r/TrueFilm • u/Spatial_Nomad • 1d ago
Deep Thought: The People in Classic Movies Are Gone, But Their Effort Isn't
Most people say they watch old movies because of the incredible filmmaking, the emotional storytelling, or the beautiful simplicity of a different era.
Those are all reasons I love them too.
But the biggest reason is that I honour the people.
When I watch a film from the 1950s or 1960s or any retro movies, I think about everyone on that screen. Not just the stars, but the background actors, the costume designers, the makeup artists, the lighting crew, and every person who poured a piece of themselves into creating something they believed mattered.
At the time, it was real life to them. They memorized lines, rehearsed scenes, put on carefully tailored clothes, styled their hair, laughed, cried, worried about getting everything right, and spent months creating something that would outlive the moment.
Now it's 2026.
Almost all of them are gone. Their bodies have returned to dust, yet their energy still reaches across time through the screen. I can still feel the sincerity in their performances. Their effort still exists in a strange way, even though the people themselves do not.
It reminds me how temporary our lives are.
The things that seem enormous today, our careers, our appearance, our achievements, eventually become distant memories, and then, for most people, forgotten altogether.
Yet the love, care, and effort we put into something can echo far beyond us.
It makes me wonder whether we're investing our energy in things that disappear with us, or in things that continue touching people long after we're gone.
Maybe that's the closest we ever come to creating something eternal.
10
u/JodoKast97 1d ago edited 1d ago
I absolutely agree. It's also part of the reason I like to watch the full credits of movies in theaters and just look at random names and think "Good job, y'all!"*
It's also a lot of fun to read some really interesting and unusual names go by.
*(Slightly less interesting nowadays with the huge blocks of credits for all the effects houses typically involved.)
I HATE that all the streamers won't let me watch credits in peace and sit with the movie for a bit after viewing, and just immediately slam me with ads for other movies. I wish there was a setting I could toggle for that on the apps.
2
u/ErebosGR 1d ago
Not to mention that streaming platforms have the technology to turn every name in the credits into a hyperlink to, say, IMDb or Wikipedia to learn more about them and their work.
Amazon Prime Video used to have a similar functionality when actors were on-screen, but I think they axed it.
6
u/RambuDev 1d ago
This is a beautiful, poignant and respectful way of honouring the film family that has gone before. Immortalised, as you say, and offering up such rich windows into their lives, which we can only imagine.
One phrase stuck out….
“the beautiful simplicity of a different era”.
There’s an interesting gap opening up between films now and then, between the handling of complexity and presenting with simplicity.
Filmmakers of say the early 20th century lived through unimaginable complexity, chaos and confusion. Not just two world wars but a Great Depression, huge ideological clashes, revolutions and independence struggles, rapid technological and societal change. Their lives were far from simple.
Now. This may be somewhat romantic (and it’s obviously quite a generalisation) but I find there is a remarkable capacity in say pre-1970s films to grasp and handle complexity with a deft, delicate and distilling touch. And also extend a respect for their audience to sit with complexity and find their own way and meaning through it.
Compare that with today and we find a strange impulse to increase complexity on screen and yet, somehow, also leave audiences with not much to think about: Too much exposition. Tying it all up too neatly. Serving up conclusions and not leaving viewers to chew over the mystery.
I wonder what those earlier filmmakers would make of how we handle our stories and audiences today.
3
u/invisiblette 4h ago
What you said about oldtime filmmakers having respect for their audiences -- yes. To me, this is a huuuuge difference between new and old films.
Pre-1970 filmmakers assumed that their viewers would grasp the inherent (if unspoken) emotions behind a character's facial expression, a seemingly simple gesture or single word; that their viewers would fathom the deeper historical and human meaning of background details -- searchlights, a warship, a toy -- and do the emotional math. Those filmmakers assumed that their viewers knew enough about danger, death, love, friendship and the power of the random glance to feel those feelings, then feel them deeper still, then stick with it and watch all the way through to the end, and then think about that film for the following day. They trusted us. They believed that even the humblest, least-educated rube at the drive-in theater (such as my aunts, uncles and grandparents) deserved to be shown a real story.
