Which Classic Movies Should I Watch?

The formatting on this site blows.

Cool Hand Luke

The Wages of Fear

On The Water Front

The Maltese Falcon

Sunset Boulevard

It Happened One Night

Witness For the Prosecution is one of my favorites. The Little Foxes. All About Eve.

Can't go wrong with a Hitchcock movie.

Few movies out there are as relaxing as Straw Dogs. Trust me on this!

Sunset Boulevard

Rashomon

Seven Samurai

Harakiri

Last Night at Marienbad

Vertigo

Lifeboat

R2 makes three excellent suggestions.

It's long and sentimental, but I love the movie The Best Years of Our Lives. Fantastic cast and stories. Beautifully directed by William Wyler.

The Big Heat is one of my favourite Film Noirs. With Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin, Glenn Ford. It's down and dirty.

Humoresque

Mildred Pierce

A Woman's Face

Sudden Fear

Possessed (1931 and 1947)

Rain (1932)

Letty Lynton

Grand Hotel

Autumn Leaves

Queen Bee

Harriet Craig

Strange Cargo

Dancing Lady

Johnny Guitar

Any Hitchcock film would fit the bill. Or, if you'd like a good comedy, try The Lady Eve.

I bought some Charlie Chaplin DVDs at an estate sale. I was surprised how much I really liked them.

The Wizard of Oz

Meet Me in St. Louis

A Star is Born (1954)

Judgment at Nuremberg

The Clock

The Pirate

The Harvey Girls

Summer Stock

Easter Parade

I Could Go On Singing

Gay Purr-ee

For Me and My Gal

In the Good Old Summertime

Presenting Lily Mars

The General

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Thin Man series

Duck Soup

Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath... So Many wonderful films. Visit the AFI website, they have lists for every category.

Gone with the Wind

A Streetcar Named Desire

Waterloo Bridge

Gone With The Wind

Fiddler on the Roof

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Miracle on 34th Street

That Touch of Mink

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

A Face in the Crowd

The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit

A Place in the Sun

Auntie Mame

Oklahoma

The Misfits

Some Like It Hot

Oliver

Freaks (Tod Browning).

Rosemary's Baby.

Summertime.

The Public Enemy.

OP, R15 again. Please, please, try these:

The 400 Blows (Truffaut)

Shoeshine (De Sica)

Please, OP!

For the foreign stuff:

The Seventh Seal

Ugetsu

I Vitelloni

Tokyo Story

Vampyr

Seven Samurai and Ikiru (with Kurosawa, it's hard to pick just one)

Umberto D.

The Earings of Madame D.

The Apu Trilogy

And OP, please also see Ikiru (Kurosawa).

I did a thread like this a couple of years ago when I wanted to watch classic movies for the first time. Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment were my favorites. I always have loved Ikiru and Tokyo Story, from even before that thread.

Hey, OP, if you appreciate strangeness, high-saturation color, and the idea of Deneuve SINGING, have a whirl with Umbrellas of Cherbourg!

And for some silent films:

Metropolis

Sunrise

City Lights

Battleship Potemkin

Intolerance

Passion of Joan of Arc

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Sherlock, Jr.

Belle de Jour is goddamned fabulous, OP.

There's a music box scene....

The High & the Mighty

OP here. Thanks for the suggestions. I spend way too much time on the internet, so I would like to start watching a movie every Saturday night. My favorites that I could recommend: Some Like It Hot (funny), Imitation of Life (made me cry), Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? was my first introduction to Bette Davis and she said some of the most hilarious things in that movie even though it wasn't a comedy.

I'm copying your suggestions onto a list.

I'm paying $3.99 per movie since I haven't found many classics on Netflix, Hulu, or Tubi which are my only sources of TV although I have a Roku.

Thanks

OP - a word to you.

Nobody needs to see as many Joan Crawford or Judy Garland films as R7 aka R10 listed. I had to google most of them before I put my eyes back in. There is no distinction made. These are only lists of films those two appeared in. Turner Classics wouldn't play most of them.

Judy and Joan Crawford made very few watchable films. Camp is a mood. Like once every two years. If you couldn't relate to Singing in The Rain (me too) don't bother with most of Garland's movies. Corny and dumb. Old movies don't have to be antiquated. MGM musicals are. Judy Garland's appeal - DITTO.

Mildred Pierce and Baby Jane are the only Crawford films you need to see. Maybe Sudden Fear. The end.

I am hoping the poster was joking, but some ancient Joan Crawford and Judy fanatics are still alive on Datalounge. Those two lists have no relevance in repsonse to your question, IMO.

The rest of the suggestions here are all worth considering. Whether I like them or not. Posters who BEG you to watch FAMOUS foreign or silent films, are not really interested in your enjoyment.

Have fun. And find a way to subscribe to TCM. It's a lot cheaper than 4 bucks a movie. The majority of what you're looking for is screened there. Go to You Tube and search Classic Film or Film Noir. There are lots of channels with good prints there too.

Here's a good one from You Tube to start. It's B&W though. Golden Age movies most often are.

Watch Shadow of A Doubt and Strangers on a Train too. Both are superior (earlier) Hitchcock.

^R25 is 100 percent correct.

There are many websites online listing the best Films Noirs from the '40s and '50s, and they are generally pretty well lined up in terms of their recommendations for the best of those to watch. Worth investigating.

I'd add that CHINATOWN, from 1974, is one of the best movies ever made in the US. It does NOT feature Joan Crawford, but instead you get the best facsimile, Faye Dunaway.

R27, I agree with Eddie Muller (TCM noir expert) who says that Chinatown is the best movie about Los Angeles, period.

OP, I second the recommendation to get TCM or subscribe to their YouTube channel. I keep it on pretty much all day long while I work - I find it soothing and have learned more about classic films than I did in my film degree.

I would also recommend Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Directed by John Huston and stars Bogart, Tim Holt (who is actually really good in it) and Walter Huston, who won the supporting actor Oscar (and who broke the mold for any future crusty prospector characters). Besides the fact that it has one of the most famous lines in Hollywood history, it is a relatively fast-paced movie about gold-mining in the 30s (?) in Mexico and the perils of greed and paranoia. It’s excellent and underrated, IMO.

"I'm not a fan of movies"

THREAD CLOSED

If you're going to watch On the Waterfront, OP (and you should), watch it back to back with In the Heat of the Night. Even though he's a supporting actor in both, Rod Steiger's performances are wonderful, and the contrast between the two is amazing.

Both great movies independently of that, too.

The Night of the Hunter

The Manchurian Candidate

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini

Movies from the 50’s—

The Magnificent Obsession

All That Heaven Allows

Written on the Wind

Giant

The Best of Everything

Pillow Talk

The Desk Set

[quote]Mildred Pierce and Baby Jane are the only Crawford films you need to see.

I think r25 may be right (I haven't seen most of r7's list). I watched Autumn Leaves on Sunday and it confirmed my not-very-positive opinion of Joan Crawford. Not only was it one of the saddest stories I've ever watched or read, I'm simply not a fan of Crawford's PRBF (Permanent Resting Bitch Face). I don't know why she is such a gay icon.

That said, I did enjoy the two Joan Crawford movies r25 recommends, Mildred Pierce and, to a lesser extent, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. I may check out Sudden Fear, per r25's recommendation. I don't know what I'll do, if anything, with the rest of r7's list.

If you don’t really like movies, I doubt you’d like old movies.