"I say ........" How things change......

Dominic

The 'creepy' Gene Wilder is exactly the reason that he was so excellent in the portrayal ......in Dahl's personification he was potentially even more ,bizarre and 'creepy ' .....he was a 'damaged' character destined to find affinity with Charlie
Let's face it ....you have to be a bit weird to want to share your home with a dozen singing green  dwarfs 

Philly_Q

Dominic said:

The 'creepy' Gene Wilder is exactly the reason that he was so excellent in the portrayal ......in Dahl's personification he was potentially even more ,bizarre and 'creepy ' .....he was a 'damaged' character destined to find affinity with Charlie
Let's face it ....you have to be a bit weird to want to share your home with a dozen singing green  dwarfs 

In the early editions of the book they were African pygmies.

Dominic

EricTheWeary said:

Dominic said:

I'm not a fan of any remakes .........rather like re-painting the Cistine Chapel because Michelangelo is a bit dated.
They are best left as a Momento Mori of their time.
I was outraged by the abomination of Depp's Wonka .........Gene Wilder was unsurpassable in that role.
Gads, they are remaking it again now with the recently trending Timothy Chalamet as Willy Wonka .

You have to leave these as a relic......can you imagine a remake of Brief Encounter ( ' I do so terribly love you ') ....they would be shagging on the train whilst being filmed on an iphone and uploaded to Tik Tok by Karen from Crydon.

Hollywood/ film remakes do seem to suggest a struggle for new ideas. Although I guess it's also if this made money 30 years ago we can make money on it now and there is also an audience that simply sees old films as old and would like them more with colour and modern music and current actors and modern CGI. 
People like Joe Bonamassa because they can go see him live and buy his new album. You can't do that with dead rock stars even if he is mostly just reinventing the wheel. People want their generation's take on something. 

It's a literary fact that most stories were already told long ago......many a Lit lecturer would say to go back and read the bible because most stories are already in there........there are thousands of re-inventions , sub plots ,sideline characters but they are all reiterations of the same human foibles against a different panorama in time or location .
 So effectively,you are correct ,we have been putting the current " generations take "on the same story for many,many generations.

Dominic

Philly_Q said:

Dominic said:

The 'creepy' Gene Wilder is exactly the reason that he was so excellent in the portrayal ......in Dahl's personification he was potentially even more ,bizarre and 'creepy ' .....he was a 'damaged' character destined to find affinity with Charlie
Let's face it ....you have to be a bit weird to want to share your home with a dozen singing green  dwarfs 

In the early editions of the book they were African pygmies.

maybe he realised that they would have a hard job lifting Augustus Gloop out of the tube ......dwarves tend to be very strong !

guitartango

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Depp really lowered himself for those last few Burton movies imo - I thought Sweeney Todd was dreadful, and the half of the Wonka movie I saw had me wanting to murder my family with how utterly cringe and devoid of artistry it was.

When I watch a Carry On movie, they don't seem exploitative to me and they don't seem to denigrate the human soul as much as people profess they do. They remind me of my grandad, and my dad, and the youthful chortles and frollicks from everyone I ever watched them with as a child. They're a pretty key part of my psyche now, and make me who I am as a person. To reject those movies is to reject my personhood, and my individuality, and my very being.

I feel that way about a lot of older movies; Papillion, Ernest Goes To Camp, Harry & The Hendersons, Predator, Polanski's version of MacBeth. The list goes on.

And I will go to my grave loving those movies, and won't give a single solitary shit if anyone disagrees with me or looks down upon me because of it.

Chortle away lads and laddettes. Whilst you still can.

Totally agree, they are just fun films, nothing more , nothing less.

Sadie Tompkins:
Have you got a large one?

Vic Flange:
I've had no complaints so far.

Sadie Tompkins:
Seeing's believing...

boogieman

I always thought the biggest problem with the Carry On films was how Sid James and Bernard Breslaw managed to get off with all those dolly birds (sic) when they both looked they’d been smacked in the face with a shovel. 

