Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

[Ek weet nie]

Apologies for the lousy thread tribute title but it's something that I've been meaning to start for a while. There are hundreds of books selling variants of 1001 Movies to see before you die. With icheckmovies.com and more specifically theyshootpictures.com I've been going through the classics for the last 18 months or so. Now, it is enormously rewarding watching some of the greatest films ever made and I've only scratched the surface but occasionally I come across serious clunkers.

Here's My Top Five:
1. Gone With The Wind
2. City Lights
3. An American in Paris
4. Easy Rider
5. Pierrot le Fou

Any other nominations for classics that ain't all that? Or any defences for those mentioned here?

[Wizard in Black]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Citizen Kane? Not a bad movie, but I despise it's classic status and "best movie of all time" title that some people (especially my uni drama course) seem to give it. Saying Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time is like saying the Penny Farthing is the best bike ever, better movies have been made since...

[Wyatt Earp]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Wizard in Black wrote:

Saying Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time is like saying the Penny Farthing is the best bike ever, better movies have been made since...

Well, it isn't really the same, is it? Because technology is cumulative: the more recent the technology, the better it's likely to be. Whereas art isn't cumulative.

I don't think Citizen Kane is the Don Bradman of film, or anything; there are other contenders in the frame. But if we're going to be using the word "classic" at all (which perhaps we shouldn't), then I think we can reasonably be using it of Citizen Kane.

[torres]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I'd rather have my testicles fried than sit through Gone With The Wind again.

[diabloinglés]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

The Untouchables

[Amor de Cosmos]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

A lot of movies are termed "classic" because of legend/narratives that surround them than rather the quality of the films themselves. That's certainly true of both Gone With the Wind and Easy Rider I think.

[wingco]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Woody Allen's Manhattan.

[ursus arctos]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

On the whole, perhaps yes, but the opening montage is certifiably brilliant.

[Reed John]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I don't really see what the fuss is about Woody Allen's ouvre in general.

I had to look up who Don Bradman was. I guess that's the equivalent of an Australian or Englishman looking up who Babe Ruth was, although I imagine most Australians and Englishmen know who he was.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Even though I've got a lot of time for Bergman I found it hard to take The Seventh Seal seriously. The symbolism is so heavy handed you might as well stick a label on everything and everybody in it. I think I'd find it hard not LoL if I watched it again.

[delicatemoth]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I thought I was the only person who describes Pierrot Le Fou as a classic. The guides usually prefer other Godard films. Anyway, it's great. Urgent, compelling and packed with charisma.

I'd nominate all films I've seen by Kubrick, Coppola and Scorsese, except possibly Taxi Driver and Dr Strangelove. Pretentious and self-important, and very cokey. Also Jaws, tedium masquerading as suspense.

AdC - I only saw The Seventh Seal recently and I absolutely loved it, partly because it did make me lol while being simultaneously majestic and affecting.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Seconded on almost all of Kubrick's stuff. 2001 is frankly shite compared to the adaptation it could have been, and A Clockwork Orange was similarly ruined by its overindulgence. The Shining was, true, a fantastic film in its own right but still, again, crap compared to the possibilities the original novel gave it, and I still think all you need to know about Kubrick was in Eyes Wide Sh*t .

I also get arse-numbingly bored every time I watch Coppola's Apocalypse Now . I think people who profess to "love!" that movie only actually like the bit with Robert Duvall on the beach with the helicopters.

[Reed John]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Bullshit. I really like Apocalypse Now but don't particularly care for that scene on the beach. I think the film would lose a lot if it were dropped - banality of evil and the insanity of war and all of that - but it feels a bit too long and repetitive.

But overall, the film's arse-numbing length (do they not have comfortable chairs where you are?) is integral to the story. It's Heart of Darkness innit? It's about a long journey on a slow river, both literally and metaphorically. It wouldn't work very well if it were a taught 130 minutes.

[Bored Of Education]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

After all the hype, I was ready to slaughter Citizen Kane when I first saw it but, you know, it's a great story and a great film that has stood the test of time.

2001 is probably the worst film that has been called a classic but that is perhaps only because Withnail & I is regarded more of a cult classic than a bona fide classic. It is, however, definitely shit.

[Incandenza]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

The Princess Bride

[/prepares for the knives to come out]

[Tony C]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Good calls on 'Manhattan' and 'Easy Rider' above.

