Classic movies don’t necessarily have to feel old or slow, but instead, they’ve just got to be the kind of film you’d be happy with seeing again, all these years later.
An office key with strings attached
Jack Lemmon spends a lot of The Apartment as a man who’s agreed to something he immediately regrets. The 1960 film features Lemmon’s character, C.C. Baxter, lending his apartment to married executives at the insurance company where he works.Â
Shirley MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik gets caught up in the arrangement and turns the whole thing on its head. What makes it work so well is that it’s funny, but not constantly funny, so you’ve got time to rest between the jokes.
A wrong man on the run
The whole story of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest centers around mistaken identity. Yes, Cary Grant’s character Roger Thornhill has to travel across the country while he tries to figure out who George Kaplan is and why everyone thinks he’s him.
The film gave us that famous crop-duster scene, along with the incredible Mount Rushmore finale, so it was always destined to be a classic. The movie rarely sits still for long, even for a modern audience watching it.
Trouble in high heels
The disguise in Some Like It Hot should fall apart within five minutes. At least, on paper. But that’s part of the fun, as we see Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon playing musicians who have to hide in an all-female band. The pair see a gangland killing in Chicago and go into hiding.
It’s a film featuring Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane, making things even more interesting. Billy Wilder just keeps piling problems on top of problems, and the film doesn’t take itself too seriously, either. That’s probably why it works so well.
Hollywood learns to talk
You can’t get more classic than 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain. The film deals with actors and movie studios panicking as Hollywood moves from silent films to talking pictures, although it does it all in a funny way.Â
Gene Kelly plays movie star Don Lockwood, and Donald O’Connor is his longtime friend Cosmo. That’s not all for major stars, as Debbie Reynolds plays Kathy Selden, while Jean Hagen is Lina Lamont. There are lots of jokes, a lot of singing, and a lot of dancing, of course.
One courtyard, dozens of clues
The plot of Rear Window doesn’t sound that interesting when you read about it, as the movie’s just about a man who can’t leave his apartment. But there’s so much to the story. James Stewart plays photographer L.B. Jeffries, stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg during a hot New York summer. So, he does what anyone would do and watches his neighbors.
The 1954 film eventually turns Jeffries’s harmless spying into a murder suspicion involving Grace Kelly’s Lisa and Thelma Ritter’s Stella. It doesn’t take long for everyone to start looking across the courtyard. You’ll probably start checking those windows, too.
A day away from royal duties
The magic of Roman Holiday is in the ordinary, even though that might sound strange. Audrey Hepburn plays Princess Ann, who slips away from her official schedule and travels through Rome with American reporter Joe Bradley, played by Gregory Peck.Â
It was filmed entirely in Rome, so yes, those streets and landmarks are very much real. Hepburn won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this movie, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. She’s funny in a very unforced way throughout.
Everyone has a job to do
The Great Escape features a lot of time digging holes before you ever get to any motorcycle scenes. John Sturges’ 1963 film follows Allied prisoners planning a mass escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp. Charles Bronson digs tunnels, and Donald Pleasence handles forged documents.Â
It also features James Garner finding supplies and Richard Attenborough organizing much of the plan. Steve McQueen gets some of the flashier moments, of course. It might be almost three hours long, but there’s always another little problem to solve, and it never gets tiring.
Nobody is quite who they seem
Charade is one of the best mystery films around, even though it’s sometimes a comedy, too. It features Audrey Hepburn’s character coming home from vacation, only to discover that her husband is dead and her apartment has been emptied.Â
To make matters worse, strangers want money she doesn’t have. The film drops Cary Grant into the middle of all this, and the audience, like Hepburn, has to work out whether to trust him. The Paris setting helps make it a classic, and so does Henry Mancini’s music.
Retirement could wait
It’s funny to think Cary Grant was getting close to leaving movies before he appeared in To Catch a Thief. It probably wouldn’t have been such a great film without him. The 1955 Alfred Hitchcock film features Grant as retired jewel thief John Robie, who travels the French Riviera after a new thief begins copying his old methods.Â
Grace Kelly plays Frances Stevens, and there are more rooftops and winding coastal roads than you’ll probably see in other films. Let’s not forget the expensive hotels and jewels, either, or the flirting. It’s electric.
Two people and a very small boat
John Huston’s 1951 adventure film The African Queen is set during World War I, but it’s not your ordinary war film. No, it’s about a disagreement between Katharine Hepburn’s Rose Sayer and Humphrey Bogart’s Charlie Allnut. Sayer wants to attack a German gunboat, Allnut doesn’t want to.Â
It sounds simple enough. It’s not. The pair head downriver through dangerous water and mechanical trouble, as well as lots of bad weather. There’s plenty of arguing, too. Bogart won his only Best Actor Oscar for the role, and it’s so entertaining seeing two very different people get increasingly stuck with each other.
Roommates who should know better
1968’s The Odd Couple might be an adaptation of a play, but it feels like a piece of art in its own right. The film stars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison. Felix moves into Oscar’s Manhattan apartment after his marriage falls apart, and soon after, he ends up doing everything for Madison.
Felix cooks and tidies while generally making Oscar slightly crazy. If you’re looking for a film with a giant adventure or chase scenes, you won’t find it here. It’s just two middle-aged men irritating each other over dinner and habits. That’s plenty, though.
Outlaws with plenty to say
Most Western heroes aren’t normally this chatty. Paul Newman and Robert Redford spend much of 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid joking and planning robberies. They run for their lives, too.
The story eventually moves from the American West to Bolivia, and it’s a Western film like no other. There’s the bicycle scene featuring the song ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,’ for example. It seems like a strange choice, but it really works.
The trick has several layers
Half the pleasure of watching The Sting is realizing someone else has probably fooled you, too. The 1973 movie brings Paul Newman and Robert Redford back together for another adventure. This time, they’re playing two con men setting up a crime boss.
It features quite an elaborate setup involving betting rooms and invented identities, along with people pretending they’ve never met. Every time you think you’ve caught up, you realize that you probably haven’t.
A little girl takes charge
It doesn’t matter that Ryan O’Neal is the adult in Paper Moon because it’s his 10-year-old daughter, Tatum, who keeps stealing the scenes. The 1973 black-and-white comedy follows Moses Pray and Addie Loggins as they travel through Depression-era America.
The pair pull small scams along the way. Tatum O’Neal later won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and she became the youngest competitive acting winner in Academy history. It’s not really hard to see why, she’s just that good.
One long night in 1962
American Graffiti doesn’t have a single big event holding it together, and that’s probably why its 1962 setting feels so natural. It follows a group of teenagers through one night of cruising, drive-ins, arguments, flirting, and street racing. That’s it.
But it works so well, and that’s probably because it stars legends like Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Paul Le Mat, and a young Harrison Ford. You get to hear early rock ’n’ roll playing almost nonstop, too.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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