“Appears on the IMDB top 250” is not the answer

[ewx]

How old does a film have to be before you can definitely say it's a classic?

Comments

[fluffle.livejournal.com]

is 'classicness' linked to age of a film, or more with the number of people of any given generation that went to see it? (I don't know the answer to that!)

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

In my mind it's bound up with rewatchability. Critical acclaim at a temporal distance is nice but not necessary.

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

To me it's how many later films use it as an influence. Not sure how'd you quantify that though.

[mhoulden.livejournal.com]

I'd say the age is less important than things like how good it is, how well the plot hangs together and how good the acting is. The oldest films on IMDB are from 1888 and feature bits of Leeds (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0392728/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343112/, or http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L7saH58usq4 and http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F1i40rnpOsA on Youtube). They're obviously historically significant but they probably wouldn't feature in someone's top 10 list of classic films. Of course there's the question of what "classic" means as well.....

[gerald_duck]

I think it would be hard to declare a film definitively a classic until a fresh generation has appreciated it outside the original context. So twenty-five years, perhaps?