There are a number of movies that are absolute classics that could never be made today. There are obvious examples of this: the Cecil B Demille epics come to mind, due to the expense of such productions in today's dollars.

Less obvious examples would be those where today's Hollywood would be less willing to take chances on. I was watching Inherit the Wind last night, and couldn't help but enjoy it once again, but also couldn't help wondering whether a movie like it would ever make it into production today. The actors/actresses are actually required to act, the film moves along on the power of their individual skills. They are, of course, supported by an excellent screenplay, which touches on a number of themes to draw their viewer in. I'm not sure how the theme of religious tolerance would be treated today, either.

What classic films do you believe wouldn't stand a chance in today's Hollywood?

I watched a piece of that myself the other night and thought some similar thoughts, but most about what an innocent age it was made in and how some/much of the material might not fly with today's audiences.
I think the film COULD be made as there is talent out there to do it, but financially it would be very demanding because the old school talent required would be megabucks.

I think a big part of the problem is that today's "stars" lack charm or charisma, certainly the younger ones. I mean where are our modern day Spencer Tracys, Cary Grants, Jimmy Stewarts, Humphery Bogarts, Gregory Pecks, Robert Mitchums, Jimmy Cagneys, Paul Newmans, Katherine Hepburns etc, etc, etc. Maybe I'm still half asleep, but I can't think of any big names since DeNiro, Hoffman, Pacino, Connery, and Nicholson and they actually play themselves, or their most common screen personas, quite a bit. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are pretty good too; I just remember The Shawshank Redemption
Ben Affleck, Jude Law, Leonardo DeCaprio, Matt Damon; I don't think so, but I haven't seen "The Departed" yet either, so maybe I'm selling the last two short.

Films, maybe "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Hustler", "Key Largo", "The African Queen", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "The Philadelphia Story", or any film based upon a play, which seem to demand real acting skills and not just a pretty face going through the motions. I probably should include "The Godfather" too, but who would even TRY on that one???

Then again, maybe some Hollywood douchebag would try it with an all black cast and include Wesley Snipes, Cedric the Entertainer, Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, and some rappers......:lmao:

My very first thought: all of the movies where people are lighting up cigarettes in nearly every scene. Heaven forbid people enjoy a smoke. "Good Night, and Good Luck" got made, but it was amazing to see people smoking like chimneys.
Tom

My Darling Clementine, evidently.

All those wonderful old Sci-Fi films w/that incredibly cheesy "stop-action" animation. Nowadays it would by done by computer, seamless as can be, but the old ways DID have a certain charm...

My very first thought: all of the movies where people are lighting up cigarettes in nearly every scene. Heaven forbid people enjoy a smoke. "Good Night, and Good Luck" got made, but it was amazing to see people smoking like chimneys.
Tom

Geez, wouldn't that be darn near every film set in 1920-1967 made before 1970?????
Can you imaging a WWII prison camp film w/o someone hawking smokes, chocolate and nylons??? :no:

Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Lawrence of Arabia all come to mind. Those movies today would all be done with computer animation because there isn't a studio anywhere that would afford the huge casts and the massive battle scenes as they were done in those movies, not to mention the lavish sets. The final battle scene in Spartacus has to be one of my all time favorite in the movie world.

Easy Rider...

Looking at TV this week, it seems the only movies they will make are sappy romantic comidies like whatever the crappy one with Jennifer Garner is, but especially if they have Diane Keaton as an older woman finding love. If they make that moive one more time I'm going to puke.

Kohlberg (1945). This was a German proproganda film made to glorify the Prussian sacrifice during the Napoleonic Wars. Meant as a metaphor for the then current struggle against the Allies in WWII, Kohlberg was intended to rally the people to ever greater feats of heroism. It didn't work. Kohlberg premiered in 1945 as Germany was being pincered from the west by the Americans and from the east by the Russians. In addition to the Bombs dropped by the Allies, Germans were subjected to theatrical indignity as Kohlberg itself was a bomb. In the 60's, German TV attempted to revive the movie but the bitter taste of the war spurred massive protest and Kohlberg bombed again. It is safe to say, this film will never be made again.

