My parents are the same way and have allowed me to watch Rated R films when I was 13 or 14. There is definitely much more I understand now than I did at that age. For example, Forgetting Sarah Marshall if I would have watched that at age 13 I would have been what the hell. Granted it would have been funny to me with the sex scenes and everything, but even now at the age of 16 I have a different perspective of what sex is and am way more mature about it.

Very True.

And not just with Rated R content.

I also think of a movie like Airplane which I saw when I was younger. I was able to laugh and find the movie funny, but it became funnier when I had experienced some of the jokes personally such as "being swamped by charity seekers as you search for your terminal and airport parking exchanges etc.

Exactly, and one major reason I love this site is because I can watch a movie like Inception with my sister who are also still fairly young and talk about the film on one level in which we understood the movie, but I come on here and there are so many other different dimensions of the movie that I read and learn about. I just think that is the coolest.

I can only speak for myself on this--I don't know what goes on in other folks' heads--but I've never in my entire 67 years seen a film that I didn't like the first time I saw it but that I suddenly liked the next time I saw it--or in the 20th viewing or the 100th viewing. When it comes to movies, I'm pretty good at multi-tasking in the first viewing. I can keep up with the plot and the bits the actors are adding to their performance and take in the sets and relate to the photography and the snap--or not--of the dialogue and the little bits going on in the background and at the same time relate the plot, script, acting and direction to other movies I've seen. And at the end of the movie it doesn't take a lot of contemplating and soul-searching to decide if I liked it or not.

Now I have seen films that I spotted something in a subsequent viewing that I didn't see in my first viewing, but these are not world-changing incidents. Just minor bits that escaped my attention the first time around. And with DVDs today, why would it take multiple viewings to figure out a film? Didn't understand what someone said? Run it back and listen again. Missed part of the action? Instant replay.

Even with films I like, I don't view them multiple times in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. More likely, I'll go some years in between viewings. And when I see them, I still like the things I first liked and dislike the things that I first disliked.

Now I will grant you that viewing the Marx Brothers as a child you may miss some of the double meanings that you're more likely to catch when you're older. But how many modern films are equivalent to the Marx Brothers?

On the other hand, I could see 100 times the Roy Rogers films I loved as a kid, and not a single one of them is suddenly gonna become Citizen Kane. They are what they are.

As for "complicated films" that a director makes, I understood Fellini (even though I can't spell his name), I understood Salvatore Dahli, I understood books like Catch 22 and Catcher in the Rye when I was young. So what's so complicated about a movie that someone has to see it 5 or 6 times to figure out whether he likes it or not? If you don't "get it" the first time you see it, is it your fault or the director's? But I'm sure that the first time you see even a complicated film, you know pretty quickly whether you like it enough to pursue it or it just doesn't interest you. I think the first 15 minutes into a film you either like it or else you start thinking about where to go to eat after the movie's out and what's on the agenda at work tomorrow--anything but the movie that hasn't engaged your interest.

I was a kid or at least in my teens the first time I saw Vertigo and I could see right away, the plot didn't make sense in the real world. I mean take the scene where Jimmy Stewart follows Novak's car down this long winding road to a point under the Golden Gate Bridge. There are only 2 cars on the road and he's close enough that she has to see him. Then she stops and he stops across the road within a stone's throw of her, and then she jumps in the water in a supposed suicide attempt. How many suicides throw themselves into the water in front of witnesses who in the case jumps in and saves her. But wait--Stewart is supposed to have this really bad case of Vertigo--wasn't there one scene early on where he couldn't even get up on a ladder without getting loopy? But now he leaps off this rather high bank into the cold and dangerous 'Frisco Bay to save a supposed suicide. But wouldn't it have messed up the killer's plans if Stewart's vertigo had kicked in right at that moment, in which case Novak either would have to save herself or drown; either way it would played hell with the murder plot. That's the kind of stuff that went through my head the first time I saw that film and it hasn't changed over the years. Yeah, I know Hitchcock was going for a certain mood and obviously he succeeded with most of the world's population, but as a murder mystery, the film sucked swamp water.

