An additional thought about the relative success of older films (make that 2 thoughts): 1. We remember the best stuff, not the vast majority of duds, including those that were critical or box-office successes at the time. That point needs a history of its own. 2. WIT in screenwriting seemed to die in the 1950s. There were still lots of good scripts, but the kind of fast-paced urban dialogue and vernacular wisecracking that marked many memorable films of the 1930s and 1940s seemed to dry up. I assume that there are a number of reasons, but one has to be the aging or passing of a particular generation of writers who had come from (or at least been processed by) New York. Charles Brackett, Ben Hecht, Dorothy Parker are just a few names that come to mind. Many had their origins in reporting. Some, like Parker, had honed their wits (often as a kind of competition) with verbal sparring with others. By the fifties, that all changed. (And I'd gladly take any 3 Brackett-written Billy Wilder films over any number of Diamond-written Wilder films--and yes, that includes SOME LIKE IT HOT). --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN