In Old Amsterdam (1949) User Reviews

family friendly school trip for Traveltalks

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 27 January 2024]

Traveltalks is flying from New York City (New Amsterdam) to the original Amsterdam. It took less than 18 hours. Much of the city is reclaimed from the sea and consists of islands. It's a vibrant city of canals and they go look at some paintings.

I don't know the local society around this time. Certainly, they're not going to the red light district and I don't expect that for Traveltalks. It becomes a sort of school trip thru the city like visiting museums. They're looking at paintings and plates. It's not the most exciting episode even for this series. It is strictly family friendly and bland.

This title is extremely difficult to review because . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 19 March 2020]

. . . it is one of thousands (or perhaps millions) of films for which the releasing studio (or its director, or gaffer, or one of the cast members, or the grip's third cousin, or the boom girl's great-grand daughter) have paid an "honorarium" (or bribe) to the accrediting review clearing-house organization to totally redact, suppress, bury, censor, ban and otherwise violate America's First Amendment and hallowed foundation block (Freedom of Speech or Free Speech) so that the most concise, pithy, astute, no-holds-barred and illuminating comments never see the light of day. IN OLD AMSTERDAM is one of the countless film offerings protected by this mob-like Reputation.com form of organized crime. For instance, one of my colleagues submitted a spot-on analysis of IN OLD AMSTERDAM that probably would be a sure bet to win this year's Pulitzer Prize for Film Criticism were is not "killed," destroyed, shredded and embargoed by the malingering mercenary miscreants engaging in these Crimes against Humanity. Now you will never know exactly how Ms. Frank factors in to IN OLD AMSTERDAM, nor will you be able to learn anything about its connection to that long movie starring Clark, Vivien, Leslie and Olivia. You can forget about a frank assessment of the performance rendered by the IN OLD AMSTERDAM narrator, nor will you ever know the unconscionable glaring omission of which this alleged "travel talk" is guilty. It's enough to make a grown tulip cry!

Polders, Rembrandt And Delftware

[boblipton · 5/10 · 14 March 2020]

James A. Fitzpatrick send the Technicolor cameras winging to Amsterdam, to take pictures under cinematographer Keith Covey. The portrait of the city on view is pretty standard for the long-running series of travelogues, offering the sort of subjects that a tourist might wish to see, now that the ravages of the Second World War were being cleared away.

Fitzpatrick's narration had calmed down a lot over the years. If his Highlights of History lecture and 30-second lecture on Rembrandt is neither deep nor novel, at least he didn't obviously write it with an open thesaurus before him. Neither does he shout as if his audience is deaf.

The standard-looking images looked a bit off when I looked at this short subject on TCM this morning, with the colors looking unnatural and slightly blotchy.

TravelTalks

[Michael_Elliott · 19 May 2012]

In Old Amsterdam (1949)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This TravelTalks series takes us to Amsterdam as James A. FitzPatrick talks about some of the town's history. We start off seeing the Schiphol Airport where the narrator brags about his 3,500 mile track only took eighteen hours to complete. From here we learn about The Flying Dutchmen and then we see the Cental Rainway and hear about its uses. Up next we learn about how the town was pretty much land lifted from the sea and this explains the various canals that are an important part of the location. We also see a funny bridge toll and then it's onto Rembrandt Park where we hear a quick bio of the famed painter. Overall this is a pretty good entry in the series as we get a lot of good stories and the visuals are quite nice as well. Once again the Technicolor really helps bring the city to life and it was especially put to good use during the scenes on the water. One wishes that we got more images like these but there's still some good stuff here.