In every old British movie ever

"Gorblimey, ain't you a sight for sore eyes and no mistake!"

"Don't mind if I do, guv'nor!"

alec guinness

"Well, I'll be!"

"Blasted poor show what"

rubble

Donald Pleasance

Michael Horden

"I say! That man!"

Lots of tweed

And trilbys.

Incredibly oblique flirting.

"Terribly"

People talking twice as fast as they did in real life

"Lower Middleswallop, you say? Well you'll be wanting the 3.30 from platform 3 but better hurries along now, young sir, it'll be leaving in *pulls out fob watch* five minutes *winks*."

"Planes going down sir! Five minutes we'll be in the drink"
"Hmmm, that rather puts a damper on things"

"Charles and I went to the Savoy, had a frightfully gay time!"

re: "Gorblimey, ain't you a sight for sore eyes and no mistake!"

Tony Hancock has a great variant on this in The Rebel - "Look what just got back from Ascot!"

Derogatory terms for Germans.

regional accents that have died out since the advent of television

bolshy Trade Unionists

regional accents that have died out since the advent of television

― but olives are valuable too (Noodle Vague)

Yeah, Southern working class accents in 40s/50s films are very odd, they almost sound Australian.

"What happened to Smudger?"
"He bought it, poor chap, Jerry came up on his tail, caught him unawares, old Smudger hadn't a hope." "Bally Jerry."

bar bolshy Trade Unionists, total absence of class conflict

oblique sexual tension

An almost complete lack of anything resembling profound emotion

future cast member of 70s TV sitcom

some of you shd be forced to sit down and watch some British movies btw

obv there's no profound emotion in Hitchcock, Powell and Pressburger, Lean etc etc

Believe me I've watched enough of the fuckers to know how bad they were

michael ripper as bavarian inkeeper

Barracks containing cheeky Cockney, plucky Northener, dour Scotsman, comical Welshman, slow-witted West Country type etc

Male actor playing the part of an older woman.

One extremely cocky American character.

John Mills, aged 32, playing a teenager

Cranky landlady with shawl and slippers: "'Oo do you think you are creepin' araand the flat at two o'clock in the morning? Some of us 'ave gotta work in the morning'
Man: (Unintelligible)
Landlady: 'Will you take a look at yourself! Drinking and cavorting up til all hours of the night and still no rent for the last three weeks. I want you out of 'ere by morning'
Man: (Falls gently down stairs)

Inept, flustered and finger-wagging figures of authority.

old woman b&b owner type character

Prissy curate forever clutching a bible

John Mills, aged 32, playing a teenager

A guy in my year at school, age 15, looked like John Mills, aged 32, playing a teenager.

newspaper or wireless prop intoducing key plot point

overly loud introductory orchestral music

Police cars with a friggin' bell instead of a siren

ending credits screen somehow too large to fit into the tv screen

(might have imagined that one)

Abrupt jump between last scene and end credits.

Shitty colourised version of b&w movie shown on TV on rainy Saturday afternoon.

bar bolshy Trade Unionists

Good description of approx 28% of my friends

strangely unfinished ending

Inept, flustered and finger-wagging figures of authority.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 1:57 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...said the ilx mod

Police cars with a friggin' bell instead of a siren

^ On point

"Why how perfectly beastly of them, darling."

"Perishing cold, it is".

Future cast members of the Carry On franchise turning up in peripheral roles

Empty London streets save for a lorry with Smith & Sons Lincoln 347 written on side.

Backfiring Morris Minors or Ford Anglia/Cortinas.

Awkwardly shoehorned-in appearances by Trad Jazz combos and/or beat groups.

Mona Washbourne

"It's queer I tell you, downright queer, the goings on up at the old manor."

There were a lot of 'queers' in the Ralph Richardson film that was on today.

Music Composed by WILLIAM ALWYN
Played by THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Conducted by MUIR MATHIESON

"'En it marvellous?"

Bucolic countryside with a vicar cycling down a country lane.

