Old Movies Worth Watching for People Who Think They Don’t Like Old Movies

A friend of mine once announced, with total confidence, that he did not like old movies. When I asked which ones he had seen, the list was short: a long epic he had been made to sit through in school, and half of a black-and-white drama he had fallen asleep during. That is a common story. Most people who think old movies are not for them have simply started in the wrong place, with the longest, slowest and most reverent titles. This list starts at the other end: short films, funny films and fast films first, with the heavyweights saved for later.

Why old movies lose new viewers

Three things tend to put people off. The first is length; a three-hour prestige picture is a big ask for someone unsure of the format. The second is pacing; some films of every era are slow, and older ones that were made to be important often move the slowest of all. The third is unfamiliarity: black-and-white photography, silent intertitles and dated acting styles all need a few minutes of adjustment.

The fix is simple. Begin with films that are short enough to be low-risk, funny enough to win you over before the adjustment period is up, and built around stories you already recognize from modern genres: heists, monsters, chase thrillers, romantic comedies. Once that works, the rest of film history opens up.

The on-ramp: old movies in the order to watch them

Step 1: start by laughing

Comedy is the best gateway because a laugh is involuntary. You do not need context to find a man dangling from a clock funny and frightening at once. Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! builds to that famous climb up the face of a building, and even viewers who have seen the image a hundred times on posters tend to grip the armrest.

Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. is even better as a first silent film, partly because it runs only around 45 minutes. Keaton plays a projectionist who dreams himself into the movie he is showing, and the special effects in that sequence still make people ask how he did them. If one of these clicks, our guide to silent comedy from Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd is the natural next step.

For sound comedy, A Night at the Opera is the Marx Brothers film I recommend to newcomers. It has a cleaner story than their earlier anarchic work, which makes it easier to follow, and the overcrowded ship’s cabin scene is one of the great pieces of comic escalation. Arsenic and Old Lace has Cary Grant discovering that his gentle aunts have been poisoning lonely old men, and he plays the panic at full volume. The Ladykillers, from Britain’s Ealing Studios, has Alec Guinness leading a gang of crooks who rent rooms from an elderly widow and slowly realize they cannot handle her.

Step 2: then go fast

Once a viewer has accepted the look and sound of older films, genre takes over. Horror, crime and thrillers were made to move, and some of the best were made cheaply and quickly.

Frankenstein runs only about seventy minutes and is far stranger and sadder than its reputation as a monster movie suggests. Boris Karloff’s performance under all that makeup is the reason. King Kong, with stop-motion animation by Willis O’Brien, is the ancestor of every giant-creature film since, and its final act in New York still works on a big screen.

For crime, Detour is a famous example of a tiny-budget noir that turned its limitations into atmosphere: a drifter, a car, a hitchhiker and a run of very bad luck, all in barely more than an hour. Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, with Sterling Hayden planning a racetrack robbery, jumps back and forth in time to show the heist from several angles, a trick that feels decades ahead of its year. If those two land, our list of the best film noir movies will keep you busy for months.

North by Northwest is longer than everything else in this step but plays faster than most modern thrillers. Cary Grant is mistaken for a spy and spends the film running from people he cannot identify, from a Manhattan hotel to a cornfield to Mount Rushmore. Many people who claim to dislike old movies come out of this one asking what else Hitchcock made.

Step 3: add color and romance

By now most skeptics have dropped the “I don’t like old movies” line and simply want more good ones. This is the moment for warmth.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is one of the best answers to the idea that old means drab. Its Technicolor greens and reds are vivid, Errol Flynn is all grin and swagger, and the sword fights are fun rather than grim. The Philadelphia Story puts Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart in a society wedding gone sideways; the dialogue sparkles and the film is more emotionally sharp than its glossy surface suggests. Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn as a princess who escapes her duties for a day in Rome with a reporter played by Gregory Peck, won Hepburn the Academy Award for Best Actress and still charms people who think they are immune.

Step 4: the long one

Only now, once trust is built, should you try something close to three hours. The Great Escape is a good choice because it never feels long. It follows Allied prisoners of war planning a mass breakout from a German camp, with a big ensemble cast including Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough. If someone sits through this happily, they are ready for anything on our main list of classic movies to watch.

When the real problem is black and white

Some people are fine with older stories but balk at monochrome. If that is the sticking point, lean on the color titles first: The Adventures of Robin Hood, North by Northwest and The Great Escape are all in color, and they ease the transition. Then try a black-and-white film that uses its palette as part of the fun. Frankenstein and Detour are good choices, because the shadows are doing real work in building the mood; take them away and the films would lose their teeth.

It also helps to know that the adjustment is short. In my experience, most first-time viewers stop thinking about the lack of color within the first ten or fifteen minutes, as long as the story has grabbed them. That is one more reason to start with films that grab quickly.

Tips for converting a skeptic

• Do not lecture. Skip the introduction about historical importance. Just press play.
• Watch together. Comedies especially work better with company, the way they were designed to be seen.
• Pick a good copy. A blurry, scratchy transfer will confirm every prejudice. Restored versions can be found through public-domain archives or licensed services.
• Stop if it is not working. Better to switch films than to grind through something that kills the mood.
• Ask what they liked. If it was the jokes, go further into comedy. If it was the suspense, head toward noir and Hitchcock. Let their taste set the route.

The goal is not to make anyone love every old film. Plenty of older movies are dull, just as plenty of new ones are. The goal is to remove the assumption that the age of a film decides whether it can be enjoyed.