as it slid past her in the grass. It is a feeling film makers have produced in willing audiences since the silent days. With its sensory presentation, film is the perfect medium for the thriller. While we often date the modern thriller from the premiere of Psycho in 1960, movies had been scaring the socks off people for half a century. In 1910, in fact, there was a one-reel Fra...

Hollywood's B-Sides: Musical Moments for the Connoisseur

Once there was a place called Hollywood, and out of it poured wonderful things, fantastic creations that included musicals, musical comedies, and operettas. What fan of classic films has not watched One Hour with You, Shall We Dance, The Pirate, or a hundred others, and not marveled at the level of artistry and studio production that made these films possible? The golden age of movie musicals falls roughly between 1932 and 1954, but music was a key eleme...

Guilty Pleasures: A Further Selection

Here are more films I find addictive while acknowledging they are far from perfect. Most of these films earned average ratings in Leonard Maltin's (now defunct) Movie Guide and Scheuer's Movies on TV. But as film buffs discover, you should never let a rating of two or two and a half stars deter you from watching a vintage film. Films with worn-out stories can succeed on style, star power, and sometimes, sheer absurdity. For your consideration this month: His ...

Author: David Pitts