Entertainment
10 Greatest Fast-Paced Classic Movies
Trying to find fast-paced movies will often turn up movies that are a little more recent, in the overall scheme of things. Not every film, but the average film nowadays is going to be a little snappier and faster overall than, say, the average movie 60 years ago. You can have a preference, and it’s not like one approach is better than the other… more just the difference is there, and that’s that. It has been acknowledged.
Now, with older movies, there are some that are fast-paced. The ones below are all at least 60 years old, at the time of writing, and stand out nowadays for just how well-paced they are. The newest film here came out in 1966, the oldest is from 1931, they’re from various genres, and yet they’re all united by how well they hold up in terms of pacing, and how surprisingly easy they are to watch, even if you’re more used to how modern-day films move.
10
‘Rope’ (1948)
There’s a gimmick at the center of Rope, but it’s a great gimmick, and also one that’s more than sound enough to sustain the film for the entirety of its runtime. Said runtime certainly isn’t long, but even then, Rope passes by quicker than you’d expect, as its 81 minutes pass by almost in real-time, with the premise involving two young men who try to get away with what they believe is the perfect murder.
The murder happens right at the start, then they hide the body, and then they host a party for people who know their murder victim, challenging themselves as to whether they can keep that dead body hidden the whole time. It was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and he finds every opportunity he can to make the whole thing exceptionally suspenseful, with the long takes that make up Rope (it’s pretty much nothing but long takes, with less than a dozen cuts in the whole film) also ensuring it stays engaging and highly thrilling throughout.
9
‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959)
It’s tempting to get hyperbolic whenever it comes to talking about Some Like It Hot, with it being probably the best Marilyn Monroe movie, and also potentially being the funniest film Billy Wilder ever directed. When it comes to whether it’s Wilder’s best movie, that’s a little harder to determine, since he was also very capable of putting out great dramas, and then you’ve also got oddities like Sunset Boulevard, which successfully rides the line between comedy and drama.
With Some Like It Hot, though, the focus is pretty much entirely on delivering laughs, with the whole thing being remarkably farcical and just non-stop with all the jokes it’s willing to throw at you. In lesser – but still fairly capable – hands, Some Like It Hot would merely feel like a comedy that was good for its time, but today, it can very much still be viewed/enjoyed as a flat-out great comedy.
8
‘Seven Samurai’ (1954)
Hyperbole is also hard to avoid when talking about Seven Samurai, which was one of the first truly great action movies done on an epic scale, and still remains one of the best to this day. It’s got a very straightforward story about assembling a team to take on a looming threat, preparing for an eventual battle, and then showcasing that battle as it plays out across much of the final act.
The whole thing is neatly divided into three compelling acts, with all the action holding up, and all the dramatic beats still being, you know, successfully dramatic and all. It’s all effortlessly done, and though Seven Samurai is long, it flies by without ever feeling boring, being worth highlighting pacing-wise because of just how long it keeps things moving for.
7
‘Casablanca’ (1942)
Casablanca has one of the very best screenplays ever written, with the quality of that writing ensuring everything moves at a great clip, with the dialogue being immense and the number of memorable characters proving surprisingly high. The two main players, though, are ex-lovers who get reunited quite suddenly during World War II, but their lives have both changed quite a lot, and one of them has a challenging moral decision to make about his future.
And among all that romantic melodrama, Casablanca is also quite exciting as a World War II movie made while said war was being fought, and having a decent amount of genuinely good (and not distracting) humor, too. That it all builds to one of the best endings in movie history is, strangely enough, icing on the cake, because Casablanca could’ve completely tripped over itself in its final 10 minutes, and it would still be worth watching for the breathless and timelessly engaging 90-ish minutes that came before.
6
‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962)
Like Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia is an exceptionally long movie, but the hours do indeed pass by faster than you might expect. It’s a monumental film about T.E. Lawrence and what he did during the First World War, which ends up being a lot, even if most of the events of the movie only take place over about a year or so, which isn’t exactly long by the standards of the epic genre.
