Visually, your favourite films

Rear Window
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho
The Birds
The 39 Steps

Alien
Blade Runner
The Duelist

Thief
Heat

King Kong (1933)
Island of Dr. Moreau

Horror of Dracula
Curse of Frankenstein
(I love how Jack Asher used light and gels in these films--they reflect the fantasy world we live in with some interesting unnatural light choices)

As mentioned above many of Welles black and white movies.

 

Paris, Texas was one of my picks. Wings of Desire is way up on my too-see list.

 

The Searchers
The Night of the Hunter
The Passenger
Red Desert
Blue Velvet
Fanny & Alexander
The Double Life of Veronique
Blade Runner

 

Oops. I was gonna comment that you didn't include Kubrick but you did earlier. My bad.

 

Mad Max - Fury Road looked really nice when I watched it today.

 

Yeah, I keep adding as they come to mind. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is another I just thought of.

 

I can't argue with any of these, but you don't rate "The Third Man" as highly? It's my favorite B&W by a long way.

Other B&W Faves:
To Kill A Mockingbird
Anatomy Of A Murder
The aforementioned In Cold Blood
Odd Man Out

 

Another vote for Barry Lyndon.
Powwaqqatsi is a feast.

 

2001 - although the first two models of satellites/bombs look like crap.
Wiz of Oz -- what can you say
Barry Lyndon -- more and more my fav Kubrick film (I must be getting old)
Gravity -- pretty amazing trickery
Mad Max Fury Road
Raging Bull
The Revenant
Fantastic Voyage
The Ten Commandments
Gladiator

They're all good!

Oh, hell, DUNE

 

Really? I never thought that the bombs in orbit looked like crap. They are consistent with the other design elements in the film.

Dune has an interesting and unique design I almost want to call it future baroque.

 

I always thought THE MAJESTIC looked visually superb.

 

I think they're the only two ships that aren't shown in rotation or in Star Warsian passing-by perspective. Their lack of movement always makes them look really flat to my eye. It bugs the hell out of me compared to the rest of the film.

 

They may have been photographed and then put on animation multiplain stand which might explain the Lack of movement.

 

Lawrence of Arabia, Barry Lyndon, Grand Prix, Olympiad, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind

 

Lawrence of Arabia
The Red Shoes

 

I like Dr Zhivago. I think the sets and costumes look good (especially for being filmed in sunny Spain). The one thing I didn't like (visually) was the 1960s hairstyles on females for a story set in 1910s Russian.

 

I said it a while back. The 70mm is a pristine transfer on Blu-ray. -Looks superb.

 

I mentioned Manhattan a while back, but I think your right in that you could put just about any Allen B&W film on the list. I think this is due in part to the great work of Allen's cinematographer Gordon Willis (of Godfather fame). Allen was incredibly fortunate to have this guy at his side for so many films.

 

Dersu Uzala

 

I never thought about that aspect. I was ten at the time, which was 1965. My father took me to see it. I couldn't possibly understand at that age, why I was going with my father to see a film about a doctor. I can only remember my father taking me to see four films in my life.

As it turned out, this was one of those four films. I really did not belong to be included in the four, because he dropped me off when we got to the theater and told me had already seen it, put some money in my hand and drove away. I'm including it only, because, if he had not brought me, I wouldn't have seen it, ever I guess.

It was an afternoon showing, not many people in the theater. I was having a ten year old WTF moment. The lights go down, the movie was starting. No, it was not. There was music playing for a while, strange music. After a while, the movie eventually started. The first scene was the funeral, oh joy, this is fun, NOT!

This was one LONG movie. I see, looking it up on IMDB, that it was over three hours long, I didn't know how long it was, at the time I just remembered it being long. I sat through the whole thing, doing my best to understand it.

As a kid, I watched old B&W movies on TV. Well, there were all B&W, all we had was a B&W TV. But, this was my first adult movie. I'm sure that I missed out on some of the finer points, which were way over my head.

I don't think I was ever aware of the photographic aspect of a film before, the screen was so wide, it had visual impact. I wasn't thinking about it, but I was taking it all in. My most vivid memory was the sleigh ride and seeing this house covered in ice. Being born in Miami and now living in Fort Lauderdale, I didn't see a lot of houses covered in ice and snow.

Afterwards, the music kept going through my head. I saved my piggy bank coins, literally, and it was the first record album I ever purchased (a gatefold cover, with a photo illustrated booklet inside). I played it on one of suitcase stereo's, with a pull down TT in the center. It was out first stereo. The older, open top model had died a couple of years prior. It was in the master bedroom, on a piece of furniture that you would put a suitcase on.

I would sit on the floor right in the center and listen to the overture in stereo. It began with timpani drums going back and forth from side to side, until the chorus began singing. I would listen to it over and over again.

This was my awakening, of music in the movies, my second audiophile moment, as it were (the first being empowered, playing the Chipmunk Christmas Song, years earlier). It was definitely my awakening to the visual aspects of movies, perhaps photography in general.

Two years later, in 7th grade band, there were these two large copper drums, the band instructor, started playing them and I know they were the same drums that Maurice Jarre used, in the movie.

A half of a century later, I am here.

 

Zhivago was one of my first theater experiences as a child as well. I didn't understand why he'd fall for the blonde when he had an attractive wife already. Yes, the sleigh ride to the snow covered house was VERY memorable. The Alec Guinness character stuck for some reason as well.

 

Agree with the votes for Barry Lyndon, Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia.

And one that hasn't been mentioned yet - Dances With Wolves.

 

Mad Max: Fury Road.
Say what you will about the movie, but it is visually stunning from beginning to end.

 

Days of Heaven

 

I know it doesn't fit with most of what's been posted, but I really enjoy the cheap, creepy, badly lit "Night of the Living Dead" - it adds a lot to the experience.