Yes, out of the past come wonderful movies on TCM. And just this evening there was a movie on called Out of the Past. It’s one of I’d say maybe ten movies that are the best of film noir (in my opinion). The others are: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Killers, Murder My Sweet, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia. There are also others which deserve special mention, like Three Strangers, Night and the City, Gun Crazy, and lots more I can’t remember right now. (I’m sorry if I’m leaving anything out. {And I mean the real noirs, not the neo-noirs.})
Boy, these movies are fun, and the best of them should always get the top ratings (4 out of 4 stars) in the TV guides. But these days, even the best are slipping. And it’s not that the movies are getting worse, it’s just that the people who rate them are getting younger.
This is not a new phenomenon. When I was a little kid who loved horror movies, all the TV Guide ratings for old movies were the highest ratings possible (mostly 3+ or 4 out of 4), unless they were horror movies, in which case they got maybe moderate to low marks (2 to 1 out of 4 stars). That’s because it was old people rating the movies who had grown up on these movies, and back then, horror movies were considered the bottom of the barrel, while the rest were a wonderful piece of nostalgia (for the reviewer). But now the horror movies from the 1930s get the top marks, and most of the other movies (except for the very top of the crop) are dwindling quite significantly. And we all know why that is, now don’t we?
Yes, I’m afraid it’s true: every generation loves what they grew up with, and they don’t like anything else as much, especially new stuff (and also nowadays old stuff). I think it’s always been like this. When I was a kid in the 1970s, all the old movies got high marks, but the more recent ones got very low ones. And then as I got older, the reviews changed such that the older ones got knocked down a notch or two, and the 1960s movies got the highest marks, and the recent ones mediocre marks still. And nowadays, it’s the movies from more recently that get higher ratings. (I think this is because movie reviewers for cable companies are a lot younger than the ones who rated the movies for TV guides when I was a kid, because by design it should be the ‘80s movies that get the top marks now {based upon my previous experience with TV guide movies ratings}, but they don’t. {Of course, many of them aren’t very good, and there’s that whole ugly ‘80s fashion thing, and all the skimping on music the did in the 1980s with the plastic keyboard scores, so maybe that’s the issue.}) And it’s quite obvious to me that many movies are being given a star rating based upon hearsay alone, because how else could they pan great old movies and say lame ones are much better? It’s not really a taste issue then so much as it’s likely a not wanting to admit they haven’t seen it issue.
But a curious thing has happened to movie ratings as time marches on, and that’s this: the old horror movies have become the top rated movies of that era, and the supposed “A-Pictures” have taken a notable slide. Could that be because the horror movies were really great all along, but that snobs didn’t want to admit it? Um, I will leave that up to you to decide for yourself. But there’s just nothing that stands the test of time like an old Universal horror movie with Boris Karloff and that great Jack Pierce makeup. But be that as it may, giving Out of the Past less than the top possible rating (4 stars out of 4) is surely a crime against humanity! If these young whippersnappers are going to rate old movies, the least they could do is get the best ones right. (And okay, okay, they gave it 3.5 out of 4, but that’s still at least a misdemeanor against humanity, isn’t it?)