All the military movies made DURING WWII where they called a spade a spade.

"they called a spade a spade"

That reminds me of a joke about two nuns in a parish school in Chicago.

The punchline is "Oh no Mother Superior, they call it a fuckin' shovel".

Definetly D.W. Griffths "The Birth Of A Nation" due to its blatant racisim which glorifies the KKK as national heroes. Oh the fallout would be tremendous!


Russ

Definetly D.W. Griffths "The Birth Of A Nation" due to its blatant racisim which glorifies the KKK as national heroes. Oh the fallout would be tremendous!


Russ
You beat me to it!
Jimmy

Can you imagine Hollywood making Chinatown now?Lessee,almost 3 hours long,expensive period piece,very literary,extremely depressing subject matter,very downbeat ending,the leading lady gets killed,a sexual predator gets away with it,and we watch him starting the cycle all over again.
I dont think so.
Jimmy

Yeah, "A Birth of a Nation" came to my mind, too. Its kinda comical now, its so damn blatant. Surely D.W. Griffith knew better...

"Surely D.W. Griffith knew better..."

Evidently not.

Odd guy, made BOAN but also Intolerance, Broken Blossoms and Abraham Lincoln.

Who knows what a guy thinks.

Grand Prix.

French Connection. The gritty, grungy look of NY. The car chase that was done without permission, etc.

"Hatari"...The animal rights people would go berserk over it...Even though they were trying to preserve animals...

Freaks.

Blazing Saddles.

Political correctness would certainly change how many characters are portrayed. Could Gone With the Wind be made today with Prissy's famous line: "Lordsie, we got to have a doctor. I don' know nuthin' 'bout birthin' babies!"

http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rantpix/butterfly-2.gif

All those wonderful old Sci-Fi films w/that incredibly cheesy "stop-action" animation. Nowadays it would by done by computer, seamless as can be, but the old ways DID have a certain charm...

Indeed they did.

Funny thing though. I love the original King Kong and its special effects are pretty primitive. Lots of models with stop action and a full size head and hand. It worked then and still does for the most part. But I was always vaguely aware that it was fake.

Fast forward to the remake by Peter Jackson, which was petty good IMHO. Now they use CGIs and a guy actually in a gorilla suit. Yet, despite the advances, I am still vaguely aware that it is fake.

It as if it has not really changed all that much.

Freaks.

"One of us..."

"Yet, despite the advances, I am still vaguely aware that it is fake."

A pithy observation, a funny one too.

...one of us. We accept you. One of us.

Gabba Gabba Hey! Joey Ramone must have loved that movie.

I only saw it recently on IFC or TCM, I can't remember which. NASCAR driver Kyle Petty was a guest on a show and chose that film to watch. I was kind of taken aback by his choice of this movie. I figured he would want to see 'Thunder Road' or 'Greased Lightning' or some race car film, but he wanted to share with the world his love of 'Freaks'.

One thing that I could never understand was at the end when the black dude with no arms or legs was crawling through the mud with a knife in his mouth. How exactly do you stab or cut someone when you have no hands?

Stephen King calls it "suspension of disbelief".

Definetly D.W. Griffths "The Birth Of A Nation" due to its blatant racisim which glorifies the KKK as national heroes. Oh the fallout would be tremendous!


Russ


You just wouldn't be able to find people who would endorse it with their ticket fees and followup revenues.

"Dr Strangelove" would be kinda hard to pull off now. So would, I think, "A Clockwork Orange", & "2001: A Space Odessy", especially seein' as how this is 2007, & space travel is arguably farther off in the future than it was in '68.

Leonardo DeCaprio, Matt Damon; I don't think so, but I haven't seen "The Departed" yet either, so maybe I'm selling the last two short.



I saw departed and it changed my opinion of DeCaprio - I believe he can act. Also, you didn't mention Tom Hanks, the one current actor who I think could hold his own against the old timers.

Blazing Saddles.

Piss on you, I'm working for Mel Brooks.

Piss on you, I'm working for Mel Brooks.

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

I saw departed and it changed my opinion of DeCaprio - I believe he can act. Also, you didn't mention Tom Hanks, the one current actor who I think could hold his own against the old timers.

