What is a Classic Film?
Sure, it's a catch-all term these days, but true movie fans know what it really refers to: that perfect and prolific period from The Jazz Singer to A Hard Day's Night, from All Quiet On The Western Front to All About Eve, from Frankenstein to From Here To Eternity.
Relive the Studio Era -- film noir, westerns, gangster pictures, melodramas and comedies -- through profiles, book reviews, DVD news and more. If you know the color of Harpo Marx's first wig, if you can name the last film John Ford shot in Monument Valley, if you went all tingly when Warner Bros released its gangster collection on DVD, then by all means, line up behind the velvet rope.
Check out my articles, blog and post in the discussions or email me with your own golden oldies.
1939: Hollywood's Best Year Revisited in July
Classic movie fans who own a TV will be salivating shamelessly throughout July, when Turner Classic Movies screens 39 great Hollywood films from the watershed year 1939. more...
Movie Review: The Fortune Cookie
The Fortune Cookie is a smart, scabrous, deliciously cynical take on greed in general and, in particular, the litigious society America was becoming in the mid-1960s. more...
Marx Bros. Duck Soup Arguably Their Best Film
Duck Soup - the fifth and best of the Marx Brothers' movies - is their funniest and fastest film, a multi-faceted farce that plays as razor-sharp today as it did in 1933. more...
September Affair a Radical Romance for 1950
September Affair poses an intriguing premise: what if you could start fresh, with a passionate new love, in a dazzling place and with no financial worries? more...
A Night at the Opera: Marx Brothers Movie Review
Consistently over-praised, this was the team's first film at highbrow MGM and it shows - with the usual winning Marx formula watered down by a meddling studio. more...
DVD Review: Forbidden Hwd. Vol. 3 - Bonus Items
In the final installment of our look at Turner Classic Movies' Forbidden Hollywood, Vol, 3, we survey special features in the four-disc tribute to William Wellman. more...
DVD Review: Forbidden Hwd., Vol. 3's Best Films
Turner Classic Movies' Forbidden Hollywood, Vol. 3 is devoted to early sound films of William Wellman -- and the final three of six features are the cream of the box set. more...
DVD Review: TCM's Forbidden Hollywood, Vol. 3
Volume 3 of Turner Classic Movies' Forbidden Hollywood series features early talkies by a master filmmaker whose career extended from the silent era to the late 1950s more...
All feature articles in Classic Films
All contributors in Classic Films
John Wayne as The Ringo Kid, Stagecoach (1939)
In: Film Westerns
By: Susan Z. Swan
Olivia de Havilland, Hollywood's Golden Age Star
By: Teresa Knudsen
Common Frontier Folk in Ford's Stagecoach (1939)
In: Film Westerns
By: Susan Z. Swan
Top DVDs to Rent for Movie Night
By:
Michael Jung
Claude Jutra's Mon Oncle Antoine
All contributing articles in Classic Films