Out Of The Past

Guest post by: aka.attrition

Out of The Past

I suspect that many readers here are of a similar age bracket to me, say 50 or 60 and up. Those in this group will probably have grown up watching the old black and white movies when we were younger in the 60s and 70s and before color movies became totally dominant. I enjoy watching these old movies even today for various reasons including the window they provide into a past we have lost.

Watching these old movies, made in the 40s and 50s, you find a number of common features of both the movies themselves and the times in which they take place. The movies tend to be heavy on script and light on special effects. The movies told a real story with real character development. Actors had to learn (especially compared to today’s movies) very lengthy speaking roles and be able to deliver the lines with conviction; you were drawn into the lives of the characters. You really had to act as CGI and special effects were not going to save you.

Considered one of the greatest films of all time, All About Eve received a record 14 Academy Awards nominations and won six, including Best Picture. The only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations including Best Actress and Supporting Actress. The movie is over 2 hours long and virtually non-stop dialogue.

I particularly like the Film Noir movies, tales of crime and moral ambiguity, the movies where there’s usually no good ending for either the good guys or bad. Characters falling prey to their all too human short-comings and failings, deals going wrong, double-crosses, blackmail and bribery, paranoia and betrayal, and often with the classic femme fatale to bring the best laid plans to an unfortunate end. Film Noir success is largely credited to German cinematographers and directors like John Seitz and Fritz Lang.

What you also see in these old movies is the times in which they were filmed. Scenes which are shot in the street, in everyday locations, where genuine passers-by were captured on film show, for example, how well dressed the men and women were (and they were real men and women). Men usually in suit and tie and women in dresses.

Streets, even in big cities like New York and San Francisco, were far less busy, far less traffic, and a lot cleaner.

There were a lot less obese people (almost none), a health phenomenon which seems to correlate perfectly with the rise of fast food, junk food, not food.

Even the bad guys were cool.

Everyone wore hats. And everyone, and I mean everyone, smoked.

What I often come away with after watching the oldies is how crapified our society has become today compared to what it was “back in the day”. Everything has become so crass, cheap, commercial. People have no manners, no respect for anything, often not even for themselves. Chivalry is dead. Status trumps class. Respectability above self-respect. Everybody’s out for #1.

Steven Covey once wrote that he researched the evolution of self-help books. He found that up to about the 70s self-help books focused on developing one’s character; traits like integrity, honesty, hard work, keeping your word, fair-play, honor, morals, ethics, respect, reputation. These made the man and the woman. However, since the 70s self-help books began to focus on personality; how to be liked, charisma, influencing people, getting ahead, personal gain, winning. You can see where this has led today with our focus on likes and followers from anonymous people, or worse (and even sadder), automated bots. Everything is a competition to be won at any personal cost. The YOLO attitude is more important than your legacy.

Or maybe I’m just suffering from nostalgia and a bout of “whenwe”. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’m just Out of The Past.

For the movie buff:

A vast collection of old movies, black and white, and film noir can be downloaded from the internet. If you would like to see these old movies then here is a set of instructions written for the non-IT person that we should all be able to follow.

There is a website called the Internet Archive. There is a lot of stuff on it from books to movies and audio files. I’m just going to focus on Film Noir movies and you can explore the site further on your own if interested.

The following link will take you to the page already filtered for Film Noir movies – Internet Archive

You will see movies listed with a little screenshot of each one. There is a search bar on the left with a magnifying glass so you can search for a specific movie or on keywords like the actor’s name. Each movie tile also shows the number of views and stars (up-votes) that other viewers have given it.

When you find a movie you like just click on the image to open that movie in its own page. This page gives various additional information about the movie, the director, cast, and perhaps a plot summary. Now, you can view the movie directly in your browser by pressing the play button or you can actually download the movie file (usually a file with “mp4” “mpeg” as the extension), a link for which appears on the right of the movie summary information.

Watching the movie in the browser might be OK depending on whether you have decent bandwidth to avoid buffering. Downloading the movie allows more flexible viewing options and, obviously, the ability to play it again without the need to stream/download it in future.

If you need a good video player then I can highly recommend the free VLC Media Player from: VLC Media Player

Here are a few really great Film Noir classics to get you started:

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Nightmare Alley (1947)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Big Heat (1953)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
The Killers (1946)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Out of the Past (1947)

I’ll be back to my regular outrage porn schedule shortly.

Oh, and did I mention everyone smokes?

Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise