Where do you draw the line between classic and modern movies?

[Harvey]

That's an interesting way of organizing American cinema, Cicero. What's the differentiation between "The Dark Age" and "The Hollywood Renaissance?" If it is the rise of independent cinema which marks the beginning of a new movement, why the cut off at 2008?

 

[Lord Garth]

I'm curious too.

I don't see how 2009 initiated any type of shift or major change. 2009 fits right in with the preceding ~10 years.

 

[J.T.B.]

Well for me I draw the distinction right at 1959 for deciding what is Classic.

Me too, from my own point of view. For Hollywood, I feel like the "classic movie" era ended with the break-up of the studio system in the late '40s, but the big studio "feel" was still strong through the fifties. Psycho in 1960 was quite a break with the past, narrative- and content-wise. There were still a lot of "big Hollywood" movies in the '60s, but there was also a lot more experimentation and testing boundaries.

--Justin

 

[Lt. Brannigan]

Well for me I draw the distinction right at 1959 for deciding what is Classic.

Me too, from my own point of view. For Hollywood, I feel like the "classic movie" era ended with the break-up of the studio system in the late '40s, but the big studio "feel" was still strong through the fifties. Psycho in 1960 was quite a break with the past, narrative- and content-wise. There were still a lot of "big Hollywood" movies in the '60s, but there was also a lot more experimentation and testing boundaries.

--Justin

Exactly, things started shifting rapidly in the 60's and definitely got experimental. And the 50's really was the last hurrah for a lot of the Golden Age directors as they either retired or slipped into mediocrity as the 60's rolled on. And the were slowly replaced by the new blood.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well for me I draw the distinction right at 1959 for deciding what is Classic.

Works for me. Mostly because thats the year I was born.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

re: Bloodwhiner and the late 60's: That's pretty much how I think of it as well. That doesn't mean there haven't been some movies I think are "classics" in the modern era but that's where I divide the classic/modern eras.

 

[Mistral]

I think the movies like The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch and Bonnie and Clyde were the heralds for the modern age. Taxi Driver would also fit in. Some movies are done after them with a throwback feel but generally that's where the modern era began. I think in the last few years we've gone from "modern" to the Mega-blockbuster era. Just a few years ago a $40 mill box office could put a movie on top-now its $250mill+.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

To me, the 1960's was sort of a transitional period. A lot of good movies that can certainly be considered classic (all the big David Lean productions, for example, and some of the big musicals)...but some stuff that is really dated now related to 60's pop culture.

However, mostly because of all the big epics and important musicals that were made during the 60's, as well as some outstanding westerns, I'll go with 1970 as the cutoff.

Actors like Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Garner, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews...all of these folks were making good movies in the 60's.

 

[Nardpuncher]

1970

 

[Cicero]

That's an interesting way of organizing American cinema, Cicero. What's the differentiation between "The Dark Age" and "The Hollywood Renaissance?" If it is the rise of independent cinema which marks the beginning of a new movement, why the cut off at 2008?

I drew the line at 2008 in part because of the success of 3D pictures in 2009 and 2010, and partly because of an increasing crudeness of content and aversion to the classical style that I now think could be better traced to the middle of the decade. My period divisions were intended to suggest the year in which the transition between eras was complete; they could as easily (and perhaps better) be organized to break at the middle of the transition between periods:

Pre-Classic: Until 1929
The Golden Age (Classic): 1929-1944
The Late Code Period (Post-Classic): 1945-1964
The Dark Age (Post-Classic): 1965-1984
The Hollywood Renaissance: 1985-2004
Modern: 2005-Present

The Hollywood Renaissance is defined (vs. the Dark Age) as the period in which the classical ("invisible") style of film-making returned to dominance, and mainstream pictures were generally optimistic, well-structured, and romantic (in the literary sense). Many films made during this period - particularly at its height c. 1999 - were very similar to Golden Age pictures (e.g. Meet Joe Black, Amistad, You've Got Mail).

 

[KB24]

To me a classic is an original old Hollywood production before things got crazy, independent and experimental and millions huge. Before massive theaters and merchandising and all that. So I suppose around 1975 defines Old Hollywood or classic to me. In simple terms one could say 'studio system' or Golden Age Hollywood as defining terms. The peak for me, however, is really probably 39 to 65.

Modern classic is a relative term, simply because people age and what was new to us eighties babies is old to kids now. In that regard, pre-75 films will always be old and classic regardless of the decades to come. We have silent films and thirties B flicks coming into public domain and streaming online now-that's old!

I am somewhat odd in that I still think of nineties films as 'new'. So perhaps we need some sort of definition for films between 75 and 95 as the go vintage? I find it more weird that anything older than five years is not deemed 'recent' anymore. Do films from 99, 2000, and 2004 thereabouts really look that bad or different?

As said above, maybe things should be defined as 'Post Gone with the Wind', 'Pre Star Wars' 'Pre Lord of the Rings' and 'Post Avatar'. ;0)

ETA: I forgot! I just did an essay on Some Like It Hot and how its gender bending themes really put the Code away once and for all, so indeed maybe 1959 is the official cut off. I'm not sure the Hayes Code itself can be the definitive answer because there are classics before its inception and after.

I used to read articles about the fall of the western and the old styles really being put to bed about 1969, with the last hurrahs of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid mixed with the X step ahead of The Wild Bunch. Is genre an issue? Blaxplotation and Sexplotation are considered 'cult' instead of 'classic'.

Perhaps less famous than Hot, I also wrote up on Suddenly, Last Summer, another nail in the code coffin

http://ithinkthereforeireview.blogspot.com/2010/06/some-like-it-hot.html

http://ithinkthereforeireview.blogspot.com/2009/05/suddenly-last-summer.html


What a nice topic this is! Regardless of how you define classic, I think old movies aren't appreciated enough!

 

[cardinal biggles]

I generally divide it up like Bloodwhiner — the collapse of the Hays Code in the mid-60s was a true watershed moment in cinema, moreso than the end of the studio system in the late '40s, or the advent of the blockbuster in the mid-70s. Those other two events were more related to distribution and marketing; the end of the Hays Code opened up all sorts of avenues in the stories you could tell, and how you could tell them.

 

[od0_ital]

Well, like a few other folks, my dividin' line is the year of my birth.

Anything that came out prior to 1978 is a "classic."

Anything that has come out since 1978 is "modern."

 

[cardinal biggles]

^I certainly understand why people do that, but it's too arbitrary, IMO.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

I divide the ages up like this:

The Early Age (silent films)
The Studio Age (up till the late 40s)
The Star Age (up till the 70s)
The Director Age (70s)
The Hollywood Blockbuster/Franchise Age Part1 (80s)
The HB/F Age Part 2 (90s-now)

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

Like others, I tend to think of the transition from Hayes code to Ratings System as the dividing line between the classic movie era and the modern one. Having said that, I'll add that old movies are NOT automatically classics. A classic is a work of art that remains popular despite the passage of time. If a movie has disappeared into obscurity, it is not a classic.

 

[Mistral]

I'm backing Bloodwhiner-1968 seems like a clear line betwixt the two.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I divide the ages up like this:

The Early Age (silent films)
The Studio Age (up till the late 40s)
The Star Age (up till the 70s)
The Director Age (70s)
The Hollywood Blockbuster/Franchise Age Part1 (80s)
The HB/F Age Part 2 (90s-now)

With some flexibility on dates this is workable - and interesting.

 

[Holdfast]

For me, I think anything produced under the traditional studio system falls within a classic era.

The Hays code is a good secondary fault line signifying another change in tone. Another fairly obvious (and not totally unrelated) dividing line would be the transfer of studio ownership from the studio founders/directly-linked successors to larger conglomerates or broader media companies and the different priorities they have.

 

[Emher]

I don't really like to divide classics like that. I'd rather say that movies that are truly good, wellmade and captivating can be a classic rather quickly. A true mark of a classic movie is if it's stands up to time. I'd consider Michael Mann's "Heat" a classic, as would I consider "Ghostbusters", "Jaws" and "Lawrence of Arabia" classics.