Dad's Movies

One of the interests of my late father was what we would call, Classic Film.

He enjoyed revisiting older films he saw when he was younger and was fortunate enough to see new availability of many classic movies that, prior to the boom years of home video, were rarely seen. Television reintroduced a lot of classic movies to new audiences but if you were looking for titles that weren't very well known, you had to be lucky enough to catch them on the few times they aired.

Dad began collecting his favorite old movies in the 1980s when we got our first Betamax VCR which he often used to record movies when they aired on TV. He also bought a few commercial tapes but for a while, the selection was poor and the price was high. By the time DVDs came on the scene, Dad had switched to buying movies. The DVD boom years were a time that a lot of classic films were issued, many had never been released on video before. Dad liked DVDs for the same reasons we all did; the picture quality was just so much better than what we had before and every month there were new releases of movies he'd thought he would never see again.

When my father passed a few years back, I made it a point to rip/borrow/acquire the movies he had in his library. Our tastes did overlap but he had a lot of films I have never seen.

Which brings me to this post and (hopefully) a new viewing project. It might take a while...

I am going to try and watch all of the films I got from him that I haven't seen before and write something on each one. I may not have a lot to say but I'll write something. I suspect he had seen all of these titles at some point in his life and had a reason to buy them. I also suspect that some of the films on this list won't exactly be Citizen Kane. Sadly, he didn't get to every one as some of the discs were still in the shrink. I'm pretty sure that I am missing some titles but this is a good start.

So Dad, let's see what you've got!

Here's the list, in alphabetical order, of the films I'll be watching:

The Awful Truth (1937)
Battleground (1949)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
The Black Rose (1950)
Blood and Sand (1941)
The Blue Max (1966)
Captain From Castile (1947)
Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

The Conspirators (1944)

Decision Before Dawn (1951)
The Four Feathers (1939)
Great Expectations (1946)
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
King Rat (1965)
The Ladykillers (1955)
The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
The Longest Day (1962)
The Lost Patrol (1934)
Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
The Loved One (1965)
Lullaby of Broadway (1951)
Man Hunt (1941)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
The Man Who Never Was (1956)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
The Mask of Dimitros (1944)
Mister 880 (1950)
The Moon is Down (1943)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
Mr. Lucky (1943)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
The Naked Truth (1957)
A New Leaf (1971)
Night Train to Munich (1940)
None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
Northwest Passage (1940)
On The Rivera (1951)
Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Our Man in Havana (1959)
People Will Talk (1951)
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)
Prince of Foxes (1949)
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
The Prisoner of Zenda (1952)
The Purple Plain (1954)
The Rains Came (1939)
Random Harvest (1942)
The River (1951)
Road to Morocco (1942)
Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)
Scaramouche (1952)
Sea of Sand (1958)
The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968)
Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
The Silver Fleet (1943)
Sitting Pretty (1948)
A Song is Born (1948)
A Song to Remember (1945)
Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
The Tales of Hoffman (1951)
Tales of Manhattan (1942)
The Talk of the Town (1942)
That Hamilton Woman (1941)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Too Hot to Handle (1938)
Tunes of Glory (1960)
Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
The Uninvited (1944)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
The Wolf Man (1941)


Wish me luck!