Old Timey Film Club
Black and white movies. Must be good, no other restrictions.
Posts for this club should be tagged: oldtimeyfilm_club.
June 11
Movie: Stalag 17
When two escaping American World War II prisoners are killed, the German POW camp barracks black marketeer, J.J. Sefton, is suspected of being an informer. [more inside]
June 9
Movie: Kiss Me Deadly
A doomed female hitchhiker pulls Mike Hammer into a deadly whirlpool of intrigue, revolving around a mysterious "great whatsit." [more inside]
June 8
Movie: Paths of Glory
After refusing to attack an enemy position, a general accuses the soldiers of cowardice and their commanding officer must defend them. [more inside]
June 7
Movie: Pushover
A larcenous undercover cop falls for the beautiful moll of a bank robber on the run and together they double-cross the hood and the cops. [more inside]
June 6
Movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still
An alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets. [more inside]
June 5
Movie: Godzilla
American nuclear weapons testing results in the creation of a seemingly unstoppable, dinosaur-like beast. [more inside]
June 4
Movie: The Human Condition I: No Greater Love
A Japanese pacifist, unable to face the dire consequences of conscientious objection, is transformed by his attempts to compromise with the demands of war-time Japan. [more inside]
June 1
Movie: The Wages of Fear
In a decrepit South American village, men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe. [more inside]
May 1
Movie: Psycho
A Phoenix secretary steals $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother. [more inside]
February 9
Movie: The Heiress
A wealthy, naive young woman falls for a handsome young man who is suspected by her emotionally distant father to be a fortune hunter. [more inside]
January 5
Movie: Shadow of a Doubt
A young woman discovers her visiting "Uncle Charlie" may not be the man he seems to be. [more inside]
December 29
Movie: The Third Man
Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy postwar Vienna only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of his old friend Harry Lime. [more inside]
December 8
Movie: Dinner at Eight
Affluent Millicent and Oliver Jordan throw a dinner for a handful of wealthy and/or well-born acquaintances, each of whom has much to reveal. Available to stream on VUDU and Amazon Instant Video. [more inside]
December 1
Movie: The Philadelphia Story
When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself. [more inside]
November 21
Movie: Salt of the Earth
Mexican workers at a Zinc mine call a general strike. It is only through the solidarity of the workers, and importantly the indomitable resolve of their wives, mothers and daughters, that they eventually triumph. [more inside]
November 18
Movie: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
An insane general triggers a path to nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically try to stop. [more inside]
November 6
Movie: Captain Blood
An enslaved doctor and his comrades in chains escape and become pirates of the Caribbean. [more inside]
November 3
Movie: Casablanca
Set in Casablanca, Morocco during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications. [more inside]
October 26
Movie: Arsenic and Old Lace
A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family. [more inside]
October 13
Movie: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Two hapless freight handlers find themselves encountering Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man. [more inside]
October 5
Movie: Pygmalion
The film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play in which a Victorian dialect expert bets that he can teach a lower-class girl to speak proper English and thus be taken for a lady. [more inside]
September 28
Movie: It Happened One Night
A spoiled heiress, running away from her family, is helped by a man who is actually a reporter in need of a story. [more inside]
September 22
Movie: Some Like It Hot
When two musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in. [more inside]
September 19
Movie: To Be or Not to Be
In Ernst Lubitsch's bracing black comedy, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy. Starring Jack Benny, Carole Lombard (in her final film role), and a surprisingly beautiful Robert Stack. [more inside]
September 14
Movie: Hamlet
Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king. [more inside]
September 8
Movie: The Great Dictator
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime. [more inside]
September 5
Movie: The 39 Steps
A Canadian man in London finds himself pulled into a chain of events in which he must go on the run in order to save himself. [more inside]
September 1
Movie: Queen Christina
Queen Christina of Sweden is a popular monarch who is loyal to her country. However, when she falls in love with a Spanish envoy, she must choose between the throne and the man she loves. [more inside]
August 25
Movie: Double Indemnity
This film-noir stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman, Barbara Stanwyck as a housewife who wishes her husband were dead, and Edward G. Robinson as a claims adjuster whose job is to find phony claims. The term "double indemnity" refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in cases when death is caused while riding a railway or other public transport means. [more inside]
August 18
Movie: Sunset Blvd.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity. The screenwriter's ambivalence about their relationship and her unwillingness to let go leads to a situation of violence and madness. [more inside]
August 12
Announcement: Old Timey Film Club!
Come join the Old Timey Film Club for black-and-white film discussion! [more inside]
July 16
Movie: The Night of the Hunter
If ever there was a movie that could be called "virtually indescribable," this one is it. Loosely, though, it's about a con artist (Robert Mitchum) posing, or at least halfway believing himself to be, a traveling preacher who, during a short prison stay, meets a man sentenced to death, one who had stolen and hidden $10,000. The would-be preacher learns that the man will soon have a window (Shelley Winters), and an idea is born. What follows is half-gritty Depression era crime tale, half Southern Gothic/Grimm Fairy Tale (and or Good vs. Evil fable), as he tries to track down the money, via the widow's children. Now playing through July 23 at Watch TCM, available with a cable sign-in. [more inside]
February 7
Movie: Sweet Smell of Success
Powerful but unethical Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker coerces unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco into breaking up his sister's romance with a jazz musician. [more inside]
February 6
Movie: Ace in the Hole
Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole is one of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker. Kirk Douglas gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter who washes up in dead-end Albuquerque, happens upon the scoop of a lifetime, and will do anything to keep getting the lurid headlines. Wilder’s follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred exposé of the American media’s appetite for sensation that has gotten only more relevant with time. [more inside]
February 2
Movie: The Defiant Ones
Two escaped convicts chained together, white and black, must learn to get along in order to elude capture. [more inside]
December 24
Movie: It's a Wonderful Life
An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed. Directed by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore. [more inside]