My son has increasingly become interested in period films and asked me for some suggestions. We watched the following 3, all favorites of mine -

Lawrence of Arabia

Day of the Jackal

The Man Who Would Be King

We both thoroughly enjoyed them all and I was struck yet again by how filmakers from the past without dramatic special FX had to concentrate on the story, plot, writing, and the acting to support them.

Let's see some of your recommendations.

Vanishing Point
Thunder Road
Charley Varrick

Maybe not classics but definitely cult favorites.

Zulu, with a very young Michael Caine. Historically incorrect, but very well done and fascinating.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p141/Scorpion008/ZuluMovieScene01.jpg

The Blue Max with George Peppard.

Master and Commander is a fairly well done recent movie. Lots of good period scenes in that.

And my all-time favorite ...

In Harm's Way with John Wayne. Classic old scenes of navy life ashore and how life was in those years of WWII..

The Great Escape; Knife in the Water: both for outstanding photography. 'Escape' is a good story, too. 'Knife' may be a little artsy-fartsy but you could frame about half the black and white scenes in it.

Fraulein Doktor: pretty obscure but gripping, with a plot that's 'grand opera' without the music. Chilling WW1 gas attack scene. Good supporting performance by Capucine, the only French actress of her era with an expression beyond 'on' and 'off' (OK, besides Simone Signouret).

Mind you, I saw all these 40+ years ago so YMMV; mine might, too, if I saw them again today.

The Day of the Jackal is unquestionably one of my favorite films of all time. A great movie. A rare case of the movie matching the quality of the book.

"Patton", 1970, & "Tora, Tora, Tora !" from the same year.

Breaker Morant, one of my favs. Gallipoli is also good.

I think I am going to the video store and doing a movie weekend. Our local shop has around 15,000 movies with just about anything you could want. The average Blockbuster shop has around 4,000 or so with mostly mutiple copies of new releases. If you can find a mom and pop place run by movie fans, you are very lucky indeed.

Operation Pacific

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968 version)

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Guns of Navarone

My Favorite Year

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (A 1978 Robert Zemeckis film, Steven Spielberg's first outing as executive producer. This would be Zemeckis' third feature film, and his third film with a writing credit - He had also written for Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV series by this time.)

Kurosawa, anything with guys carrying swords, also Dersu Uzala, a fairly obscure film of his. You have to be willing to put up with subtitles of course.

The Mission is a heck of a period movie

A Man for all Seasons

Another David Lean film is Great Expectations from the forties I think. Much more watchable than you might expect.