On a number of occasions here we have invoked something we dubbed the “three screenings rule”—that it is hard to fully come to grips with a movie until you have seen it three times. Thus although we will often, even with great enthusiasm, share a few words about a movie seen only once, we nevertheless insist of characterizing such ruminations as first, and thus implicitly preliminary thoughts.
There is certainly something to be said for first thoughts, which capture something special and fleeting: immediate, less-than-fully-formed, visceral reactions. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of movie reviews are based on one screening—and there is a logic to that; after all most people who read a review will likely only see the movie once, so that is the relevant experience for reviewers to report on. But we’re not in the business of reviewing movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; there is a valuable role for movie reviewing, as a consumer guide (there are more movies than we can possibly see), and, as you learn a reviewer’s taste, you can come to trust their judgments, or, (this more evident with wine criticism), learn how to calibrate their preferences with your own.
It’s just not our bag. We treasure the writing of Roger Ebert, but not so much for his reviews, rather, for his stimulating insights into great films. Or as A. O. Scott put it in his book Better Living through Criticism, “A critic is a person whose interest can activate the interest of others.” That is the enterprise in which we seek to participate. Such an approach does not eliminate the inevitable biases of personal taste, or even ensure a shared sense of the appropriate criteria of evaluation (ours can be found in the manifesto “what we want from the movies.”) But does imagine talking about the movies in a certain way, which is, pretty much, a commitment to talking about the movies—an invitation to spirited conversation and contestation, as if the movies mattered, and the argument was the thing.
Certainly those conversations begin as soon as the lights come up. But it is our position that, if the movie is worth taking about, to really do it right you have to see it three times. The first time, if you’re not bored, the movie just washes over you; it is something that is experienced, not analyzed in the moment. (It’s really hard, if not impossible, to do both at the same time.) And then when it’s over you can process, talk about it, think about it, see how it sits with you . . . or consider how does it feel?, as Bob might ask. Is it something you might want to see again?
If it is, then eventually that crucial second screening will take place. At this viewing, you are now watching the movie knowing how it will end. And this is where the rubber hits the road—is this movie coherent, and thus worthy of close attention? Because if it is, then every choice made as the narrative unfolds will matter—in ways that would be impossible to fully appreciate the first time around. And in this context things fall into place—or fail to. Because a film is not an imperfect attempt at creating virtual reality (I can see a particular friend of mine shaking his head, but he’s wrong)—it is a radical abstraction from “reality” that is presenting but a tiny sliver of the imagined fictional world (or even the non-fictional world) that is implied by the narrative. You are not seeing “the story”—you are presented a version of a story that is irresistibly, relentlessly and definitively imposed on you by the filmmakers. Every shot, every angle, every camera movement, every cut, every color, every costume, every performative expression, and, perhaps most consequentially, everything that is not shown—these are crucial choices, and each could have been wildly different, even if the nominal “story” remained more or less the same.
You need not to go all Kubrick here (“I must have complete total final annihilating artistic control over the picture”) to share this perspective. Movies are collaborations, with the finished product shaped by accidents (Welles’ definition of a director is one who presides over accidents), compromises, improvisations, and the implications of the practical pressures of time, money and possibility. But in a film worth its salt, in retrospect everything flows – as if inevitably – from beginning to end. And so in that second viewing, the behavior of characters early on becomes infused with new meaning once we know how things will turn out. Even the ending itself reveals new things about the logic of the beginning. (Why did the movie start where it did? Why not a day earlier? Focusing on a different character or location? Films don’t start at the dawn of time, they start with what has been decided as where this particular story begins, no sooner and no later—the logic of which is unknowable to the audience at a first screening.)
[Sidebar: This is why changing the ending of a film due the reaction of a test audience is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a crime against the integrity of the film.]
[Another Sidebar: Choices are inescapable in movie-making, but it is certainly possible to make them haphazardly, indifferently, or clumsily—our position is simply that in movies worth talking about, they are done with intention, care, and, in the finest films, a coherent artistic vision.]
And then there is the third viewing—take a deep breath here, it is the first where you are truly unencumbered. If screening one is an uncertain, emotionally-driven ride (you can only see Psycho for the first time once, even though it’s worth seeing again and again), and screening two offers the initial opportunity to understand and assess the movie as a coherent whole, in the third viewing, and beyond, you are free. And your relationship with the movie (if you’re going to have one) can really begin. (Now that I think about it, “having a relationship” with a movie is a crucial metric for me.) From the third viewing, the filmmaker’s hand recedes, and, increasingly, the movie becomes yours, as you start to have your own feelings for the characters, and the choices that they make. And perhaps you realize that life is a trip from Andre to Wally, or your sympathies shift from Benjamin to Mrs. Robinson, even though the movie is exactly the same. (For years I had a roaring disagreement with my father over the motives of Martin Landau’s character in Crimes and Misdemeanors. I’ve come around to his point of view.)
It took me three viewings to follow the plot of Touch of Evil, and several more to not care about the plot—and decide that the movie was really about the relationship between Quinlan and Menzies. At least that’s my current position. Happy to talk more about it.
Orson Welles and Joseph Calleia in Touch of Evil