TimmyO

"I am keeping dirty caravan and am looking for scrubber"

Best line ever. 

thecolourbox

Dominic said:

The 'creepy' Gene Wilder is exactly the reason that he was so excellent in the portrayal ......in Dahl's personification he was potentially even more ,bizarre and 'creepy ' .....he was a 'damaged' character destined to find affinity with Charlie
Let's face it ....you have to be a bit weird to want to share your home with a dozen singing green  dwarfs 

I thought Depp was closer to the Dahl Wonka than Wilder personally. I didn't mean that Wonka was too weird in the Wilder portrayal, just that my perception of his portrayal was more that he was a bit slimy and smug rather than damaged and kooky

WiresDreamDisasters

boogieman said:

I always thought the biggest problem with the Carry On films was how Sid James and Bernard Breslaw managed to get off with all those dolly birds (sic) when they both looked they’d been smacked in the face with a shovel. 

Same way I got married - charisma!

EricTheWeary

boogieman said:

I always thought the biggest problem with the Carry On films was how Sid James and Bernard Breslaw managed to get off with all those dolly birds (sic) when they both looked they’d been smacked in the face with a shovel. 

I think it was after Carry on Girls that there were a lot of complaints about Sid seeming like a dirty old man so they recast him after that. You can almost date a Carry On film by how lecherous he was allowed to be. 

Philly_Q

All those films are time capsules and for every element that may be considered offensive or creepy by today's standards there'll be another element that seems quite innocent and charming.  I hope people have the sense to realise they're "of their time" and appreciate them for what they are.

TTony

viz said:

 There was a culture then that things that we rightly see as abhorrent now were deemed acceptable, and that may have emboldened a lot of awful behaviour. 

I don't know.

Genuinely.

Were things back then really deemed acceptable, or did we just have a different understanding and acceptance of the role of humour?

Today we point and call out such things to show how more aware of such things we've become.

Back then, there were ridiculous caricatures that mocked that behaviour instead.      The CarryOn characters leching after Barbara Windsor were generally shown to be a little hard-of-thinking, she (and her colleagues) were generally shown to be both adept at using their advantages and more than capable of thinking more cleverly.  

TTony

EricTheWeary said:

Why a film with 1950s values was made in 2007 seems more of a mystery. 

Aren't remakes usually just an easy way to make money?  

Mattharrier

With regard to the Carry On films, as @TTony says, the men who were lusting after Babs Windsor weren't shown in a good light at all. Even the "hero" of each film was generally shown to be a muppet at best, or incompetent or cowardly, rather than as a positive character. The women were usually portrayed as much nicer, and usually more competent people.

That doesn't really excuse the nature of the jokes, but I'm not sure they really need to be excused. It would be inappropriate to do something like that today (although humour these days seems to simply dispense with the innuendo so you have people shouting "cocks! Fannies! Shagging! instead), but there was never anything particularly nasty about the films, as was the case with most of the comedy from the 50s and 60s (and the Carry On films, although they were made through most of the 70s, were always products of the previous couple of decades).

They wouldn't work now (Carry On Columbus didn't work back in 1992, because things had moved on a lot since 1978), and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch any of them, but I do have a certain fondness for them.

I do feel that "we" have got a little too scared of causing offense of any kind - while having little to no impact on racsim, sexism or bigotry of any kind - and it would be a shame for something like the Carry On films, Terry Thomas, Leslie Phillips et al to be cancelled along with so many other things.

scrumhalf

I'm not so sure things were deemed acceptable back then, I think it's just that there were so few outlets for the voicing of dissent that dissenters rarely got a hearing.

Because of the prevailing censorship of the time things were suggestive rather than explicit anf I think they were overly suggestive to, if you will excuse the phrase, ram things home. 

Oh, and has this thread seen the first use of  chortle" outside of kids' books or comics? 

guitartango

Mattharrier said:

With regard to the Carry On films, as @TTony says, the men who were lusting after Babs Windsor weren't shown in a good light at all. Even the "hero" of each film was generally shown to be a muppet at best, or incompetent or cowardly, rather than as a positive character. The women were usually portrayed as much nicer, and usually more competent people.

That doesn't really excuse the nature of the jokes, but I'm not sure they really need to be excused. It would be inappropriate to do something like that today (although humour these days seems to simply dispense with the innuendo so you have people shouting "cocks! Fannies! Shagging! instead), but there was never anything particularly nasty about the films, as was the case with most of the comedy from the 50s and 60s (and the Carry On films, although they were made through most of the 70s, were always products of the previous couple of decades).

They wouldn't work now (Carry On Columbus didn't work back in 1992, because things had moved on a lot since 1978), and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch any of them, but I do have a certain fondness for them.

I do feel that "we" have got a little too scared of causing offense of any kind - while having little to no impact on racsim, sexism or bigotry of any kind - and it would be a shame for something like the Carry On films, Terry Thomas, Leslie Phillips et al to be cancelled along with so many other things.

