I can’t find the term but when TV started showing movies in the 50s, the run times of many old movies were shortened through either speeding up the film and frame dropping. Speech was also compressed slightly in this process. It was done so the movies would better fit TV schedules and allowed TV stations to insert more commericals. Unfortunately many older movies these prints done in the 50s are the only surviving copies of these movies.
Most guys in old movies wore a suit and tie, you don’t see that(or hats) much in movies anymore. Times and styles change. That’s how I see it.
Today’s target audience is younger too. Snappy dialogue counts for very little with that crowd. I imagine back in the day, those movies were aimed more at adults with the idea that censorship made the movies ‘safe’ for younger people.
It’s a vestige of the stage play origins of film. All of Rimbo’s links show films played much like a stage play, with the dialogue stylized and coming right on top of itself. Stage acting often has the actors delivering lines in a rapid-fire way because it’s hard to see actors’ facial expressions on a stage, so it’s all conveyed in dialogue. Pauses are dead space on stage unless something physical is happening, so dialogue scenes move fast. The popularity of radio at the time also meant that audiences were far more accustomed to taking in a lot of sound information at once.
Naturalistic portrayals of speech and dialogue was something that didn’t arise to common usage until the '60s, and became the norm in the '70s. People didn’t talk faster or smarter then, the nature of entertainment presentation was just different in the medium.
Those movies were made back while coffee was still deregulated.
Actually, although film making is a lot more expensive these days, celluloid in those days was insanely pricey. Actors had to talk fast in order to maximise value. That’s why scenes with cars driving in olden films appear to be sped up - they’re not, the stunt drivers just drove really fast to save money.
Interestingly, when the Gamecube and it’s smaller capacity discs came on the scene, Nintendo experimented with 1.5x and 2x versions of films but ultimately decided not to go with them.
Start at 9:30 of this video for one possible explanation:
The steering wheel on my 1986 jeep would like to have a word with you.
Usually because they aren’t in the actual car, and thus they have no actual feel for the road, and are trying to match the movements on a rear projection screen.
Actually, without power steering, the wheels DID jerk a lot. When I was growing up and pretending to drive, though, I would mimic that movie stuff and just be going back and forth the whole time. But if you’ve ever driven a really old car, there IS a lot of movement.
Audiences were smarter back then.
Ah.
I’ve driven without power steering – well, technically the vehicle had it, but it failed randomly – and never experienced anything quite like that, but I guess it makes sense.
They were trying to make up for lost time from the silent era.