Now there are actors who I didn't care anything about for years until I saw them do something that really interested me--Jack Nicholson is one example. But I didn't learn to appreciate these people by watching one film over and over-I watched enough of a variety of their films until I finally found one that interested me.

When you first saw Airplane! could you relate it to the Airport series of films about airliner disasters? Were you able to contrast it with earlier airplane-in-trouble films like No Highway in the Sky, The High and the Mighty, Fate is the Hunter, The Crowded Sky?

Point being it's not just a matter of later encountering Hari whatevers soliciting funds at the airport; knowing something about the genre of airplane disaster films, especially the Airport series gives you more insight into what had become stereotypical characters in such films that are lampooned in Airplane!

Re: Appreciating movies
 

I'd say the first watch is 1000x more important than any of the following watches. If it makes an impact the first time, then it is worth revisiting. If it makes an impact the second time than it is on a different level of good. Because most films tell stories, the important aspect of The Reveal as controlled by the film is sort of ruined in the second viewing unless you forget a lot of the first viewing. You expect things and this is just not the proper tension for any story or scene. It's kind of fetishized when you are sitting there waiting for a certain line to be said. Nothing like that makes a film great. A great line is when you're struck by it the first time you hear it. When you sort of stop listening to the rest of the lines because THAT LINE was so great.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

I agree that the first watch is definitely the most important though. Sometimes I think I set my standards a bit too high for the first watch though.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

I am also wondering if your judgement on movie series such as Twilight, Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter goes by the same standard as a movie without a sequel? Meaning if you watch the first in the series and it sucks does that mean the liklihood of you watching the sequel is less?

Re: Appreciating movies
 

No. Each film should stand on its own if it is presented as such. There's zero reason why the Lord of the Rings could not have been shown altogether--there're have been longer consecutive narratives with Tarkovskian pacing and no orcs, mind you--but it wasn't, so each film should be judged on its own. Knowledge about it the previous parts then become like the "common knowledge" you take to other films. That film World Trade Center, it didn't explain anything about terrorists or anything. It showed a plane shadow and that was literary it. If I looked away for second, I would have thought it was a film about an earthquake. For the historically oblivious kids 50 years from now, this could be the case.

Especially when HP and Twilight have switched director in between films. I see no reason to link them and grade them as a whole. You didn't watch them as such.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

If you watched a film years ago but didn't connect to it the first time, your opinion may well change. There's lots of things that figure in opinions of movies and it's not solely the worthiness of the movie. Reviews, friends' comments, when you watched it, bad connotations...all of that can play a part. But I think that time distance is important. It's unlikely you're going to dislike a film you first watched today and then watch it tomorrow and suddenly love it.

Ironically lots of the Disney films creeped me out when I was younger (it was impossible to watch The Lion King without crying and The Hunchback of Notre Dame terrified me). But now I really love both films because I can understand and appreciate the different themes in there (and the lust in Hunchback. No kid is really going to understand that on first-time viewing).

My opinion on sequels is that each film should be a good film in its own right but the overall story (if they're part of a planned series) should carry across the films, so they're actively building towards the ultimate story.

But surely you don't usually give the films you don't like a second chance? Let alone a 20th or a 100th!

Also, this isn't binary; a film can be mediocre, or just a bit disappointing, but better on repeat viewings. I'm not suggesting everyone go out and watch The Tuxedo again and again, just in case there's something buried there. This applies to average films, or unusual ones, more than it does bad ones.

I'm sure you're quite good at it, but you're still human. You can't catch it all, and probably not even most of it, given that we have to process in real time what a screenwriter spent months on, and a director, years. I've known many very smart, very observant people who find themselves discovering things in their 10th viewing of The Godfather. And while I have a healthy amount of respect for your intelligence and insight, I'm not sure I can believe that you're exempt from this.

Besides, by definition, you can't know what it is you're not noticing.