Yep Hanks is good, but he's over 50 now, which I guess makes him almost as old school as Jack and the gang.

I think we may have strayed a bit here from the original post which may have been more concerned with the quality of the acting and script than the topics presented or scope of production.
FWIW, I think Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy was as fine a set of movies as any made. The acting and character development may not have been the stuff of legend, but the result certainly was outstanding. While much of the pap that oozes out of Hollywood isn't worthy of a trailer on Jerry Springer, there still are fine films being made.
Sort of like audio gear and music; you just have to dig for it! :yes:

"Pretty baby" with Booke Shields as a 12 year old girl (which was her age at the time it was filmed) in a whore house being sold to the highest bidder some of the best kiddy porn ever made for the big screen Full frontal nudity doubt they would do that one again.

And no I have never watched it.

The one I watched last night, Lawrence Of Arabia.

Politics aside the scope of the thing is just huge!
Sure they could CGI the scenes of the marching armies and the battles and the desert backgrounds but it just aint the same thing.

Films that capture the spirit and energy of a place and time. Anyone seen the German film "M" with Peter Lorre, came out in 1931/2? The frantic explosive energy in that couldn't be duplicated, at least not in the US imo. Than there is something quirky like Monty Python & the Holy Grail or Gilliam's Brazil. Who's going to finance Brazil, how was it financed then? Maltese Falcon or Key Largo, the Big Sleep, Seven Samurai, Ran, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bonny & Clyde. Some movies just should never be remade, like Psycho.

There is a sad dearth of Character Actors today...You know, the Robert Emhardts, Reta Shaws, Burt Mustins...Those folks who seemingly were in every other TV program in the fifties thru the Seventies..An' a lot of the movies, too....They're all gone...and all the people who play in every backwater TV show & grade-z flick are automatically "BIG STARS"..Gimme a break..

Musicals. Sound of Music, South Pacific, On the Town, etc, etc.

If it ain't got sex, violence or drugs people don't wanna see it.

While there are some goods films out there, too many new films are more about shock than anything else and are an insult to my intelligence as well as to others.

Twelve Angry Men would bomb in this day and age. Dracula with Bela also. The Searchers would close in a week, as would most of the other good westerns.

Kohlberg (1945). This was a German proproganda film made to glorify the Prussian sacrifice during the Napoleonic Wars. Meant as a metaphor for the then current struggle against the Allies in WWII, Kohlberg was intended to rally the people to ever greater feats of heroism. It didn't work. Kohlberg premiered in 1945 as Germany was being pincered from the west by the Americans and from the east by the Russians. In addition to the Bombs dropped by the Allies, Germans were subjected to theatrical indignity as Kohlberg itself was a bomb. In the 60's, German TV attempted to revive the movie but the bitter taste of the war spurred massive protest and Kohlberg bombed again. It is safe to say, this film will never be made again.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036989/

Anybody a fan? Did anybody see the classic, "He Walked By Night" on TCM Sunday Night?
Big Festival in San Fran, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/30/features/noir.php.
I will have to check and see what's going on at the Senator, and the Hippodrome Theaters. The crowd has become to snooty for me.
And when the hell are they going to release on DVD, "The List Of Adrian Messenger"?

SPECIAL EFFECTS HAVE RUINED FILM!!!

"Song of the South"

Make it? Heck, they can't even release it on DVD.

some of those early deco flicks are pretty amazing:

Metropolis
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

"Song of the South"

Make it? Heck, they can't even release it on DVD.

Want a DVD of this for NADA - Gratis - (free)? PM me. Warning - it has Japanese subtitles.

Thanks Herb. PM on the way.

Anybody a fan?

Oh yeah, my favorite genre by far!!

I wish I could go to that festival, I saw Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face (Pre code not Noir) at The Castro a few years back when I drove up to pick up a Predicta, what a blast it was watching it with a very enthusiastic crowd!
better than MST3K :yes:

Every so often they try to do a modern Noir, just doesn't work in color though...

Every so often they try to do a modern Noir, just doesn't work in color though...

I'd say Chinatown and Blade Runner were exceptions.

I'd say Chinatown and Blade Runner were exceptions.

