Attached Link: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/robertharris/index.html

There's some interesting stuff at the link about about movies, and why they look as they do. The 1950s are when panchromatic emulsions were the standard, though there are other differences. (My brother tells me that some factories in Eastern Europe and the FSU still turn out that style of emulsion.) There are things like the grain size and the thickness of the emulsion layer which affect the look of the final image. There's also aspects of the film processing which can do a chemical edge enhancement. The other thing to remember is that the cinematographers went to a lot of trouble over the lighting and such things as depth of field. There's more than film that gives those movies the visual feel that they have.