This guest post is from Anyes of Far away in the Sunshine who is a fellow WordCount Blogathon participant. You can also read my guest post on her blog.
The attraction I still have for Black and White movies started early on, while I was watching the late Friday nights flicks every week in my living room. Those magic moments marked the beginning of my love affair with the whole genre. As everyone was asleep and the whole house had fallen into a quiet slumber, a different atmosphere could be felt all around. I order to better my English, I remember watching mostly American B&W movies, in VO (original Version) with French subtitles.
They were showing me a world, I had never dreamed of. I was about 14 years old at the time and my impressionable mind absorbed all of those wonderful images. This foreign language was music to my ears, those landscapes I had never seen made me curious and eager to know more. The actors and actresses were all surrounded with the glow of my teenage admiration.
A movie like Suspicion, where the handsome Cary Grant made me wonder if he was as bad as his co star Joan Fontaine suspected was the kind I really enjoyed. Alfred Hitchcock's quiet understated movies were always so full of suspense. This particular capacity of his to take an ordinary situation and turn it into a frightful scenario, was simply irresistible to me. Looking past the fancy decor and the well chosen words of the dialog, I could see a whole different window into a world I wanted to be part of.
Another one of my all time favourite is Bringing Up Baby this time with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Every scene of this classic movie, was an excuse for a comic repartee from either actors or some physical comedy that left me crying out of laughter. I really enjoyed watching the interaction between the two actors and having a big adolescent crush on Cary Grant made the whole experience even more enjoyable.
Having fairly young children, I have made a point to try and share my love for those old fashioned movies signs of different times. I feel very lucky that both my children still come and sit with me when one of my old favourite is showing on TCM, and get to spend a bit of time into a different world, one I used to cherish in my younger years.
What is your favourite Black and white movie?