I do that quite often, but there are plenty of films I see only in theaters, for one, and it's not as if broader themes and parallels are the kinds of things you can pick up on by rewinding 20 seconds now and then.

Equivalent in quality? Few. Equivalent in the sense that we "get" more of the jokes, references, or thematic elements when we're older than we do when we're younger? Tons.

That might actually be the most pertinent question: how many films have you had occasion to watch with not just a gap in years, but a significant gap in maturity, experience, or education? That's where I find films can change the most. And it's probably something that applies more to someone my age than someone your age, actually, which might explain part of this discrepancy.

Well, take Citizen Kane, then; if someone saw it and thought it was bad, would you encourage them to watch it again with the hope that they would pick up on more than they might have the first time?

It completely depends. Some viewers just want casual entertainment when they sit down, and don't "get it" because they don't care to. Or because the film is just too complicated and not worth the effort. Both are understandable. But I wouldn't find fault with a director simply because they decided to make an intricate film. Not all films are going to be for all people, and I wouldn't want all directors to feel they have to be.

But this is, as I indicated in my last post, an academic point. Whether or not the director is to blame for someone not liking a film the first time is completely separate from whether or not there's more quality to be found by giving it another chance. This is about whether or not we can get more out of the process, not about whether we owe it to the director to do so. It's entirely self-interested. :)

To be fair, one could also say this is just an example of someone making a snap judgment. There's an extremely fine line between a film failing to engage you, and not giving it much of a chance if it doesn't do so in the first 15 minutes.

I'll let one of our many Vertigo fans here engage you on the specifics on the plot, since it's not among my favorite Hitchcock films, anyway, and I don't remember it well enough offhand, anyway.

I think the "because more films tell stories" part is an important caveat, because obviously there are any number of films from which we can derive great enjoyment from things like the performances, which don't rely nearly as much on The Reveal.

I find certain off-beat comedies hold up very well. I've probably seen Raising Arizona a dozen times, but the performances and the comedic timing are just so flippin' enjoyable in their own right, even if I know all the punchlines. It's always interesting to see how that enjoyment evolves. It's not the same as the first time, to be sure. It feels more like satisfaction than surprise.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

There's no time like the first, is what I mean. Not that the rest of the viewings are worthless--obviously not, how else would we study them--but that the impact of the first viewing is the most important impact. I'm very relativist in terms of art, so the first, most untainted viewing, is the least cluttered, most objective, least relativist viewing.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

Couldn't you also say the opposite? That the first viewing is more cluttered because you're taking everything in for the first time, all at once, and that someone who's viewed a film repeatedly and focused on different aspects every time actually has a more "objective" view of it?

Re: Appreciating movies
 

Possibly, yeah. I'll have to think about that one. All I can say is that not knowing exactly what's about to happen is like how we live life. As Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

You're right. You can't know what you're missing if you're really missing it. So let me put it this way--I cannot remember ever in any film that I've seen multiple times that I ever spotted any element of importance that I missed in my first viewing or that changed my whole point of view about that film. Which either means I'm unusually observant the first time I see it, or I'm unusually blind to additional stimuli in other viewings. Take your pick.

For example, take Shane--I once heard or read somewhere there's a scene in Shane when he's riding at night and you can spot in the background the lights of a pickup going down the road. I've looked and looked for that flub and have never spotted it. What I did spot is that the scene in which such a flub would have the best chance of occurring looks to me like day shot for night--in other words the cameraman used a dark filter to make a scene shot in daylight appear to take place at night. And if that's the case, then why would a pickup be driving with its lights on and how would that be picked up by a filtered camera to start with?

Oh, sometimes I recognize an older actor or spot a former star among the character actors who I didn't notice the first time through, but it doesn't add or detract to my initial enjoyment of the film in my first viewing.

My argument against major discoveries in subsequent viewings is that people seldom go back to see a live play expecting to see something they didn't spot in the first attendance. Now I've seen the same play as presented by different casts and can spot differences in their presentations. But if I can sit through a play with an average size cast and watch all their comings and goings and listen to the dialogue and the songs if it's a musical and pretty well catch what is going on onstage, then how much more difficult can it be to watch a movie?

