Black and white movies?

[glitchlynx]

I get eyestrain and headaches really easily, and I find it difficult to watch modern movies in one sitting, especially on a large TV. I've found I really enjoy black and white movies as an alternative... they're slower, they're not flashy, and they tend to have pretty short run times. Some examples I really like are: "Dracula" (1931), "12 Angry Men" (1957), "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), and "Dead on Arrival" (1949).

Anyone else like black and white movies, or have any recommendations?

[Melooon]

There are so many! If you really wanna find some good ones the best streaming service is Criterion (It's actually the only streaming service I still subscribe too!) (If your not in the US then you need to use a VPN to sign up, but after that you can stream from anywhere)

Let's see some favourites... you might find around the place..

• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
• A Face in the Crowd
• The Absent-Minded Professor
• The Incredible Shrinking Man

There's a good playlist on youtube with over 200 Noir Crime Films, though some of them are reaaaallly bad!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

The early works of Akira Kurosawa are to mention, especially (but not only) "Rashomon", "Throne of blood", "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" - his output is highly influential and by many considered to be among the best movies ever made. If you aren't too tuned for historical material, his film noir movies are also worthwhile!

Billy Wilder shot many of his screwball comedies in black and white. "Some like it hot", "The Apartment", "Ace in the hole", and "Sunset Boulevard" are hot recommendations.

Citizen Kane; it has reason he is commonly called out as the best movie ever made, even if you disagree that such a thing might exist ;). But also Orson Wells Shakespeare material ("Orthello", "The Bells that chime at midnight" "MacBeth") is really good stuff!

Casablanca is also a damn good flick. Topkapi is hilarious. Johnny got his gun is a touching anti war movie.

I could go on forever. Tell me if you need more.

From Melooons list, I can heavily recommend "The Hitch-Hiker". Its a real classic :).

[glitchlynx]

There's a good playlist on youtube with over 200 Noir Crime Films, though some of them are reaaaallly bad!

That's perfect actually, I love a really terrible movie! 

The early works of Akira Kurosawa are to mention, especially (but not only) "Rashomon", "Throne of blood", "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" - his output is highly influential and by many considered to be among the best movies ever made. If you aren't too tuned for historical material, his film noir movies are also worthwhile!

Billy Wilder shot many of his screwball comedies in black and white. "Some like it hot", "The Apartment", "Ace in the hole", and "Sunset Boulevard" are hot recommendations.

Citizen Kane; it has reason he is commonly called out as the best movie ever made, even if you disagree that such a thing might exist ;). But also Orson Wells Shakespeare material ("Orthello", "The Bells that chime at midnight" "MacBeth") is really good stuff!

Casablanca is also a damn good flick. Topkapi is hilarious. Johnny got his gun is a touching anti war movie.

I could go on forever. Tell me if you need more.

From Melooons list, I can heavily recommend "The Hitch-Hiker". Its a real classic :).

aaaaa you've listed so many, thank you! I've been thinking about watching Casablanca for a while now, I should take this as encouragement to actually get around to doing that.

[Finnialla]

All these are great suggestions. I've always been a fan of silver screen and Akira Kurosawa is a masterpiece of the action genre.

I have a couple black and white films that I love watching over and over again.
 
1. Any of the Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Becall classics. My personal love of the four is The Big Sleep, which is a crime noir based on the book of the same name. It's a camp masterpiece, very gay coded, and actually has a gay villain character and women in agency roles. For me, from favorite to least goes, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, Dark Passage, and then To Have or Have Not.

2. On the same vein, the Maltese Falcon, also starring Humphrey Bogart is a masterpiece of the noir genre. Also, it's somehow a queer masterpiece. It's got gay villains, just like in The Big Sleep.

3. Silent Films are a great source of black and white movies. I've created a playlist on Youtube of the ones I can find. My favorites are Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and anything with Rudolph Valentino.

Silent Movies Videos

I'm glad you get to rediscover the love of black and white movies. I wish more recent movies decided to shoot in black and white because they would look beautiful.

[vashti]

Ikiru (1952) dir. Akira Kurosawa is one of my favorite movies. It's based on a novella by Leo Tolstoy. The movie made me cry, hard; very moving, like the novella. The director has many more black & white movies if you end up liking Ikiru.

[sokil]

ah, one of my favorite topics (as well as black and white television)!! i'll have to add more to this sometime as i'm about to head off to bed, but alfred hitchcock films are a must! 'citizen kane' and 'a place in the sun' are also excellent! i also recently watched an old german film called 'M' which was very well done.

2. On the same vein, the Maltese Falcon, also starring Humphrey Bogart is a masterpiece of the noir genre. Also, it's somehow a queer masterpiece. It's got gay villains, just like in The Big Sleep.

the maltese falcon is actually a queer story! i love the 1941 version with humphrey bogart and peter lorre, but the hays code meant that any references to homosexuality had to be scrubbed. the pre-code version, which came out in 1931, actually implements a fair amount of this stuff from the novel based on what i've read before. i haven't read the novel yet, though; it's been on my to read list for quite some time.

+1 to this rec; the maltese falcon is amazing.

[Finnialla]

the maltese falcon is actually a queer story! i love the 1941 version with humphrey bogart and peter lorre, but the hays code meant that any references to homosexuality had to be scrubbed. the pre-code version, which came out in 1931, actually implements a fair amount of this stuff from the novel based on what i've read before. i haven't read the novel yet, though; it's been on my to read list for quite some time.

+1 to this rec; the maltese falcon is amazing.

I haven't seen the 1931 version. I'll have to check it out! The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite queer noir stories. When I took an English course about detective stories in college, we all used to make the joke that both the Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep had detectives that were the gayest straight people we've had ever read. Even the professor thought the detectives were super queer coded. Both books are more explicit with their queerness than the movies.

Also, I'm glad someone else brought up the Hays Code. They were wonderful queer, women, and black films before its implication in the late 30's, but so many have been lost to time. That's the problem with older cinema, including many black and white movies. We either lost them to having the film itself wiped and reused, theaters burning down, or having the films archived for tax purposes.

[soft-star]

There is such a wealth of fabulous black and white films. For comedy I recommend Young Frankenstein (1974), Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). All uproariously funny. For another Christmas movie I highly recommend It's a Wonderful Life. If you're into horror at all I recommend The Innocents (1961) or Psycho (1960).

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Is wonderful :).
When it comes to comedies: There is a old socialist italian movie, named "Miracle in Milan". It is heartwarming, great, and strange - could align well with the taste of the people here, I believe :).

[alexela64]

kind of a goofy answer to this but there's this old mockumentary that a few of my friends and I watched a while back about the dangers of Marihuana (yes they spelled it like that)
It's called Reefer Madness and it's up on YouTube iirc