You don’t need to convey a person’s entire life, though, to make a character study on such a scale work. Lawrence of Arabia does paint a compelling portrait of its central character, and then also succeeds at providing a ton of spectacle to go alongside it. If you only ever watch a single epic movie that was made more than 60 years ago… well, you could make it Lawrence of Arabia. Or Seven Samurai. Hopefully, you can watch two or more, because missing out on one would be a shame.
5
‘M’ (1931)
One of the earliest “hunt for a serial killer” movies, much in the same way the previously-mentioned Seven Samurai helped codify/define action movies, M is easy to get wrapped up in while also appreciating how influential it ultimately was for the genre it belongs to. The serial killer here is one who’s targeting children, and he’s considered dangerous enough that basically everyone (people from differing sides of the law, in other words) teams up to try and find him.
There’s a bit more to M beyond that, as where it eventually ends up is undeniably interesting and thought-provoking. What it’s going for in terms of intensity and heaviness does indeed still feel intense and heavy, and the whole thing’s paced in a way which feels admirably relentless, all to an extent you don’t often see in movies that are nearing 100 years old.
4
‘Bringing Up Baby’ (1938)
Bringing Up Baby is one of those movies that took a while to get the appreciation it deserved, and so maybe it was just too fast-paced and wild for its time. They made a movie that was too funny, or at least too relentlessly funny, even by screwball standards. And this really is the ultimate screwball comedy, being about as anarchic as they come, perhaps even more so than Some Like It Hot, which was also about two decades older.
The premise of Bringing Up Baby involves two mismatched people crossing paths and then getting into a series of misadventures together, plenty of them involving the titular Baby, who is a leopard. If you’re of the opinion that older movies can’t be as funny as newer ones, then Bringing Up Baby is the kind of older film that may well help you see the light, so to speak.
3
‘North by Northwest’ (1959)
Just over a decade on from Rope, Alfred Hitchcock made another film that feels particularly well-paced, all these years later: North by Northwest. Now, including those and no other movies by Hitchcock shouldn’t suggest that there weren’t any other movies of his that have solid pacing, even by today’s standards… it’s more just that these two are particularly snappy (and, in any event, “best pacing” is a different thing from “best movie”).
It’s perhaps Hitchcock’s ultimate “wrong man on the run” movie, and it escalates so well throughout.
North by Northwest is one of the first great spy movies, or at least one of the earliest that feels, more or less, in line with what you’d expect to see in more modern-day spy/espionage movies. It’s also perhaps Hitchcock’s ultimate “wrong man on the run” movie, and it escalates so well throughout, with numerous great set pieces, just the right amount of humor/levity, and a perfectly utilized cast, too.
2
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966)
Without a doubt, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the easiest-to-like Westerns ever made. You could see it belonged to such a genre, and then also see its runtime as three hours, and feel subsequently hesitant to actually watch the thing, but it’s very much worth devoting all that time to, in any event, because it’s such an effortless viewing experience.
The premise here involves three men racing each other across the desert, all while the American Civil War is going on, each of them in pursuit of a small fortune in gold that’s purportedly buried somewhere. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a perfect entry point into the Western genre, for anyone largely unfamiliar with that kind of film, and it’s honestly barely aged a day in the 60 years since it first came out.
1
’12 Angry Men’ (1957)
If you try to describe 12 Angry Men to someone, it might not sound like much, but it’s all in the execution here, where what’s seemingly simple becomes something closer to sublime. That’s a bit of a floaty and/or pretentious way to put it, but at its core, 12 Angry Men is about a bunch of guys sitting in a room and talking. They’re the members of a jury, and the trial they’ve sat through is an undoubtedly high-stakes one, but still, it’s probably not enough to make it sound riveting.
Things are helped by just how good the dialogue is, how strong all the performances are, and how well the whole thing is helmed by Sidney Lumet, who was, quite surprisingly, making his directorial debut here. 12 Angry Men is up there among the most enthralling drama films of all time, and one of those shining examples of how, if you know what you’re doing, you can make a perfect movie out of the most straightforward of premises.
12 Angry Men
- Release Date
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April 10, 1957
- Runtime
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97 minutes
- Director
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Sidney Lumet
- Writers
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Reginald Rose
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