I was never interested in old movies until I met my wife. She dragged me to a New Orleans movie theater that, once a week, showed a double feature of old classic movies.
The first night, we saw Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” and “Notorious”.
I was hooked.
Years later, when we finally got cable, there was AMC, which at that time showed old movies. Then TCM came along.
What amazes me is the excellent writing in some of those old movies. In many cases, it was better writing than you find in most modern movies.
There haven’t been too many releases in the past ten years that I’ve even thought about seeing. The last movie I went to was “1917,” which actually was excellent.
(As a WW1 buff there’s some things I could pick at, but no matter.)
Before that it was the documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old,” which was outstanding!
“Pickup on South Street” is an excellent film; there’s a scene on a subway car where a soldier has a number one on his shoulder patch from the First Infantry Division, the director Sam Fuller’s old outfit. One of his last films was “The Big Red One.” Watch “The Steel Helmet” about the Korean war with Gene Evans. If that’s not the precursor to “Night of the Living Dead,” I don’t know what is. George Romero lived in Toronto the last few years before he died and there are or were comic-cons at the convention centre. He made several appearances there and I always wished I had gone so I could ask him about that.
I just watched “Out of the Past” with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. That is as classic a film noir as was ever made. Mitchum made it look easy.
I’ve loved old movies ever since my mother dragged us to see Keaton’s “The General” when I was about 10 years old. A silent movie? What a crazy idea! Mom grew up in a movie theatre. Every Saturday every kid in Bensonhurst was in the movies with cartoons, shorts, newsreels, B feature, A feature and then they could watch it all over again until the parents dragged them home to have dinner. Cheap daycare, even in the 1930s.
“Grapes of Wrath” to me is the last western. Grandma and Grandpa came west in a covered wagon, now they have to leave in an automobile. Everyone had to leave- it was ethnic cleansing, similar to the pogroms in eastern Europe, the clearances in Scotland, the famine in Ireland. In each and every case, the people being moved out ended up much better off then they were had they stayed put.
Speaking of that movie…there was a chase scene where they are racing down a road that follows the coast. To the side of the road opposite the ocean is a cliff, maybe 20-30 feet high.
they pass under a pedestrian bridge that spans from the top of the cliff to a stairway on the ocean side of the road. Basically “beach access” is what comes to mind when looking at it.
I’ve racked my brain and beaten up google satellite pretty bad trying to find that location, to no avail.
Have you any idea where that location is? I suspect it was not shot anywhere near the location of the town where they end up at the conclusion of the chase. I think it was shot north of Los Angeles somewhere, and then spliced into the move timeline via editorial creativity.
To make matters worse, immediately after they pass under the bridge (heading north, ostensibly) there is a break in the cliff with an intersecting road that they turn on and double back headed southeasterly, in sort of a slow climb of the cliff.
Convicted One- I watched the movie a few years ago with a guy who knew the area well. He said it was south of L.A. but now I don’t recall just where. Flintlock - I forgot just how good that movie is. I wonder if that’s a narrow-gauge railway- note the small electric locomotives. And Donald Sutherland is still around, unlike the people you mention on TMC.
“The friends of Eddie Coyle” has a few neat scenes at a MA commuter station. A PC Turbo Train screams by, and the bad guy smashes into things in a 71 Roadrunner. Since I love both muscle cars and trains, this is a great scene, and not a bad gangster movie!
Flintlock- I sure do remember those Sunday channel 5 movies and the daily 4:30 movie on what, channel 9? I must have seen “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” about a dozen times after I got home from school.
“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” I think has Mitchum’s best performance, not that he ever gave a bad one. The book is excellent too as are the other books by the author, George V. Higgins.
In your movie, Flintlock where the tanks come straight out of the tunnel the tracks look to be broad-gauge and off to the right where the electrics are, it looks like narrow gauge. I wonder where it was filmed- I assume Spain.
[bow][bow][bow] That’s gotta be it!! Finding that has been a thorn in my side since first seeing that movie. You have unburdened me, thank you!!
Oddly enough, I have driven right through there a good half dozen times, but all before I ever saw the movie, so it never registered with me back in the day. But I’m sure you’ve nailed it, the view up the incline reminds me of the movie in a big way.
That trailer’s a little different from the one I remember. Pretty close, but I remember a line that went:
"The ‘Good’ kill because they have to. The ‘Bad’ kill, because they want to. The ‘Ugly’ kill, because THEY LIKE TO!" Maybe it was from a radio commercial, it has been a while. Great Western, that’s for sure!
'54, “Kelly’s Heroes” was filmed in the former Yugoslavia, that particular area’s Croatia now. At the time the Yugoslav army was still using a lot of WW2 vintage equipment, Sherman tanks and assorted American and left behind German motor vehicles. They also had T-34 Russian made tanks that had been modified to look like Tigers for a Yugoslav movie produced several years earlier, so the “Kelly’s Heroes” production team found everything they needed there.
Thanks for that info, Flintlock- good stuff! I always thought that in the GB & U, that the “Ugly” referred to Eli Wallach and not Lee Van Cleef. In any event, there is a scene in the “Naked City” television show where Eli shoots an unbilled Peter Falk. Naked City was awesome!
I like how movies such as Leone made use obvously European railroad equipment yet still expect us to believe it’s in the American West. Wasn’t it made by an Italian production company some years earlier? Clint was in that one I recall. Spaghetti Westerns- gotta love 'em! Hell, I love all Westerns. Especially those done by Sean Aloysius O’Feeney.
“Living It Up” starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis is a 1954 film which begins with Lewis playing Homer Flagg, a station agent in the small town of Dessert Hole, New Mexico who has always wanted to visit New York. The opening scenes introducing Lewis as a railroad man were filmed at Summit depot at Cajon Pass and there are some shots of Santa Fe steam helpers turning on the wye which fascinated me since I was fifteen and living along the dieselized New Haven.
If you’ve seen “Saving Private Ryan” you’ve seen those “Kelly’s Heroes” Tigers making another screen appearance. I believe the three of them are in Britain now.
The Tiger in “Fury” on the other hand was the real thing! Loaned to the film-makers from the tank museum in Bovington, UK.
What amazes me about the “Spagetti Westerns” is that there’s enough interest in Europe about the American West that they’d make such films to begin with.
Hey, they re-enact the American Civil War in Germany! Talk about amazing! If you know your Civil War history it shouldn’t surprise you to find Union Army outfits where German is spoken, but it’s a mind-blower to find Confederate outfits doing the same!
When I was in Germany on vacation on a heritage rail tour, we passed by what looked like Fort Courage from “F Troop.” People pointed it out to me, being the only North American on the tour. Most of us grew up reading the Hardy Boys and Mark Twain; Germans all seem to have grown up on tales of the old West written by Karl May who never left Germany. Those rootin’ tootin’ teutons!
A friend lent me a Thin Man movie collection. The one I watched last night, “The Thin Man Goes Home” from 1944 shows Nick and Nora travelling by train. The train was packed to the rafters with people. 3 people in seats made for two, the aisle of a a sleeping car jammed with people standing. Is that what wartime train travel was like?
