A Question for the Oldies (45+!) - Movie Title (not a game)

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4&nomore

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I have just been reminded of a film I have seen a couple of times. Quite an old film - may even have been black and white, although I suspect it was made in the 50s/early 60s so many have been in colour.

It is a film about a little deaf girl and how she is taught to speak. She may even have been blind as well, but I don't think so. I'm not sure. She is eventually taught to talk by feeling the vibrations of a balloon as someone talks onto it

Can anyone think what it was called?

There is also another film which I hardly remember at all because I was very small, almost certainly early-mid 60s, which involved a woman (lovely, happy family, etc.) who got reallhy sick (lukaemia, cancer or TB I think) and who was under strict instructions not to overexert herself but who couldn't resist getting up to fiddle with the Christmas tree but who fell over an died as she was fiddling.

Can anyone think what that's called? I'd be very grateful please as I am trying to collect movies that had an impact on me when I was a child, but the problem is that I often don't remember the title! :rolleyes:
 
Mandy was a film about a little deaf girl. It was made in 1952 and starred Jack Hawkins, it was also in B & W. Don't remember the scene you mention though.

Sorry, don't recall the other film :)

EDIT: Just found out that the balloon scene was in Mandy :D

SounRAB like it could be the right one!
 
The story of Helen Keller was remade with Melissa Gilbert (of little house/prairie fame) in the title role.

There have also been some other remakes ,most recently in 2000
 
That's the one, yes thanks. As soon as I saw the word "Mandy" I remembered. Good film, I thought. :)

Made before I was born though, so it would seem.

Thanks everyone else too.... Now what about the one with the ballet dancers? :D I think it may have been the support feature to Lady and the Tramp, it was when there was almost always a support feature on instead of lots and lots of advertisements! I thought it was quite sad, although I was quite small I seem to remember. Even as a child, though, I got emotional when Lady and the Tramp were having spaghetti outside the back of the restaurant and falling in love :o
 
There's a film about a young girl who has the illness and wants to be a ballet dancer (you mentioned ballet dancers in your more recent post) called Six Weeks. There's also a photo of a Xmas tree on the front of the video/DVD. It starred Mary Tyler Moore.

Only trouble is it was made in 1982, which puts it way out of the time you say that you saw it :confused:

Hard to trace a film without knowing the actors, maybe someone could still recall it though :)
 
Yeah, I know, it's a long shot. Thanks for the suggestion, but it's probably not that one. I think I may have confused the issue by mentioning the ballet dancer film, when I had started off talking about an entirely different film in the OP - the one where a woman collapses and dies whilst fiddling with the Christmas tree. I was slightly under the influence of lilquid yesterday, having had a rather good day :)

Anyway, that means there are two other films I'm looking for besides "Mandy" (actually there are a lot more than that, but I will restrict myself to the soppy genre in this thread ;) )

The first is the one I mention in the OP, the one which involved a woman (lovely, happy family, etc.) who got reallhy sick (lukaemia, cancer or TB I think) and who was under strict instructions not to overexert herself but who couldn't resist getting up to fiddle with the Christmas tree but who fell over an died as she was fiddling.

Then there's another film which I remember seeing when I was very small. I didn't actually describe it, did I? I was under the mistaken and slightly inebriated impression that's the one I had mentioned in the OP, but seeing as I've brought the subject up - herer goes...

This other film was about a dancer. She, I think, was blonde. She badly wanted the lead role in a ballet she'd been rehearsing for. Another girl (brunette) got the role for reasons I can't remember (there was either something sad or underhand going on, or blondie was in love with the lead male or something - it was very sad for the blonde one anyway, whatever it was). The scene I remember most was when the blonde one was watching the brunette one dancing the part on stage in a gorgeous red tutu and imagining herself dancing the part (this is why the hair colour is important, because that's the only way you could see that she was imagining herself in the part because the dancer changed from brunette to blonde - or it might have been the other way around). I don't remember what happened after that - It must have been in the early-mid 60s! I'm not sure that it had a happy ending though. I don't require films to have happy endings.

I know how hard it is to place films like that, but you'd be surprised how much success I've actually had in getting hold of films whose names I didn't know ("Night of the Demon", "Johnny Got His Gun") by making just such posts on various forums, even eBay! However, this is a specialist forum, so I thought I might as well try out the experts ;)

Stand by for my thread on obscure old spooky films... :D
 
Loved the film Mandy remember watching it when I was small and loving the end when the kiRAB in the street ask to to play and ask her name and she says Mandy..gets me every time!
 
What about Black Tights? :o :D Actually a film about ballet starring Moirer Shearer, but not as famous as her other one The Red Shoes. Black Tights came out in 1960.

One of the spookiest old films I ever saw was The Innocents starring Deborah Kerr. Really scary film that one :eek:
 
One of the spookiest old films I ever saw was The Innocents starring Deborah Kerr. Really scary film that one :eek:[/QUOTE]

I remember that one! Wasn't she a nanny or something, looking after two children? Filmed in black and white with some shots taken in a huge garden with lots of statues?

The film that really scared me was another very old black and white one called 'Dead of Night'. It was made up of people sitting in a room telling ghost stories and included one about a ventriloquist's dummy that came to life :eek:
 
Dead of Night - brilliant. I had nightmares about ventriloquist's dummies for ages after I saw that when I was a kid. Saw it again fairly recently and it's still scary.
I just started a thread on scary films - didn't realise there was one going already.
 
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