I watched Robert Altman's 'McCabe and Mrs Miller' recently, the film that by popular critical opinion redefined the modern western. In as much as the semi-improvised plot dragged interminably and the dialogue was often inaudible (deliberately, apparently) it redefined the genre all right. But not necessarily for the better.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I only got around to seeing it last year, and came to the wholly original conclusion: Citizen Kane is brilliant.

Heart of Darkness is a 100-or-so page novella, Reed, not some Tolstoyan epic. But I really enjoy Apocalypse Now, and I don't mind that it rambles and lets the Method (perhaps in the green drug sense as much as the Stanislavky business) take over here and there, cause it looks amazing.

I love the Kubrick films too. Apart from The Shining, because it's ridiculous.

[jason voorhees]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I think people who profess to "love!" that movie only actually like the bit with Robert Duvall on the beach with the helicopters.

Absolutely wrong. I think it's the worst scene in the film.

Working in public education the past decade, I've found the bridge scene ("who's your commanding officer ?!!" "AIN'T YOU ?!!") to be the scene that I always use to describe anarchic classrooms. "Man, that Mrs. Wilson's class. Talk about the bridge scene from Apocalypse Now."

Not a bad go, Ek.

Of the AFI 100 Years 100 Films list, I'd put:

0) Birth of a Nation (Thanks for extending Jim Crow for another 50 years, D.W.)
1) Gone With the Wind
2) The Graduate
3) Mr. Smith Goes To Washington/It's a Wonderful Life/The Philadelphia Story (I never liked Mr. Grant, even though he was Princeton)
4) Dances With Wolves
5) The Sound of Music

The fact that The Jazz Singer and The Gold Rush and Birth of the Klu Klux Klan is on that AFI list instead of Greed, M, Metropolis, and Sunrise is a dimestore travesty as well.

[Reed John]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

It's a Wonderful Life is a classic if anything is a classic.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Dances with Wolves is in the AFI top 100?

Stack me sideways!

I mean, Jesus wept.

[George]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Birth Of A Nation is reprehensible stuff in terms of it's message but when watching it as an historical artifact and a marker in early cinema I actually found it enjoyable (for want of a better word). It's followup Intolerance was a bit too long winded. Great Babylonian sets though.

The numerous reels of film which ended up being butchered from the final edit of Greed were apparently thrown away by a janitor who thought they were just unwanted rubbish.

[Guest]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I'd like to stand up for City Lights. I saw it at the Edinburgh Festival with a live orchestra and loved it.

The Deer Hunter - now there's an incredibly tedious film.

[Reed John]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

I generally find all of the "classics" from the late-1960s through the 70s to be very slow and sometimes tedious. For example, like I said on this board to great derision not long ago, I recently saw Serpico and was disappointed. It seemed like the film was taking so long to make anything really happen that it was suddenly over before I felt like I really understood the character.

It's said that beginning with Star Wars and then the advent of video games and MTV and what not, that we've been conditioned to have shorter attention spans and films have tried to cater to that so therefore somebody of my age or younger will always find older films to be slow and probably dull. You know, that old chestnut.

And yet, I don't ever feeling that same "move this the fuck along" feeling with older flms. like Casablanca, My Fair Lady, All Quiet on the Western Front, Doris Day/Rock Hudson stuff, etc.

So did films actually slow down in that supposedly "golden era between the end of the studio system and the rise of the blockbuster?"

And I find a lot of contemporary "indy" films really slow and boring. So does that mean that the Miramax era brought about another great slowing down of the pace of films, perhaps because those movies are all inspired by the films of the 1970s?

JV would probably be the one to answer this with some technical precision.

[ian.64]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

Just to digress, I think that what's in danger of being lost is the appeal of films that grow after a length of time to achieve a status of enhancement that could be termed 'classic', or just have qualities that don't become truly apparent until after a decade or two. Every film now is the 'best ever (insert genre here)' or the 'greatest ever', when their true quality won't probably show through until time has had its way. They won't be 'great' then, they have to be 'great' now.

It's as though everyone turns into Paul Ross as soon as something mildly decent turns out.

[evilC]

Worst movie to be described as "Classic"

While I don't think I'd ever heard it called a classic, I heard enough people calling it "brilliant" that I had my expectations raised for 'Fargo'.

Big mistake.

Like the description of 'The Seventh Seal', above, I found it plodding, incredibly predictable and if I was a Minnesotan, I probably would have sued the Coens for portraying them all as a bunch of small-minded fuckwits with stupid voices.

Seriously overrated.