I've seen The Godfather several times, but all the additional info I've picked up came from the book, which I read before they made the movies. For instance, I know from the book that the Italian man who brings flowers to Michael's father in the hospital and ends up standing with Michael like armed guards outside the hospital entrance when the would-be hitmen come by, is the former POW who the baker early in the film asks the Godfather to arrange to stay in America instead of being shipped home after the war so the kid can marry his pregnant daughter. Or remember the baptism scene when Michael's gunmen are getting revenge on all of his enemies? It's easy to spot all of the mobsters who get gunned down, but there's one short quick scene where they hit this one guy in what looks like a pizza cafe. He's not one of the gangsters who went after the Godfather, but the book makes it plain that he's Michael's former bodyguard who placed the bomb that killed his first wife in order to fulfill his often expressed desire to go to America. I'll bet there's some people who have seen the film dozens of times who never figure that out from the movie.

Well, I'll go back to Vertigo--not to be picking on that one film but because it's already been cited in this discussion as a complicated film that benefits from multiple viewings. Guess I was in high school when I first saw this film, and I didn't like it. Went into the army, got married and divorced, had a child, worked, went to college on the GI Bill, got married again, more children, another divorce, worked 30 years in newspapers, including many years covering police investigations and trials all the way from JP court to federal courts and appeals. And through it all, I still don't like Vertigo for the same reasons I didn't like it 50 years ago. Yeah, I know Hitchcock was going for this whole mood thing--I'll even say he was successful at it, but that doesn't matter to me because all of the reasoning behind the murder plot depends on circumstances--a real murder would not, could not be done that way. Now that doesn't matter to folks who like the mood thing, and that's fine. I'm not asking anyone to dislike it. I hope you all enjoy it. But I don't, for the reasons I outlined--and that's just me. You can tie me in a chair and make me watch until my eyes bleed, and I'll only hate it more and more. As for as creating moods, I think Hitchcock did a much better job in films like Rope, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, Suspicion, Dial M for Murder, all very well-made and believeable. And Stewart and Novak were much more interesting together in Bell, Book, and Candle.

Now this is where I differ the most with other folks in this forum. Why would I hope someone would like a film I like? What's it to me? There are films I don't like, and I'm perfectly willing to give everyone else the same right. If they don't like Citizen Kane, fine, don't watch it. My wife doesn't care much for Kane and she hates Shane, but we get along better than any of my former marriages. I have no need to justify my movie picks by making sure everyone else like them. If I were the only one who likes Kane and it was banned from ever being viewed again, I'd still remember it as the greatest film ever.

I'm not faulting a director for making an intricate film. I would think Kane is intricate, as is The Third Man, The Postman Always Rings Twice, All My Sons, Casablanca, The Grapes of Wrath, The Ox-Bow Incident, Streetcar Named Desire, The Right Stuff, and many others. I even like Two for the Road with all its flashbacks and flashforwards. Didn't take multiple viewings of any of those to figure out I liked them, along with films like Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, all films examining the difference between right and wrong, the individual vs. society, truth and misdirection, the whole essence of the human spirit.

However, for a director to claim people just don't understand his film is like a writer claiming the public just doesn't appreciate his book. Who's more likely to be at fault in such a case--the unsuccessful individual (unsuccessful in this particular incident, although he may have had many prior successes) or the millions of the general public who apparently "don't get it"? Is it incumbent on the viewer to do all of the research and work to bring himself to the director's point of view? If that were true, more people would read the book before they see the movie, and you know that's not going to happen.

To me, it's like a songwriter saying, "If people only understood my song, everyone would be whistling it." Not.

