Rediscover 10 classic movies to spark your love for black & white films

The Ladykillers is in colour, though…

Which reminds me - quite a lot of my favourite B&W films are actually in colour - and glorious Technicolor at that - because I first saw them on a B&W TV set as a kid. Human brains are just weird.

7 Likes

Damn you’re right of course! And in my head it’s B&W for exactly the reason you mention - those formative early viewings were on the old childhood TV.

I redouble my recommendation of Kind Hearts and Coronets as a result. Also, unrelatedly great, Wuthering Heights (the Olivier one) and And Then There Were None.

3 Likes

I am a lifelong fan of 40s and 50s film noir and could add dozens of titles to the suggestions already made but I want to give a shoutout to a more recent movie which is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Fantastical, trippy and beautifully, BEAUTIFULLY filmed. It’s title is NOVEMBER…

7 Likes

… every film is a black and white film if we set the saturation to zero :thinking:

6 Likes

Yes. He was still a charming con man, but he usually used his talent with less unpleasant results than in the movie.

2 Likes

5 Likes

We could step back to The Man in the White Suit.

7 Likes

Yes! especially “Rules of the Game,” “M,” “Zero de Conduit,” “L’Atalante.” If you like those, try “Boudu Saved From Drowning” & “A Nous La Liberte” (great comedies about poverty). I recently marvelled at “Smiles of A Summer Night,” the one hilarious Bergman movie I’ve seen.

6 Likes

Stranger than Paradise is one of my favorite films of all time. Dead Man by Jarmush is awesome too.

4 Likes

Awesome film.

5 Likes

Thanks all for recommending Detour. I watched it last night and thought, hmm, okay I suppose.

If im going to watch a low budget flick about a nasty hell raising woman, I’d prefer Shanty Tramp.

5 Likes

Or about a bullshitting murderer

2 Likes

Wait, you’re saying she killed the guy who owned the car? Or that the sad sack main character did? I can see how his story could be made up, but not a lot of evidence for that. Yes, the two deaths he was involved with were pretty unlikely “accidents,” but there wasn’t much of a big reveal otherwise even suggesting that he was their murderer. :thinking:

2 Likes

We’re getting the whole improbable story from the guy and I felt no especial reason to trust him. I don’t recall a moment that proves he was lying, so I won’t say he definitely killed those two on purpose, but I wouldn’t rule it out either. And his characterization of the woman is therefore suspect too.

Agreed. He very well could be an “unreliable narrator,” but then, usually when that’s the case, we get a stronger indication of that. :person_shrugging:

2 Likes

A b&w Estonian (?!?!) fantasy horror film. That’s enough for me. I’m in!

2 Likes

You will not regret it - however, despite the trailer kind of implying horror, it is definitely not a horror film. It is so much more than that, a fever dream of a movie.

3 Likes

I’d argue there’s definitely a difference between the way a movie is filmed in black-and-white and how one is filmed in color. Desaturate your average color film, and it will be a gray mush, with little separation of elements. B&W cinematography, done right, is beautiful, and a lost art. DPs like John Alton, James Wong Howe, Nick Musaraca, and Gregg Toland don’t exist anymore.

1 Like

I think that’s a little unfair. If someone wants to shoot like Greg Toland now, they can. They can also shoot like dozens of others with sufficient money. And do things that couldn’t be done back then.

They can’t print on nitrate of course, but that’s probably for the best!

(Not that I don’t desperately want to go to see nitrate prints displayed)

3 Likes

I can’t say that I’m into horror films for the horror. If a film is refreshingly stylish and has an interesting well-written plot that is intelligently served by the horror and fine acting, then I’m game! Your posted trailer and its Estonian origin grabbed me. One of my favorite 20th/21st century composers is anti-Soviet native Estonian Arvo Part. Documentaries show him there and enjoying the fairytale-like woodlands in and around Tallinn, with that partially explaining my curiosity about the film; what kind of film can come from such a place. So… horror fan? No. In all, we only have perhaps less than two dozen classified-as-horror films in our 2000-plus film collection, so, horror for the sake of horror – nope.

BTW: Not in b&w, but I highly recommend Ready or Not.

1 Like