"Older" films certainly use a different film-making vocabulary, which I can see might take a little adjustment.
One of the things I find interesting, is that even though today's movies tend to be hyper-edited, they're still a lot longer than old films (average movie length these days is just over 2 hours, only "epics" used to go over 90 minutes back in the day.)
Older films tend to concentrate on just telling the story as economically as possible. Especially in films from the 30's & 40's, actors will speak really quickly in single takes, and you'll get lots of quick dissolves & wipes between scenes, with very little "filler."
At the risk of making it sound like "homework", reading up on older films before you watch them can help you appreciate them a lot more. If you get around to "Gone With The Wind" (too long, but worth it IMO), awareness of the racist subtext puts a whole new dimension on the story, e.g. when they say "We're going to clear out those wooRAB", they're actually Ku Klux Klan members looking for runaway slaves...