But why does this only apply to movies? If you take a bite of something and it tastes like you've got a mouthful of manure, are you gonna make a "snap judgment" and spit it out, or are you gonna sit there and savor it hoping that if you just give it a chance you may find something of quality within that sh*t? If you read a book and halfway through you decide you don't like it, do you keep reading or toss it aside? I didn't mean to set 15 minutes as some sort of cutoff time for deciding whether or not you like a film--there have been some that have lost me in practically the last scene, leaving me steaming that "I sat through this whole movie for that????"

Sorry, if I don't see some redeeming quality to a movie at some point, I'm gonna bail rather than waste my time on it. There are too many good things in life you don't have to "learn" to enjoy.

Don't mean to rag on you, Yoda, and believe me I really do understand what you're getting at. But I get the image of the movie-goer saying, "OK, this time I'm gonna concentrate on everything happening in the upper right quarter of the screen and next time I'll concentrate on the lower left quarter." To "focus on different aspects every time," doesn't that imply you're tuning out most of the movie to look for . . . what? To paraphrase you from an earlier posting, if you don't know what you're missing, how do you know what to look for?

Really, I don't mean this as smart-ass as it probably sounds. I guess the concept of rewatching a film to try to spot what I missed the first time through is just so foreign to me. I can understand sometime noticing some little thing you hadn't noticed before, like in one scene he's holding the glass in his left hand, but in a shot from another angle it's suddenly in his right. Lots of folks are into that, but flubs like that really don't matter much as far as I can see. Doesn't add or subtract from the film (not like when the overhead mike dips down into camera view, or you can see camera crew in the mirror or window behind the actor--now that sort of sloppiness does drive me up the wall).

Re: Appreciating movies
 

Wow! Great stuff from everyone! I'm starting to like the debates that this thread has posed!

Now, I hate to ever agree with Yoda, and I'm not going to exactly, but rufnek, this:
is the totally wrong reason. If this is the reason that Yoda gave you (I only skimmed your walls of text sry), then it is the wrong reason.

You don't rewatch it to catalog tiny details you didn't catch. That's, well, to put it bluntly, that's 'tarded. You rewatch it in order to re-evaluate the details you did catch the first time. If you catch any new details the second time, then you need to watch it a third time to re-evaluate those details, and so on. This is why Vertigo is one of, if not the greatest film of all time, because it leaves a perfect amount of ambiguity and certainty so that endless amounts of meaning can flow from it.

Your lack of appreciation for what I think, and what many have called, Hitchcock's best is disturbing, as Vader would say.

"Mood" as you say, is no reason for a film to be considered great. The thing is, Hitchcock is so precise sometimes that it bother's you doesn't it? Like when Scotty first sees Madeline and she's sort of just out of his visual range, but the camera still shows a full profile of her and it's this beautiful, beautiful shot. Isn't this shot the very beginning of his fantasy of her? Why does Hitchcock not turn Scotty's head just a little bit more so we as an audience can really believe that it's a subjective POV shot? No. He doesn't. Hitchcock wasn't an idiot. He kept it just out of range so Madeline's face would be, essentially, the beginning of his fantasy. Only when she steps away, when the fantasy is not as intense, does Scotty turn and look at her fully and the shot becomes actually subjective POV.

But this is just one interpretation, you see.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

rufnek, I think you're being way too literal. We don't rewatch movies to see what our eyes may have missed. We rewatch them to see what our hearts and minds may have missed. We aren't especially rewatching the films to clarify the plot. We're rewatching them to try to figure out what it really means. What is the deeper meaning and how does it affect us in some non-superficial way. It could just be the way certain characters interract and how their relationship seems more (or less) meaningful than it originally did. I like to be able to understand what a film's plot is but if there are more-symbolic things occurring in the film and you only look at it from the point of view of just trying to understand "what's going on", you can easily miss many images which have significance far beyond the plot. Now, if you don't like to do that with films, then fine, but plenty of directors do and the people who "appreciate" their films like to look for everything the film has to offer.

By the way, how many Ingmar Bergman, Alain Resnais and Andrei Tarkovsky films have you watched? Everything doesn't have to be as deep or symbolic as some of their films but there are plenty of American filmmakers who utilize similar methods of telling a story through film.