Some thoughts on old-fashioned movie-making

I am getting very interested in the technical aspects of movie-making these days - gone is the time I would just watch a movie for the heck of it. Now I choose movies only after a rigorous process of elimination and then see them with a critical eye. I like watching the old Hollywood classics (even the black-and-white ones, which I used to studiously ignore at one time!). The oldest full-length movie I have seen to date is Todd Browning's influential Dracula (1931), which has Bela Lugosi in the title role.
Old movies have a charm of their own - with little or no special effects and CGI creations, the emphasis is heavily on dramatic performances and dialogue. The black-and-white film noir movies of the 1940s - like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), both starring the gruff Humphrey Bogart as the private eyes Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, respectively - were hugely enjoyable for me. Of course, both films were based on the two most famous novels in the hard-boiled detective genre and so the basics were strong.
Then, of course, when it comes to technical aspects, there is no better education than watching Alfred Hitchcock's films. Some of them are over-rated, no doubt, but still even the worst of Hitchcock's creations had much to commend them. I love the films from his golden period (the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s) during which time he helmed classic after classic (Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds) and there are plenty of technical aspects to note from these magnificent movies. Even in a weak late-career Hitchcock effort like Frenzy (1972), there is a marvellous continuous tracking shot of the camera moving from an upstairs bedroom (where a murder is about to be committed) to the street downstairs.
Tracking shots, when they come off, are wonderful to watch - the five-minute visual stunner on the beaches of Dunkirk in the recent Atonement has come in for an inordinate amount of critical praise but the most famous example of such an uncut shot in a mainstream movie was, perhaps, the opening scene in the Orson Welles noir gem, Touch of Evil (1958). But, then, the great Welles was a master at technical wizardy - he tried almost every innovation possible in his Citizen Kane (1941).
Hitchcock used to shoot entire movies in his head. He was a classic storyboard director - every shot was carefully storyboarded in advance and then the actual shoot was a mere formality for him. He must have made use of all his technical prowess in that wonderful "runaway car on a downhill slope" sequence in his final feature, Family Plot (1976). One wonders what Welles and Hitchcock would have done with the special effects now easily available to even obscure directors!
Nowadays we associate action movies with constant movements, loud noises and explosions - but check out the great thrillers from the early 1970s like Dirty Harry and The Parallax View. These films made extensive use of lengthy silences and long-distance shots to great effect. One needs to watch them a few times to appreciate the actual impact.