January, traditionally, is a bad time for movies. It’s before the blockbuster season, so none of the big studios want to bring out anything big, expensive and potentially record breaking. It’s the beginning of the year, so none of the smaller studios want to bring out anything that could potentially win an award, just in case the short memories of the Oscar voters forget that it ever happened. This year there is a third factor, the marketing juggernaut of the most recent Star Wars film eclipsing everything else on the market, something which has made everyone more reluctant to put out anything to compete with the film. There might be some surprises in the mix, but the early part of this year is going to be a relatively weak one for fans of cinema. Instead, fans of film might be well served to go back in time and watch some old films.
Old films can still be relevant and still reflect the world we see around us. For example, A Face in the Crowd (1957) is a great way to understand America during their election season. It’s the story of a man, played by Andy Griffith, who gains power and influence through a radio show, while becoming increasingly arrogant behind the scenes. In spite of being released nearly sixty years ago, it has managed to become increasingly relevant to understanding a lot about contemporary politics, and given the sheer number of elections that are happening in 2016 it’s useful to watch a film about the rise and fall of a carefully crafted public persona. One wonders if the Donald Trump presidential campaign, built around saying what terrible people are thinking, might be built around the template established by the central character of this film, albeit without the late film twist, though I would not be surprised if that happens eventually.
If you want tension, Wages of Fear (1953) takes a fairly simple premise – men have to drive two slightly broken trucks over extremely difficult terrain in order to make some money – and makes it into one of the most tense movies you will ever see. What makes it tense is the trucks are filled with explosives, and the explosives themselves are both extremely volatile and not secured properly, so any wrong move could mean everyone explodes. The film was eventually remade as Sorcerer (1977), which is also very good and is different enough to make it worth watching. Both films also happen to be pretty good arguments for the value of proper workplace safety regulations, at a bare minimum unsecured explosives are a pretty big no all around.
In the era of big, special effects spectaculars, it’s easy to expect anything to happen on screen, and that anything can be accomplished with a bank of computers and a the imagination. This was not always the case, of course, and that means that the simple pleasure of seeing a train fall into a river makes an old silent film as impressive today as it was when it was made originally, while early experiments in computer graphics just don’t hold up to the same degree. The General (1926) has more than just a train falling into a river, it’s also a film with a great deal of elaborately choreographed stunts and slapstick comedy, and it still holds up because it uses elements that just don’t age. Watch a film by Jackie Chan and you can see a lot of elements that were pioneered by Buster Keaton on films like this, and since special effects were, by and large, not invented yet, you get the added thrill of people doing genuinely dangerous things. Like making a train fall into a river, for example.
But what if you just want to see someone shooting people? After all, that’s the main thrust behind most of the films released during blockbuster season, and I haven’t recommended a single film that’s mostly just violence. So let me tell you about Point Blank (1967), which is about Lee Marvin shooting people who owe him some money. It’s not particularly intellectual, though it is consistently amusing how the main characters assume there’s a much deeper reason behind the main character shooting everyone instead of his stated purpose, to get some money he is owed. But it is stylish and violent, and as a fan of stylish violence it’s easily one of my favorite films. Given that it will likely be a challenge to see the latest film by Quentin Tarantino, which has had a relatively limited release so far, it’s a good idea to go see a film that definitely has influenced him in some way.
January is traditionally a cold, dark month – relative warmth in 2016 not withstanding – making it a great month to sit and watch a film, which makes it strange that it also happens to be the month when it is hardest to find a good, new movie to see. But while some movies might be old, they are still new to people seeing them for the first time. These are some examples of films that are worth watching, but are far from the only films from the past worthy of attention.