L.A. Confidential too, guess there are some good ones I hadn't thought of.
Still I prefer my Noir in B&W. :yes:

L.A. Confidential too, guess there are some good ones I hadn't thought of.
Still I prefer my Noir in B&W.

How did I forget that contemporary classic?

Anyway, your preference originates when noirs were the new genre on the block. The three color ones were all self-consciously film noirs; that is they were styling these films on something that had long past. Not a particularly important distinction, but perhaps an interesting one. B&W obviously adds to the dark atmosphere.

To Live and Die in L.A.

To Live and Die in L.A.

That is a great flick. The ending sure startled me. Why do you think it couldn't be made again?

Because the ending was so...courageous. Hollywood doesn't have that kind of courage these days.

I saw departed and it changed my opinion of DeCaprio - I believe he can act. .


Apparently you missed Gilbert Grape.

Because the ending was so...courageous. Hollywood doesn't have that kind of courage these days.

Possible Syriana Spoiler

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Get back to me after you've seen it.

I've seen it. Didn't like it. Not even comparable.

Also, you didn't mention Tom Hanks, the one current actor who I think could hold his own against the old timers.
I'll agree on Hanks.

No one has mentioned Naked Lunch, doubt that one could find a backer these days.

Also Once Upon A Time In The West comes to mind - You probably couldn't afford to cast it these days, everybody who was anybody at the time was in that one.

And while we're on westerns - Paint Your Wagon!! (Of course, the other question here is WHY would anyone want to remake the film, much less WOULD anyone remake the film.)

I watched a piece of that myself the other night and thought some similar thoughts, but most about what an innocent age it was made in and how some/much of the material might not fly with today's audiences.
I think the film COULD be made as there is talent out there to do it, but financially it would be very demanding because the old school talent required would be megabucks.

I think a big part of the problem is that today's "stars" lack charm or charisma, certainly the younger ones. I mean where are our modern day Spencer Tracys, Cary Grants, Jimmy Stewarts, Humphery Bogarts, Gregory Pecks, Robert Mitchums, Jimmy Cagneys, Paul Newmans, Katherine Hepburns etc, etc, etc.



I'd have to say, Johnny Depp comes pretty darn close to being able to be the "universal actor", as in being able to handle most any role like Cary Grant, Jimmy Cagney and such.

Another one that (when given a good role) really shows up his craft, is Billy Bob Thornton. Check out "The Man That Wasn't There", if you think they really don't make film noir anymore. It's the real deal...

Another thumbs-up for Tim Robbins. His performance in "The Hudsucker Proxy" was, IMHO, as good as most any of the classic performances of any of the actors cited above, from earlier days!

Regards,
Gordon.

Another thumbs-up for Tim Robbins. His performance in "The Hudsucker Proxy" was, IMHO, as good as most any of the classic performances of any of the actors cited above, from earlier days!

Regards,
Gordon.

Into O/T -

I too am a Robbins fan, my favorite being "The Player". The range of emotions he displays in it is wonderful.

I think it doesn't make sense to give here examples of movies which couldn't be made because the technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. That's just bullshit. For that, why not start a similar thread, like "Cars that could never be made today" :).

Anyway, as for morality stuff, I think that Chaplin's "The Dictator" couldn't be made today. It was pretty bold even for it's time.

No one has mentioned Naked Lunch, doubt that one could find a backer these days.



Whoa - that was a weird one. Peter Weller typing into a talking beetle/typewriter, shooting his wife in the head, and breaking up an international "Mugwam Jizm" ring. What a head trip! Almost made me read beat writings...

In todays atmospher Gone With The Wind would never have been made, sad that.:tears:

Anything from "Film Noir'"! Movies for several years now have been awful.

Political correctness would certainly change how many characters are portrayed. Could Gone With the Wind be made today with Prissy's famous line: "Lordsie, we got to have a doctor. I don' know nuthin' 'bout birthin' babies!"

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/625775untitled.pngDo they still show that movie ON "TV" with that line in it? (That poor movie has been destroyed to hell :()

Blazing Saddles.Yup I love that movie alot!!!

10+ year necropost!
Noice.