Terry-Thomas

Xp
Also "bleedin' marvellous innit"

"Hard cheese old man"

“Coming soon on Talking Pictures TV…”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Maddern#Partial_filmography

I was reading this list of roles played by Victor Maddern and more or less every one is distinctly 'old British movie', eitherf just job titles like 'British N.C.O.', 'First Tram Conductor', 'Shop Steward', or people named stuff like 'Joe Biggs'. My choice for the two most evocative of old British movies - 'Grouchy Soldier Clearing Rocks' and 'Sailor fishing for bike'

Always looked about 55, even in his 20s.

but simultaneously always looked somehow boyish even when he was in his 50s

https://downstairslounge.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/maddern.jpg

https://scontent.fman4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/89861621_3014621605258794_3114549483778605056_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dd63ad&_nc_ohc=BLwOCc7loD8AX_U9Av8&_nc_ht=scontent.fman4-1.fna&oh=00_AfDIwkgeQzo4JVJmA4_BxnSnacF7Kcky6EyhlIfJWnPWrA&oe=660AA620

I feel like you don't get guys with faces like this anymore

always handy to be good friends with a pianist

Xp D&B bloke DJ Voltage would look like that without the beard imo

Groups of grubby kids playing on crater scarred wasteland and bombed out buildings.

xps improved childhood treatment of adenoids?

https://focus.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/thumbor/HIHF1zTTvVO1uTRXgnqbB67Q0Lw=/0x0:1500x828/1280x853/prod-mh-ireland/c00903c8-951d-11ed-91ed-0210609a3fe2.JPG

Sam Kydd

Drawing rooms

Cigarettes in a cigarette case

This sound perfectly heard from inside a house

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtkXC6R20vY

Groups of grubby kids playing on crater scarred wasteland and bombed out buildings.

Including my mother, who was an extra in The Blue Lamp. She was supposed to have the only line ("ere, look what Queenie's found!"), but because she turned out to be a) too quiet and b) too posh, they gave it to one of her classmates instead.

I watched The Uncle on Talking Pictures TV the other day and it reminded me of something I associate with old British movies which is a particular way that adults talk to children, this mixture of kindly, amused and ironic. I feel like you don't see adults talk to kids this way often in modern movies or tv (or possibly real life? idk, I don't encounter children very often these days) - there seem to be fewer conversations between adults and children in movies generally (maybe there are fewer child actors these days, or at least more restrictions involved in using them?), but when they do appear the adults are more likely to be either trying to address the kid 'on their level', or in a polite but disinterested way, either way it lacks this slightly elliptical, mocking quality. I feel like I remember from my own childhood that adults would talk to you in this way that you see in old movies, this sense that they were all in on some private joke that seemed obscure to you?

Now picturing various scenes in Great Expectations.

(xp) Good one

“run along now”

🖼

I feel like you don't get guys with faces like this anymore

a chance encounter with a stranger in the compartment of a corridor coach train

housekeeper shaking her head and tut-tutting: "If I may be so bold, sire.. nothing good can come of this, mind you... nothing good at all"

In a similar style: Angry, slightly crazy landlady reprimanding the lead character for coming in after midnight

People saying "Poor devil..."

lovingly depicted nuances of class stratification

"Very good, sir!"

cat or dog called "nigger"

Apart from the abrupt cut to the credits - two pages, then the film finishes - the other thing I associate with old British films is really loud footsteps. Viz the opening bit here, technically from a TV show, but it was shot on film by a film studio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqNaRedoKtI

I don't know if it's because the sound was recorded live, and everybody in those days had ammo boots or leather-soled parade ground shoes, or if the footsteps were foleyed in later - by people with ammo boots or leather-soled parade ground shoes. This was back when shoes were made of leather, with leather soles, and when they wore out you took them to a the cobbler, and probably your mother wasn't allowed into the cobbler's shop because he sold condoms or something.

Also, fades between scenes instead of cuts.

The Sweeney is not what is meant by old British movies.

I’m wearing real shoes a lot more these days and one of my favourite things about them is how it makes me sound like I’m in an old movie when I’m going down the street. If you walk with a little bit of purpose you can kind of accentuate the effect.

I have a pair of parade-ground shoes as well, and every time I wear them I either imagine that I'm Dixon of Dock Green walking around at night with a lamp, or I have a mental vision of myself as Inspector Blakey from On the Buses, with a little Hitler moustache and an ill-fitting suit. In the event of a nuclear war Blakey would have been first in line for a rifle, because he was the kind of petty tyrant who was just waiting for his moment.

In the grim future of war-ravaged 1980s Britain, society would divide into two groups. Those who were on the buses, and those who starved. Dot dot dot insert something about old British films here.

Durum wheat is not from Durham. I did know this, but it took me a while to realise

oops, wrong thread soz

Durum wheat is not from Durham. I did know this, but it took me a while to realise

Crack up every time Will Hay launches into this routine.

Or the Pink Panther...

Cockney ne'er-do-well wearing a camp and smoking a cigarette as he leans on a lamppost

Between 1992 and like 2008 Jim Broadbent was in every damn movie. Like, if Jim Broadbent isn't in it it isn't getting made.

Enchanted April through Moulin Rouge at least.