Old movies  I’m talking about those made before the 1970s  come to us in packages these days. The producers of DVDs and the programmers of repertory theaters look for themes and contexts that will help to make sense of these films for the several generations of culture consumers who are likely to find them utterly strange. Or if not to make sense of them, put them in a framework where their assumptions and devices can be sold to younger moviegoers as hip or camp rather than laughably archaic. Hence the weeks or boxes of film noirs or screwball comedies, or of the careers of directors with distinctive, easily cataloged styles.

To put on a Cary Grant series  as the BAMcinématek is doing from Monday through Aug. 20 with 17 films, and a second batch to follow in 2010  presents some special challenges. Grant made more than 50 movies as a leading man, but the only thing that ties them together is that they starred Cary Grant, playing some version of his man-of-the-world persona, or of himself, which seemed to amount to the same thing.

He had his screwball period and his Hitchcock period, each of which produced several great, giddy entertainments (like “The Philadelphia Story” and “North by Northwest”). But he avoided entire genres that didn’t suit him, like noir or the western, and much of his output consists of the sort of mainstream light comedy or melodrama that seems most dated today.

Image Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's film, "Suspicion," playing in a series at BAMcinematek. Credit... Photofest/BAM

It’s brave of the Brooklyn Academy of Music to be showing the 1941 weeper “Penny Serenade,” a hit at the time and an important moment in Grant’s career. But when Grant and Irene Dunne smile as their adopted child says she wants to be an angel before next year’s Christmas pageant, the howls will be heard across Fort Greene.