Leeway for older films

Question

Preminger's "Laura" just came out on DVD recently (finally!). I just saw it a few days ago, and really liked it (not loved it, but liked it a lot). This despite the fact that it's really loaded with flaws.

A cop lets a writer walk around with him while he's investigating a murder, questioning suspects, etc.? He finds the murder weapon and then puts it back where he found it? The love story is flimsy and the revelation of the Whodunit is pretty flat.
And yet, none of this really bothered me. And I can't help but wonder why I would let this stuff pass when I know the same stuff would ruin a more contemporary film for me.
It made me think of my all-time favorite movie, Vertigo. No way would I forgive a modern film in which the lead actress was as awful as Kim Novak was, or if there was a sequence as weak as the cartoonish descent-into-madness sequence. The bottom line, though, is I still love that friggin' movie.
The weird thing is that I don't even think it's an intellectual thing. I don't go into an older film telling myself I have to have lighter standards because the techniques of filmmaking weren't as advanced as they are now. It seems to be a more-or-less intuitive sliding scale.

Does anyone else notice this phenomenon?

Stephen Mack
"Nobody's smart enough to be wrong all the time." -Ken Wilber

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Preminger's "Laura" just came out on DVD recently (finally!). I just saw it a few days ago, and really liked ... advanced as they are now. It seems to be a more-or-less intuitive sliding scale. Does anyone else notice this phenomenon?[/nq]
I don't think that it's a matter of older movies being intrinsically less believable. I simply think that we have a different set of conventions in respect to what constitutes "acceptable disbelief." Because we watch tons of cop shows and tons of medical shows, we think that we know all sorts of things about how "real" cops work and about how real doctors operate but in fact, all most of us really know is how things work on cop shows and doctor shows and we judge the reality of new movies and shows as they come along against that accumulated "sense" of reality not against any real reality.

But that "sense" of reality is just a style it happens to be a modern style that permits certain things and doesn't permit other things. But that's not to say that a lot of things that it permits and thus that we find to be believable aren't just as absurd in terms of how things are really done in the real world, as anything you'd find in movies made fifty years ago.
And I suspect that our modern style what we consider to be "realistic" seen fifty years from now, will likely seem just as strained and absurd, stylistically, as movies that we watch that are fifty years old.
Our ability to accept old movies requires that we embrace the style and form and conventions acting conventions, dramatic conventions, visual conventions, editorial conventions, et al of the time in which they're made just as you have to embrace the myriad conventions of Elizabethean drama in order to be able to watch a Shakesperean play.
The fact that one doesn't have to make that leap to embrace the conventions of the movies and plays of one's own time, of course, is not to say that our movies don't have such conventions or that those conventions aren't, in their own way, just as outlandish as the conventions of movies made in any generation. They're just a little bit harder to see because we're in the middle of them.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I don't think that it's a matter of older movies being intrinsically less believable. I simply think that we have ... movies made in any generation. They're just a little bit harder to see because we're in the middle of them.[/nq]
All excellent points, but what I still find kind of strange is: if I can make these allowances for older films, why wouldn't I be able to make the same allowances for contemporary films? And I wonder if maybe I'm too harsh on contemporary films for flaws that wouldn't bother me in older films...

Stephen Mack
"Nobody's smart enough to be wrong all the time." -Ken Wilber

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]The weird thing is that I don't even think it's an intellectualthing. I don't go into an older film telling ... the techniques of filmmaking weren't as advanced as they are now. It seems to be a more-or-less intuitive sliding scale.[/nq]
I wish I had your intuitive sliding scale. I just watched CHARADE recently, and couldn't get over how wooden Cary Grant was, or how ditsy Audrey Hepburn was.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Preminger's "Laura" just came out on DVD recently (finally!). I just saw it a few days ago, and really liked it (not loved it, but liked it a lot). This despite the fact that it's really loaded with flaws.[/nq]
I noticed when I had a extra/dancer role in a tv film set in the 20's(?) that although haircuts were required for all none were at all authentic (well except for one idiot...:-) for the period. Certainly not any of the speaking roles. Hair for many period films is much closer to the style of the day than to an actual period, well unless there are powdered wigs.

I realize that's an over generalization but there are many small details probably down to posture and body language that are unnoticed the year of release but are subtly different a decade or two later. Well in the case of haircuts in the 70's not so subtle.
-sam

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I noticed when I had a extra/dancer role in a tv film set in the 20's(?) that although haircuts were ... are subtly different a decade or two later. Well in the case of haircuts in the 70's not so subtle.[/nq]
That's one of the things I always think about while watching "Singing in the Rain." The women wear slightly flapper-ish outfits, but their hair and makeup is totally 50's.

Ken (who was authentically coifed as an extra in Day of the Locust)

Leeway for older films

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