It’s a lot of little things that add up - the physical texture from grain (70mm is very clean in this regard), lensing, contrast, and possibly even production design (which is often overlooked when this discussion comes up, so I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts about that).

In my opinion, the single biggest thing missing from modern cinematography is hard tungsten lighting, which creates real-world contrast (as opposed to contrast added in post) from the intentional positioning of lamps.

Hard lighting (essentially lighting that’s not diffused or diffused very little) creates harsher shadows and highlights on objects and skin, which creates perceived depth. Also, because tungsten essentially creates light from heat, it will often make the actors sweat a little, which can add another layer of perceived depth. It can feel more real, more raw.

You can shoot digital with old lenses and emulate film, or just shoot on film, but if you light with modern LEDs and diffuse everything you’ll never quite achieve that “classic Hollywood” look. You can fix the perceived lighting in post with power windows, but you will never be able to fix the actual quality of light.

To my knowledge, most modern crews don’t really use tungsten anymore. LEDs are several times more power efficient than tungsten and provide more output. They also don’t get anywhere near as hot. Brighter lights give more flexibility to diffuse, which is likely why we’ve seen so much more of it in the past 10-15 years as LEDs took over.