People in these films seem to talk a lot faster than modern movies.
I'm trying to think of films from the 60s that had particularly fast speech and drawing a blank. Could you give some examples?
I work in the film/special effect industry so I may be able to share a little insight here.
Back in the day movies were actually shot at a frame rate that is lower than 24fps (this became the standard later on). So once they took these reels which were often shot at 18fps and played it on a projector that ran 24fps, everything would seem sped up. Once these reels were converted for television audiences they often were not recorded at a slower fps, which showed the larger tv audience a slightly sped up movie.
But we're talking about the 20's, 30's and early 40's. 50 years ago was 1966 and generally speaking nothing was sped up like that anymore. But I would love to see an example of a movie you saw that had the faster speaking actors.
Hi OP, is this what you're referring to?