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What Are Your 3 Favorite Movies Pre-1950?

Would love to share your "favourite" per-1940 movies from any genre and why. Here are mine...

1) King's Row (1942). A wonderful epic about pride catastrophe and redemption. A lot of very dark subjects are dealt with - suicide, possible incest, insanity, absolute corruption and an eerie analogy to the eugenics movement (rampant at the time and now the domain of infanticidists everywhere) overcome by religious faith, honesty, willpower, friendship, love and most everything good in the human nature. Also one of the most beautiful and powerful music scores ever composed by a refugee from Hitler's Germany. The great Ronald Reagan was cast as the supporting actor but after editing in response to the power of his performance it really became his film when released. Love it cry to it every time.

2) Casablanca (1942). If you have not seen this film you then you simply cannot cll yourself a cultured or educated person. There is nothing I can say about this movie others have not already but here is an interesting fact: there is the classic scene where the patrons in Rick's sing the Le Marseillaise drowning out the Nazi officers who were singing "Watch on the Rhine" it is tear inspiring always but at the movie premiere the audience reaction was overwhelming the projectionist replayed it! What makes it more poignant is that many of the cast in the movie were themselves refugees from Nazi Germany or occupied Europe including the actor who leads the Nazi officers singing Watch on the Rhine! If you can watch this without crying then I am truly sorry for you.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU]


3) Adventures of Robin Hood/Double Indemnity (1939 and 1944). Okay so I cheated! As a little girl I thought Errol Flynn was a god. I don't feel any different now he is just so beautiful, so cool. And so tragic ... which is what makes this film extra perfect. Why did they ever bother to make another? They have all trash. So many great lines but my favourite is by Basil Rathbone as Sheriff of Nottingham

Flynn: "Surely you wouldn't kill a man merely for speaking the truth?"

Rathbone: "If it amused me, yes" ( Yeah...My kind of man!)

Rathbone hated Flynn out of jealousy but this is also the film where Flynn and the beautiful and perfect Olivia de Havilland finally made love off screen as well as on screen and discussed getting married which was not to be.


I think Double Indemnity (1944) is simply the best of the film noir. Sharp dialogue people used to associate only with Americans until they decided they could best express their thoughts by using only in obscenities.

Fred MacMurray: "Yeah...and for once I believe you because it's just rotten enough."

Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten."

Fred MacMurray: "Only you're a little more rotten."

Fred MacMurray was a devout Catholic and when they asked him to take off his wedding ring because the character he played was single he refused. "It only comes off when I am dead" he replied which was very brave cause he was not an influential actor and this was his big chance ... and the studio backed down which is you see him wearing it in the movie.



So...there my three. Obviously I have many more which is why I put "favorites" in quotation marks.

So if you wish please share yours and thanks!
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CASABLANCA!~ yes! a seminal work of fiction AND reality
"shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here."

face in the crowd,, 57 andy griffith,, is that too old for this list?
a story of political manipulation, via personality cult.

the Claudett Colbert "cleopatra" I like the era's take on old egypt, purely for the art.
[c=#008099]
so you LIKE Errol Flynn? I studied the sword, [i]with his fencing master[/i]![/c]

Jamaica Inn, Hitchcock film starring Charles Laughton

I cannot stop at 3,,,
so I will
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher OMG! You fenced with Flynn's fencing master! Why I envy you...my father taught me how to fence and will study again when I finish with Saudi Arabia.

What did he say about Flynn?
@Abrienda he laughed ans said he enjoyed him "it was so very long ago"
"Bob" Anderson was the most astounding talent and wise man.
if you look him up on the wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Anderson_%28fencer%29
you will be amazed at what you did not know you knew of himhe WAS the original darth vader in the fight scenes etc.
he was sword master in SO MANY famous films
do give that a look!

* shyyl* for years,, I secretly cultivated a look based on Mr FLynn.
the long haired version.
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher He was god-like in his beauty. Not handsome, beautiful.
@Abrienda * sadly* so was I ,, and [i]I did not even know[/i]....
now? * sigh* age has made me so much less welcome.
for all we speak of character,, it is our appearance that matters to most.

but I STILL Love old movies.. Spartacus was formative for me
"the Egyptian" same era,, fabulus

Collosus, the FOrbiin Project,, later but deeply affecting.
most all the alfred hitchcock.. maltese falcon.
so many, I have a huge collection, in case the internet breaks!
Abrienda · 26-30, F
The Egyptian is fascinating! I read it desecribed as the first and only film noir sword and sandal movuie...and it is. It is dark, claustrophobic, moody...I just love it.

"Remember Sinuhu...I ask for nothing." The best portrayal of evil in a movie...the after Sinuhu gives really a pompous and boring lecture to Horemheb/Victor Mature about how he pities him even though he has just become pharoah, Mature just smashes all that hypocrisy with "Pity? Are you mad, too? I am PHAROAH!" He UNDERSTANDS the world. My father again watched that film with me many times and only when I was older was he able to explain the darker points of it.
@Abrienda the character of "Nefer" [i]I read the original long before[/i] gave me an early understanding of wicked women.

hormenheb was a real person, was the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. he left no succesor

Sinuah was ALSO a real person, whose writing have been describes as one of the earliest novels..

you comment recalss a thing a latin american said to me

what don't you understand about political corruption?
what other purpose is there to gain power, but to use if for your own advantage
@Abrienda Ahkenaton, the pharoe in the film was also real, and he did [i]very temporarily [/i] establish a monotheism.
his Hymns to Aton, bear a striking resemblance to many in the hebrew bible.
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher I know about Horemheb and that Sinuhu was real...I read books.

Yes... there was a Spanish general named Navarro who on his death bed was being given Extreme Unction (I am Catholic) and the priest asked the general if he forgave his enemies.

"I can't, holy father." Navarro replied

"Why, my son?" the priest asked.

"Because I have killed them all." he replied
@Abrienda I am enjoying our conversation
very much.
that you read is more and more evident, so many do not.


so this begs the question. is power for it's own sake, a good thing? to be admired?
and the other
"the ends justify the means"

thoughts?
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher I. Know. Ahkenanton. Was. Real. I. Read. Paul. Johnson's. Book. On. Ancient. Egypt. It. Is. In. My. Fathers library. Which. I. Inherited.
@Abrienda um.. why the periods? clarify?



I keep up with egyptology a lot, the Set Maat workforce is a truly fascinating subject
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher Yes they do. Too often good loses out cause it tries to prove to evil how righteous it is. Well I say to Hell with that!

And I am immensely enjoying our conversation as it gives me a chance to stretch my English.🤗
@Abrienda it is so fine to find a well read person, I am so used to too many of my countrymen have NO IDEA about anything that is not Pop cult
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher Cause I want you to stop acting as if I am an ill-read person. I know who you are talking about an what happened to them. I was home schooled even though it is illegal in the Philippines and it was my father who taught me history and Literature.

So I read Waltari's book also...the movie I thought was much better because of the film noir sense it has.
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher Also two years almost alone in Saudi? Reading and watching documentaries and movies and listening to music is all there is for me to DO!
@Abrienda I watch a lot of film moir,, so many on you tube

pardon my default position of others, no knowing,, it is ever so rare to find literate persons.
Abrienda · 26-30, F
@plaguewatcher Move to Central Europe. Actually some of the deepest conversations I ever had were with Russians and Americans