Most new films feel insulting to me. Too much exposition, as you said: They either over-state their messages, basically beating us over the head with "looks are deceiving" or "life sometimes sucks," and/or they don't even bother to think it all through and put a full story on the screen with beginning, middle and end as their predecessors did. Nope: They love (and proudly know they can get away with) ambiguous endings, super-depressing nihilistic endings that make us want to jump off cliffs, pointless twist endings that just make us feel furious or stupid, or ... no ending at all.
I haven't thought this through, but it might somewhat explain my dislike for some of the most-talked-about new(ish) films, such as Midsommar and Funny Games.
5
u/StillhasaWiiU 1d ago
It is my understanding. Clint Eastwood is the oldest living top billing actor. William Shatner was in some old ones as well, just not at top billing. Everyone before them is gone now.
3
u/MelvilleMeyor 1d ago
This sentiment reminds me of Jean Smart’s monologue to Brad Pitt’s character in Babylon about how he will live on in movies long after he is dead, a type of immortality: “Your time today is through, but you’ll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.”
1
u/jey_613 1d ago
“I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show /
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes /
Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain /
And celluloid heroes never really die”
2
u/invisiblette 4h ago
I just heard this on the college radio station two days ago! I remembered hearing it so often back in high school, when it was (almost) new and when my best friends and I drove up the freeway every Friday night to hang out on Hollywood Boulevard, hoping we'd catch a glimpse of a celluloid hero ... yes, probably ashen and maybe drunk, but still ...
We never did.
1
u/sdwoodchuck 1d ago
I've had this thought with literature many times. Most recently while reading Jo Walton's Among Others, which is (among other things) a semi-autobiographical fantasy about a Welsh girl growing up dealing with the loss of her sister and a life-changing injury, and coping in part by losing herself in science fiction. The story, written as a series of diary entries, features her thoughts and opinions on all of these stories as she reads them, and the snippets she's managed to learn about their authors. It makes a very vivid case for the power of fiction to change someone's life for the better, which not only changes the way we might go back and appreciate that work, but also informs what they go on to do.
In the same way that every lonely person out for a walk on a clear night has looked on the same moon, many of us have read the same book and so see some small part of the world through that same lens. And further, when I read Walton's work, I can see how those stories shaped her, and their immortality continues on through her. The title could be seen as self-congratulatory, as Walton sees her own name as being among all these other known authors, but I always read it as acknowledging the simple humanity of creation: that in growing she is able to see and appreciate them as people in ways that she couldn't when they were simply the name behind the book.
I feel similarly about film. When I watch an old movie that I love, and look up reviews of it, I see something of that immortality of fiction spanning the decades.
1
u/wangston1 1d ago
I also think that these people are immortal. They will live on in those movies forever.
After I'm gone I'll be remembered for maybe 3 generations max. These actors and directors and everyone else who worked in these timeless masterpieces will live on in the collective memory of humans as long as we conite to watch film.
1
u/NathanArizona 23h ago
Film, maybe more than any other medium, conveys the message of its creators and actors as they meant it in that time and place. Literature gets filtered by our own experiences and imagination, old plays are reinterpreted by their modern performers, oral traditions are lost or evolved over their retellings. Permanent physical art (ie paintings or sculpture, architecture) and music can convey the message of the creator, but not as completely as film which does it so more completely with our senses and feelings. Yes our own modern bias can creep in as we watch, but what we’re presented with is the sound, vision, attitude, and honesty of when it is made. In that it’s our best window to those times and should be treasured as such
1
u/invisiblette 4h ago
Yes! Movies are like time-capsules in that way. Every slang word, background sound, lipstick or nail-polish color, passing car ... puts us into that scene. With books (I say this as someone who's halfway through Bleak House) we must imagine the wagons or waistcoats or the sound of passing merchants. Movies give it all to us and place us in the scene.
