I think sometimes the B&W nature adds a certain ambiance. Could just be though that I think they feel better in B&W because that is the only reference I have.

I am not one of those people. There are so many classics that I would not understand her reaction either, but I was raised on b&w TV. I like silent films as well. Metropolis is one of my favorites.

What would Hitchcock's films look like in color? He studied shadows, lighting, etc., when shooting his films. Colorized Hitchcock films lose so much.

Anyone raised on colorful special-effects-driven films would find black-and-white classics boring. They've never learned that there's way more to a film than visuals. Like plot and character. One of my favorite films of all time is "All About Eve" (1950) -- awesome story-telling and acting.

I watch them

Absolutely watch B&W films! So many classics.

Also a ton of them are colorized - so your co-worker has zero excuse.

There aren't many that I would get excited about, but some I love because they're classics and that's a category all unto itself. My son (12-yo) refuses to watch Young Frankenstein because it's only in black & white - I can't convince him how much he's missing out. Adams Family, Munsters, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Godzilla movies, and vaudeville shows also get my vote of approval.

B&W movies don't have enough explosions per minute, have plots that take more than 5 words to sumerize, and actually contain segments that don't have background music when the people aren't talking. It's a wonder people watched them at all.

What most people feel for Casablanca, I feel for Treasure of the Sierra Madres and the Maltese Falcon. Nowadays, B&W is a sort of media vs. message sort of thing. Schindler's List is a conscious decision to use only one color once.
If you get immersed in the story, you won't miss the color.
BTW, I'm dropping the "u" in colour in a cowardly form of submission to the majority. It just feels wrong. Had to get that off my chest.

WAIT!! WHAT?!?!? It's in black and white?!?!? OMG! I never noticed!

One of my favorites!!

I never really thought of it that way Young Frankenstein was filmed in black and white it looks fine to me I guess in my mind's eye it put in whatever colors I reasoned appropriate, I find silent films a little bit harder to handle, but GoGo Quasimodo!

Doctor Strangelove isn't topical?

I’m not one of those people but I’m wondering if the lack of interest might really be due to the out-of-date topics, themes, and production values of films that old, rather than the fact of its lack of color alone? I think a lot of people feel movies that old are just hard to relate to. A test of my hypothesis might be to consider one of the modern movies that were filmed in B&W. (I think there are a couple). Or one of the very earliest color productions.