Favourite Film Era .

[David Hardy]

I am always interested to read what other movie collector's film era's are .
My favourite eras are films of the 1920's , 1930's , 1940's , 1950's , 1960's and 1970's .
I do enjoy and like some films from later eras but not as many as i do from those six decades above .

So what are yours ?

[Joe Caruso]

When Film Began; The very earliest ca.1892 through just as the Roaring Twenties were at a height...Strange as it may seem, that's Shorty

[Melvin England]

I would say movies from across all decades but perhaps not as many recent ones. Certainly for output and quality the 1970's was a prime decade. Interesting thing about this, though, is that I was too young to see X rated films for most of that time, so I have spent a lot of the 1980's+ catching up with them and not being disappointed either.

[Steve Klare]

1950s:

Color, Stereo, CinemaScope, Costumes, Epics, Big Budgets! -all from an era when going out to a movie was still an event.

-give me a movie with an orchestra in the opening theme and don't spare the kettledrums!

"So let it be written, so let it be done!"

[Ken Finch]

My favourites are similar to yours but also extend to the early 1990s. I have enjoyed fewer films since then. Too much repetitious use of aggression, comic book sci fi and cgi in so many films for me these days.

[Osi Osgood]

I'm with Shorty, but possibly from a different angle. I have always been fascinated with the Old West, and I am always intrigued with the earliest films and they're relationship with the times. For instance, "The Great Train Robbery" 1903, here, in the outdoor scenes, you are seeing some of the last of the Old West, alive and on film, before your eyes. Or, for instance, shorter films from the 1890's of pack/mule trains, or trains rushing through a
mountain landscape. It's an era that except through photos and especially early film, I can long for but only briefly visit. Sigh ....

[Ken Finch]

I was referring to David’s Post but also agree with Steve to some extent. Even the big budget films these days do not seem as good as those of the past. Perhaps it it because it has all been done before.

[Ken Finch]

My goodness this topic has really got me going.! Osi and Joe, thanks to Pathescope you can still see a great many of those early films. Very much abridged but with much of the main plot.

[Steve Klare]

I'm just interested in seeing somebody particularly nasty get smited!

(-in 'Scope!)

[Ed Gordon]

... I have always been fascinated with the Old West, and I am always intrigued with the earliest films and they're relationship with the times. For instance, "The Great Train Robbery" 1903, here, in the outdoor scenes, you are seeing some of the last of the Old West, alive and on film, before your eyes.

Actually, "The Great Train Robbery" was filmed in Dover, New Jersey, not the Old West! I know what you mean about historic value of old films. When I see a western with the old trains, I always wonder where the ever found a working old train to film. Of course today with CGI, anything is possible.

I would have to say that my favorite era for movies was the 50's and 60's. As Steve said, "Color, Stereo, CinemaScope, Costumes, Epics, Big Budgets! -all from an era when going out to a movie was still an event."

[Steve Klare]

-actually there are railroad museums all over the world that do a pretty tidy business providing locations for movies. The Sierra Railroad is pretty close to Los Angeles and has been on-screen for decades including the 1890s engine seen in Petticoat Junction and Back to the Future 3. (-plus the usual delivering and picking up freight cars to and from commercial customers along their line.)

This can even backfire. The Denver and Rio Grande had been modernizing for a couple of decades: they were well over 90% standard gauge and dieselized by the 1950s. They still had this unprofitable, narrow gauge, steam powered stub up in southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico they needed to abandon. There was not enough traffic to justify either dieselizing or standard gauging it. They had all sorts of graphs showing the interstate Commerce Commission the annual decline in traffic.

-until they made the mistake of hiring it out to a Studio making a Western!

Freight traffic continued to decline, but after seeing the beautiful scenery and old trains on-screen, people showed up wanting to ride the train! They were down to one or two mixed trains a week handing ALL traffic and all of a sudden they needed to schedule dedicated passenger runs, and the trains grew longer and longer and more and more often! They scraped up every narrow gauge coach they could find that had been rotting on sidings for years and had to put serious money into maintaining 40+ year old locomotives that had been destined for scrap 10 years earlier.

By the 1970s the D&RGW had torn out what track they could get away with, but still had these two isolated steam powered 3 foot gauge lines they couldn't abandon because the trains sold out every trip.

-so they sold them off and today they are the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad and The Durango and Silverton.

You can still get a ticket to ride, but better reserve a few months in advance!

[Douglas Meltzer]

David,

That's a tough one! I like so many films from different eras but since you're forcing me to choose I'd say the 40s -70s.

The 40s & 50s had classic film noirs, the films of the 60s were like that decade, full of social change and rock & roll. The 70s were revolutionary....the new Hollywood, realism, blockbusters and great foreign films.

[Graham Ritchie]

For me going to the cinema it would be the 1960s, 1970s 1980s with the 1960s top of the list

[Dominique De Bast]

The silent era and the early talkies are my favourite, but of course there were many good films made in the following decades.

[Paul Adsett]

I love Film Noir, and the great noir stars of that period- Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Richard Conte, Dan Duryea and of course the femme fatales- Marie Windsor, Joan Crawford, Shelley Winters, Lana Turner, too many to name, but all great actors and great films with really tight scripts and racing plots all less than 90 mins. So definitely the 1940's for me,
Also the 1950's with my next favorite genre - westerns. Shane of course ( a great super 8 print) and then the great Cinemascope westerns soon to follow.