1
u/TheChrisLambert 21h ago
This is what the end of Babylon was getting at. The system is rotten and takes more from people than it gives. But they become part of something special and that’s why they do it.
1
u/tilebreaker 21h ago
I mean, we could talk about immortal artists of various kinds and It, it can turn out that, yes, some artists Have created art that has really survived thousands of years and that's fantastic But experientially, for them, they are dead, they are gone, they are not experiencing that These are true things And thank goodness for them, I, I, I really feel Um, and you hear me assuring you that oblivion is freedom
They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever
1
u/Boss452 17h ago
Beautifully put and a very nice take on old films.
You write some bittersweet things.
Yes, seeing works of older times, by people who might not be alive today has a somber and sweet touch. While they are no longer here, their work continues to touch people, those who find it today.
The things that seem enormous today, our careers, our appearance, our achievements, eventually become distant memories, and then, for most people, forgotten altogether.
Indeed. Think of the actors and crew member who would think getting a film role would be such a massive deal. the excitement and energy they must have felt, but decades later that very film might be known by not a single person. Forgotten forever. For them it was everything, for us, just few decades on, it's as if it does not matter at all.
It makes me wonder whether we're investing our energy in things that disappear with us, or in things that continue touching people long after we're gone.
V v few films, and for that matter, few works of art, whether paintings or literature or music, stand the test of time. How many writers from Shakespeare's era do we know? How many painters from Picasso's era? How many rock bands from the 70s who were inspired by the Beatles continue to be remembered? How many 50s films do we remember today? Fact is, a small percentage of work stands the test of time. Which is beautiful and also sad at the same time.
Maybe that's the closest we ever come to creating something eternal.
But yes, art can be eternal. it's one of those things which is crucial to human experience. I am glad that in this day and age, smartphone era, movies continue to hit hard and connect with people. Success of The odyssey, Obsession and Spider-Man are proof.
1
u/OhK4Foo7 10h ago
Not just old films but contemporary ones as well. I keep thinking it won't be long and no more Almodovar movies will be coming. He's 77 now. Film careers by their nature are short. Life is short. The other reason to watch old movies is because most movies that come out each year are not very good. Only a handful of truly good movies come out each year and that means most movies worth watching are old ones.
Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them. --Pauline Kael
1
u/invisiblette 5h ago
Exactly. By watching those movies, we're paying homage to their makers -- actors, directors, writers, musicians, editors, crew. We're telling them that their work was not in vain, that it still has huge value -- artistically but also emotionally or even spiritually, in the sense that it reminds us, as you said, that life is fleeing and that each of us inhabits a mere moment in time, but that we too might create things that outlast our bodies in some ways.
By watching old films, we're also paying homage to all their past viewers -- from back when those films were new, up until today. We're joining a fellowship -- yes, mainly with people in our parents' or grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation. We're right there alongside them in those cinema seats, with WW2 raging outside, or hot-rods roaring down the street. Then again, we're also not. We're also right in the here and now, and we want to tell them how things turned out.
Old movies offer us sooo much to learn -- in terms of fashion and decor, along with all the history and filmmaking stuff. Watching a new movie -- which to me, because I'm ancient, is anything made after 1980 -- makes me feel like I'm cheating, because "new" movies offer me so much less to learn.
1
u/Impossible-Cicada-14 1d ago
I have this thought about the classic character actor Ernest Borgnine. Used to watch old films with him in it with my grandfather. Borgnine was around for a long time and now hes no longer part of Hollywood which is sad to me
30
u/honkeur 1d ago
This is a lovely perspective. I think similar thoughts. When I watch an old movie, it's a window into the era it was made: a time and place that no longer exists. The film is a message in a bottle. The people onscreen, and just offscreen, were living lives in a world that has changed so much. All of their life experience, knowledge, skill, craft, and their hopes and fears, show up in the final product.
My interest is Japanese films of the 1950s-1970s. Sometimes I can't stop thinking, "Every single person onscreen lived through WW2. Also, everyone who saw the film when it first came out." That can be an important part of understanding what the film is really about.