You have to actively look for those kinds of pictures, she said, which the film society does. I think some of the strangest and darkest stuff I’ve seen on film falls in that period of classic film.” “But we’ve shown musicals that are some of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen. “Unfortunately I think for a lot of people when they hear ‘classic film’ it just means old, especially in a way that means they’re not interested," said Rebecca Lyon, who is a programmer with the film society. (Dennis Scott will accompany the film on the Music Box organ.) Starring “Little Billy” Rhodes, who, as a little person in Hollywood, was frequently relegated to comic relief but here he plays a role with real depth.
#TCM COM NOWPLAYING MOVIE#
This week the film society screens the 1928 silent “ The Sideshow” and as per usual, the blurb they’ve written includes just enough context to get you interested: The movie follows a trapeze artist who takes up with a traveling sideshow troupe and its circle of outcasts. One of the more consistent resources for classic film screenings locally is the Chicago Film Society, which has wonderfully eclectic taste and a real talent for unearthing obscurities. Plus, any film with Walter Matthau grumbling his way through his lines is worth your time.Īndy Griffith and Patricia Neal star in "A Face in the Crowd." Patricia Neal plays the radio producer who discovers this rakish con man, only to regret sending him down this path, and the fact that a woman is playing this role in 1957 feels surprising in all the right ways. I remember maybe 10 or fifteen years ago seeing 1957’s “A Face in the Crowd” for the first time - courtesy of TCM - and being blown back by how dark and cynical and disturbingly insightful it is, about a guy (Andy Griffith) who manages to exchange every ounce of integrity he might have once had for an empty life of celebrity, wealth and power. It seems odd to discount all of film history pre-1980, but Serrano is voicing something we’ve all heard before: The perception that films made during the first half of the 20th century are dull. )Īs surreal as it is to hear him list those titles as “old” (he’s right “Raiders of the Lost Ark” came out nearly four decades ago), there’s room enough in the media landscape to like what you like and avoid the rest. Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in the 1951 film noir/comedy "His Kind of Woman." (Gaston Longet RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Some of them, of course, were undeniable, like a ‘Jaws’ or ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Indiana Jones.’ You watch those and you go, ‘Oh, I see in this the bones of what eventually became whatever action franchise.’ Or ‘Alien.’, they’re just not that fun to watch.”
#TCM COM NOWPLAYING HOW TO#
It’s clear that they were still trying to figure out how to do things. I watch old movies and I’m like, ‘No thanks.’ They’re not fun. He was interviewed by Esquire’s politics editor Jack Holmes, who noted that Serrano’s book focuses on movies from the ’80s and beyond and asks: “Are you like me in that you don’t see a ton of appeal in movies older than that?”
Serrano isn’t a film critic - he is best known for his writing about hip-hop and basketball - and it was specifically his comments about older films that touched a nerve on social media. I’ve been thinking about how people generally think and talk about classic films because earlier this month, an interview that ran in Esquire with pop culture writer Shea Serrano about his new book “Movies (And Other Things)” sparked some back and forth on the topic of these films and their value (or lack thereof).
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