Flickgrrl

That happens to me often, though sometimes I know intuitively that some films I really liked at one point will lose something later and I try to avoid revisiting them to preserve the original experience. Less often (mainly because I tend not to return to films I didn't like originally), movies I didn't like at first I come to appreciate later such as Reds. Other movies, such as Blue Velvet, seems to give me a different reaction each time I see it. You also are right about generational differences. Easy Rider and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice left me scratching my head wondering what people originally saw in them.

As I progress through my thirties, I notice that the films that really spoke to me as a teenager, like "The Breakfast Club" or "Some Kind Of Wonderful", now seem somewhat hokey and dated. While still watchable, I find that if I come across them on cable, I will view them for nostalgia's sake, rather than out of a desire to see a good film. I don't feel them the same way that I did when I was 13.

Sometimes I think, "I used to enjoy watching this?"

At the Free Library Book Festival on Sunday, I did a Q & A with Steven Bach, the perceptive biographer of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite filmmaker. He offered an excellent example: Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," her mythologizing profile of the Fuhrer. As Bach says, it was one film in the 1930s, when it whipped viewers into ecstasy or unease. And it's an entirely different film in 1945, seen through the lens of Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. Before World War II, it is political propaganda. After the war, it is propaganda that helped exalt a murderous regime.

There are several reasons why movies seem to change as we age. As others will (and have) mention(ed), we get wiser and movies that were insightful to us in our youth are espousing "old hat" platitudes to us decades later. But from a filmmaking perspective, the methodology of creating a motion picture changes from decade to decade as well. You can often tell when a film was made not just by clothing or automobile styles, but by the direction and cinemetography. Do you really think Casablanca would have been filmed the same way today? Would it have featured the longer cuts, the patient scenes as the actors emoted, the soft-focus on Ingrid Bergman? Moving a couple of decades forward, consider how tame Deliverance seems by comparison to the significant advances that horror filmmakers made in the 1980's. And other touching films such as "Big" would not be made the same way today; they would have more quick-cuts, harsher music, and simply would not be as sweet as pre-2000's films were able to be. We change, the industry changes. To combat this, when I watch an old film I make a concerted effort to watch it through the eyes of a viewer living at the time the film was released. Doing so makes one a much more tolerant (and sometimes insightful) moviewatcher.

Just goes to show how drugs can impair your moral judgment.

I enjoyed your observation about how your perception of "Murmur of the Heart" has changed over the years. I was particularly struck by your line "I walked out struggling with the question of whether a 14-year-old was a consenting adult." Presumably you meant the actor Benoit Ferreux, and whether it was responsible behavior for adults to cast him in such a role.
When the movie "Mysterious Skin" came out I saw it in a theater, and was quite disturbed by it. In this movie, the young adult principals are shown in flashback sequences as very young boys having sex with each other and their adult coach. The movie was slickly made, well-acted, and told a riveting story. At times, however, it seemed to veer perilously close to child pornography. I'm not a censorious prude, but I thought a line had been crossed. I couldn't help but wonder how the young child actors would be affected down the line by playing these roles in their early formative years. I also questioned whether any story is worth telling (or showing) that puts young actors in these kind of situations. What do you and your blog readers think? Can art ever go too far?

Just recently read this blog on this point. Sorry to be behind the times.

I guess we will always be jousting with the New Criticism.

Is a critic obligated to re-evaluate art in terms of changes that have moved the art form forward? Some parts of "Butch Cassidy" are as dated as "The Jazz Singer," because they spoke of a cinematic future of split screens that did not happen. We would laugh today at what was considered acceptable fine dining in 1965. So, yes.

Is a critic obligated to re-evaluate art in terms of changes in political attitudes? It would be hard to come to terms with "Triumph des Willens" otherwise. But if the social context changes and the artistic genius -- or lack thereof -- remains, what to do? Does that lead to a re-evaluation of "The Green Berets" after Sept. 11 in terms of whether art should support the underpinnings of a free nation? This is a dangerous area once you get beyond Hitler.

But still, it's one thing to say, well, maybe we should look at "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" a little differently after the collapse of Marxist-Leninism. "Zabriskie Point" is less than interesting outside the context of its times. Any film that draws its potency from being Notes From Underground can suffer when repression eases. But those are all forces that affect everyone's viewing of the art.

But then there is the question you raise: Can a critic legitimately re-evaluate art in terms of the changes in attitudes that have resulted in one's personal life -- as you note, the change from child to parent? In the case you raise -- having to do not only with different social attitudes about childhood sexuality, but also with how those play out in the role of a parent as opposed to the role of a young single woman -- can any person successfully balance the moral and aesthetic sides? Could you say, yeah, actually, this is still a great film, without feeling you are somehow putting a child's fate at risk through favoring something that could endorse a possible threat to her and those like her? Should a work clearly reflective of its zeitgeist be judged according to the moral standards of a different time?

And is that acting more to repudiate or question the people we once were, our mistakes and beliefs and enthusiasms, and not the art itself? In 40 years we have gone from "sex will make you free" to "the world is full of predators." Is the first wrong or were we just young? Is the second right or are we just older? And how does the criticism touch those who are not in the same places we are?

So do we say that on balance, we feel safer now siding with the second voice than the first, though the first may still have a case? Will the pendulum swing yet again and will we have been on the wrong side of its swing this time, or last time?

So to me it's hard for a critic to re-evaluate the moral basis of a film from an earlier era the critic lived through on the moral basis of the current time in the critic's life, and should be kept to a minimum, though realistically it cannot be avoided altogether. Whereas, whether the film speaks artistically to a different time is another matter and is what you want the critic's many years of learning to enable her to do.