FFS get a grip

Mattharrier

guitartango said:

Mattharrier said:

With regard to the Carry On films, as @TTony says, the men who were lusting after Babs Windsor weren't shown in a good light at all. Even the "hero" of each film was generally shown to be a muppet at best, or incompetent or cowardly, rather than as a positive character. The women were usually portrayed as much nicer, and usually more competent people.

That doesn't really excuse the nature of the jokes, but I'm not sure they really need to be excused. It would be inappropriate to do something like that today (although humour these days seems to simply dispense with the innuendo so you have people shouting "cocks! Fannies! Shagging! instead), but there was never anything particularly nasty about the films, as was the case with most of the comedy from the 50s and 60s (and the Carry On films, although they were made through most of the 70s, were always products of the previous couple of decades).

They wouldn't work now (Carry On Columbus didn't work back in 1992, because things had moved on a lot since 1978), and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch any of them, but I do have a certain fondness for them.

I do feel that "we" have got a little too scared of causing offense of any kind - while having little to no impact on racsim, sexism or bigotry of any kind - and it would be a shame for something like the Carry On films, Terry Thomas, Leslie Phillips et al to be cancelled along with so many other things.

FFS get a grip

Oh yeah? Get a grip, eh, matron? Oo-er! :-D

monquixote

TTony said:

viz said:

 There was a culture then that things that we rightly see as abhorrent now were deemed acceptable, and that may have emboldened a lot of awful behaviour. 

I don't know.

Genuinely.

Were things back then really deemed acceptable, or did we just have a different understanding and acceptance of the role of humour?

Today we point and call out such things to show how more aware of such things we've become.

Back then, there were ridiculous caricatures that mocked that behaviour instead.      The CarryOn characters leching after Barbara Windsor were generally shown to be a little hard-of-thinking, she (and her colleagues) were generally shown to be both adept at using their advantages and more than capable of thinking more cleverly.  

While I broadly agree with you I think the one thing that is problematic is the girls in these films are always laughing along with the "cheeky" scamps making comments about their appearance whereas in real life women in those situations are very often smiling through gritted teeth because they fear that they might lose their job if they don't put up with the letchy boss, or things might "turn nasty" if they don't play along.

To give an example a women I know has given up running after being frightened by a group of builders who did the classic "AWRIGHT LOVE, WORRR!!!!" routine on her hanging out of a van window. I'm sure they all think it's a "Bit of fun" and pretty close to what you would see in a Carry on Film, but she didn't think so.

I also know of a woman who quit her job because of the boss who made constant inappropriate remarks (but only when no one else was around).

I think the message those old 70's films show is that the pretty nice girls like that sort of attention, and only the mean old matron spoil sports disapprove.

guitartango

Mattharrier said:

guitartango said:

Mattharrier said:

With regard to the Carry On films, as @TTony says, the men who were lusting after Babs Windsor weren't shown in a good light at all. Even the "hero" of each film was generally shown to be a muppet at best, or incompetent or cowardly, rather than as a positive character. The women were usually portrayed as much nicer, and usually more competent people.

That doesn't really excuse the nature of the jokes, but I'm not sure they really need to be excused. It would be inappropriate to do something like that today (although humour these days seems to simply dispense with the innuendo so you have people shouting "cocks! Fannies! Shagging! instead), but there was never anything particularly nasty about the films, as was the case with most of the comedy from the 50s and 60s (and the Carry On films, although they were made through most of the 70s, were always products of the previous couple of decades).

They wouldn't work now (Carry On Columbus didn't work back in 1992, because things had moved on a lot since 1978), and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch any of them, but I do have a certain fondness for them.

I do feel that "we" have got a little too scared of causing offense of any kind - while having little to no impact on racsim, sexism or bigotry of any kind - and it would be a shame for something like the Carry On films, Terry Thomas, Leslie Phillips et al to be cancelled along with so many other things.

FFS get a grip

Oh yeah? Get a grip, eh, matron? Oo-er! :-D

Thats more like it   Funny for the time and still makes me laugh now.

Tent up now, bunk up later

chillidoggy

There’s a channel on terrestrial TV called Great Movies. I’d be happy to sit spend watch the old B&W, square format films, especially if they’re war films. The Cruel Sea is a favourite of mine, Ice Cold in Alex is another.