One of my best memories of childhood is settling down on a winter afternoon, with my mum, in front of the TV for the Sunday Afternoon Classic.
Together we sobbed our way through Waterloo Bridge, failed to follow the thread of The Big Sleep, learnt American history from Scarlett O’Hara, hummed along with West Side Story and tut-tutted when Alida Valli rejected Joseph Cotton in The Third Man.
I always imagined I’d enjoy the same bonding sessions with my own children but somehow Casablanca failed to grip their imaginations – black and white? No CGI? What’s this guy called again? Humphrey? Weird name for an actor.
I soon found I had to jump a decade or three before they could engage in what they saw as a “classic” movie. But there was an upside. Films I had experienced as part of my own progress through adulthood were presented in an entirely new light. Some had vintage stamped all over them; others were, well, showing their age. And some were a revelation. I had been too young, or too distracted, or too prejudiced, when I had first seen them but now they revealed their hidden delights to me.
So here’s a small sample of the good, great and not so great from the past three decades or so.
Triple-a bona fide masterpiece
- The Last Picture Show
- Days of Heaven
- The Conversation
- Blue Velvet
- American Beauty
- Mean Streets
- Throne of Blood
- Midnight Cowboy
- Chungking Express
- Chinatown
- Spirit of the Beehive
- Downfall
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