Black and Whites

What is your favorite black and white classic of all time and who is your favorite actor/actress?

I can't help but like "To Have and Have Not" based on the Hemmingway book.

My favorite classic actor would have to be Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant

 

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

 

Christmas in Conneticut, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Fountainhead, just a few of my favorites

 

My favorite black and white classic film has to be Ossessione (the Italian version of the Postman Rings Twice) which was made in 1943.

My favorite actress of this film genre has to be Ingrid Berman
My favorite actor of this gene would be a toss-up between Clark Gable, and Henry Fonda.

 

Some Like It Hot & The Apartment
I think Jack Lemmon is the shit

 

Some of my favorite black and white movies:

The General (Buster Keaton)
M (Fritz Lang)
Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
The Third Man (Carol Reed)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin)
Brief Encounter (David Lean)
White Heat (Raoul Walsh)

My favorite "black and white" actors are James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney.

 

I have so many favourite black n whites.. they're such great films as a whole...

 

'Casablanca' Humphrey at his best...Also 'Key Largo'

 

"It started with Eve," (1941). Deanna Durbin, Bob Cummings, Charles Laughton and Guy Kibbee.

But besides Deanna Durbin, there's always Aida Lupino and Susan Hayward as my favourite female actresses. Favourite male actor? Rod Taylor ("Time Machine," "Birds," "Sunday in New York," "Glass Bottom Boat")

And yes, I am still waiting for the Sandra Dee remake of "It started with Ev," "I'd rather be rich."

 

Nosferatu,An Andalusian Dog ,Modern Times(Charles Chaplin) and King for a Day(Bulgarian)

 

a hard day's night.
i watched a lot of bw movies, it's just i can't remember it at the moment.

 

probably Sunset Blvd. or practically any Billy Wilder directed film

Arsenic and Old Lace is also a good one

 

Key Largo, Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, Notorious, Mildred Pierce, Queen Bee, Double Indemnity, Manhattan,

 

Chaplin's City Lights from 1931... possibly the best film ending in cinema!

 

Beauty and the Beast 1946 Jean Cocteau

 

Casablanca too~

 

To Have and Have Not is great. Lauren Bacall is so fantastic - You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow - and Bogart...mmmmmm.

and of course Casablanca.

Nosferatu is cool too.

I also love the french new wave stuff - I think i saw someone mention Breathless (Jean Seburg is so cool), and the 400 blows and Hiroshima Mon Amor are both great too.

 

There are so many good classic black & white films that have been made, and I am hard-pressed to narrow it down to just one favorite - I have several that run neck-to-neck for the position of my 'favorite'!! One of my favorites has got to be "Metropolis", made in 1926, I believe. I'm speaking of the original "Metropolis" - not the re-make. This movie was great because it dealt with a subject matter and concept that was way before it's time - that being, the involvement of "The Machine", or "The Industrial Revolution" in man's life and the subsesquent ramifications it gave rise to. This film was made so early in film-making history that it was not only black & white, it was also a silent film. The story line was conveyed completely without sound - and it was superbly done. It actually forsaw what was to come for our society as relating to the intervention of the Machine in our lives - it portrayed people coming to and going from work in masses and behaving like automotons - and how the Machine became more important than the health of the human - imagine that?!

Other classics that are amongst my favorites are any "Marx Brothers" movies as well as "Spanky and Our Gang" movies - the predicaments that both of these groups got themselves into! What ridiculously fun stuff!

I own almost every Fred Astaire movie ever made - what a suave and debonaire gentleman, in the true sense of the word! I like nothing better than to sit at home on a Sunday afternoon and watch Fred Astaire dance; so eloquent a talent, we've seen nothing like him since then.

Orson Welles films are in the top of the list for me as well - films such as "Citizen Kane"; "A Touch of Evil"; "The Trial" - Welles was brilliant, and it is written that he was an outcast from Hollywood who did not follow rules - ya gotta love him!

Any movie that William Powell was in - "The Ziegfeld Follies", "The Great Ziegfeld", "My Man Godfrey" .......

Actually, almost any black & white film made during that era was good - lots of movies about silly folks, some serious; but all that delivered a good moral message nonetheless. That's something that movies used to convey, no matter what the story line was - a good moral message. I do not favor movies like "Friday the 13th" or "Freddie, etc.etc." because they frighten me, and I do not see being frightened as good solid entertainment value.
As well, seeing the horrid ways in which man can harm his fellow man is not what I find entertaining, and not what I would want my kid to be learning.
With all of the crazy things that are going on in the world today, we need to see a departure away from movies that portray crazy horrible things. Sure, some of the old black and whites were kind of unrealistic, but that as well can be a good thing - escapism from the day-to-day doldrums is wonderful entertainment.

Sincere Regards, Michaela
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"They will never make a perfect heart until they make one
that can't be broken." ....... The Wizard, "The Wizard of Oz"
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i mean casablanca
we all know was great.
i also like breathless and a stranger in paradise too though...
modern times was nice k im gona stop

 

David Lynch's "ERASERHEAD" (1977)
A spectacular surreal movie so intense it moves into a horror that is sublime without being gory. Watching it is like living in a terrible dream you might not wake up from.
Its not horror like the gory movies are horror and its not a thriller its simply a nightmare surrealism in the opposite way that dali's paintings are surrealist visions of light
Eraserhead is a surreal darkland no light escapes it
http://campuslife.louisville.edu/sab/calendarevents/films/eraserhead.ics

Infact now I think of it I thought I would add that when you watch it you see none of the charachters has much fear of the awful situation they are in - they deal with it and accept it the nightmare is an onslaught but they never knew it any other way
I hate watching this one scene where a roast chicken is still moving on the plate - its got no head but its legs still move - and when someone slices it all the blood oozes out
Its a film you cant miss its such a classic