The first time I watched Citizen Kane I cut it off after 15 minutes; the second time I watched it I was mesmerized, and today I consider it my all-time favorite movie. Some of you maybe be wondering why I liked it the second time. Others may be asking why I would even attempt it a second time. After all if I tried it once, why even attempt it again?
Maybe it was the reputation that surrounded the movie or the references to it that appeared in other movies and television shows, but something prompted me to want to see it again, to challenge my first impression of it. And because of revisiting it I was greatly rewarded.
Rediscovery is an amazing thing. It conquers that little bit of resistance within us, that slight touch of arrogance that we did not know existed and open our eyes and understanding in fresh, unexpected ways. It’s looking at a painting a second time and seeing colors we missed initially, or trying an entrée and tasting flavors we did not taste the first time.
Rediscovery is seeing something new in the world even if you’ve seen the same thing before.
Here’s another example from a movie: After another viewing of Citizen Kane and adding it to the top of my movie list I watched another well-reputed film called The Third Man that reunited Citizen Kane stars Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. I pushed play on the VCR and had my expectations challenged. First, the theme music was… well, silly. It sounded like strange carnival music, whatever that sounds like. After a few minutes I realized that Mr. Cotten—not Mr. Welles—was the star of the film. Then the film is halfway over before Orson appeared on screen. Finally, the film ended, but with an unsatisfactory conclusion. Yep, another “classic” did not live up to its hype.
Several months passed before I attempted a “Citizen Kane.” Again, something inside me said watch it again. This time I had the experience of knowing that sometimes a movie gets better with a second viewing. The second time I realized how the zither (the instrument that in my ignorance sounded like something from a carnival) added the perfect touch to the feel of the story and of the intriguing cinematography that carries us through post war Vienna (I later discovered the song itself was well-known). Then I realized that Joseph Cotten is perfect as Holly Martins, a writer not of prolific literature or political treatises, but of pulp Westerns. So much is said about the elusive “third man” that when Orson Welles finally appears as the insidious Harry Lime with that sly eye and twisted smile we realize Holly Martins is in over his head. After the mysterious events unfold we come to the haunting end of the film as Martins leaves the city of Vienna, a throwback to his arrival at the beginning. The Third Man is a great film.
And it’s even better the third time around.
However, some things do not improve upon rediscovery. For another movie example, there is the big-screen movie remake of one of my favorite TV shows as a kid, Lost in Space. I sat in the theater and the action began immediately as the film opened with a dogfight in space. Add a few cameos from the original series, a nod to the original Jupiter 2 spacecraft, state-of-the-art special effects, and an updated interpretation of the characters and story, and you have one happy movie-goer. The revamped theme song over the end credits added the perfect touch. I walked out of the theater loving Lost in Space.
I saw it at home on DVD about a year or so later. Maybe it was the smaller screen, maybe it was that I knew the outcome of the movie, maybe it was flaws that went unnoticed upon the initial viewing, but I did not enjoy Lost in Space when I rediscovered it. When I played it a third time I stopped it in the middle of the movie. Today Lost in Space is one of my least favorite movies, if it can indeed be in a list with the words “favorite” and “movies.”
Many of our original impressions can be credited to expectations. How do I think this food will taste? What is the artist’s style like? Will the movie be good with this actor? But we should be prepared to have our expectations challenged. We should let the wondrous things within this world reveal themselves to us, and often we must let that happen a second, or even a third, time. Sometimes more. When we hear something we do not agree with sometimes we should ask ourselves why does someone else believe it, what are the points they consider valid. Atticus Finch called it “walking around in someone else’s skin.” Sometimes we can see something new in something we’ve seen before by reexamining it, by reevaluating it, by rediscovering it. A 20-year-old should not think like a child; a 40-year-old should not think like a 20-year-old; years of experience should shape our understanding of the world around us.
But sometimes we become too comfortable, too complacent. We stagnate and cease to move forward with our lives, and then wonder why we are in the situations we find ourselves. We often feel trapped, isolated, alone, or confined. Why? Maybe because there is something more to the world we live in than we noticed the first time, mysteries waiting to be revealed. Maybe, to reference another movie, “there’s something there that wasn’t there before.”
Let us not be consumed by arrogance and/or ignorance. We may not like or agree with what we rediscover, but at least we will have made the journey, and that is what discovery is all about, knowing something we did not know the first time. Keep searching, keeping looking. Keep moving. There’s something there waiting to be discovered.
Maybe it was the reputation that surrounded the movie or the references to it that appeared in other movies and television shows, but something prompted me to want to see it again, to challenge my first impression of it. And because of revisiting it I was greatly rewarded.
Rediscovery is an amazing thing. It conquers that little bit of resistance within us, that slight touch of arrogance that we did not know existed and open our eyes and understanding in fresh, unexpected ways. It’s looking at a painting a second time and seeing colors we missed initially, or trying an entrée and tasting flavors we did not taste the first time.
Rediscovery is seeing something new in the world even if you’ve seen the same thing before.
Here’s another example from a movie: After another viewing of Citizen Kane and adding it to the top of my movie list I watched another well-reputed film called The Third Man that reunited Citizen Kane stars Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. I pushed play on the VCR and had my expectations challenged. First, the theme music was… well, silly. It sounded like strange carnival music, whatever that sounds like. After a few minutes I realized that Mr. Cotten—not Mr. Welles—was the star of the film. Then the film is halfway over before Orson appeared on screen. Finally, the film ended, but with an unsatisfactory conclusion. Yep, another “classic” did not live up to its hype.
Several months passed before I attempted a “Citizen Kane.” Again, something inside me said watch it again. This time I had the experience of knowing that sometimes a movie gets better with a second viewing. The second time I realized how the zither (the instrument that in my ignorance sounded like something from a carnival) added the perfect touch to the feel of the story and of the intriguing cinematography that carries us through post war Vienna (I later discovered the song itself was well-known). Then I realized that Joseph Cotten is perfect as Holly Martins, a writer not of prolific literature or political treatises, but of pulp Westerns. So much is said about the elusive “third man” that when Orson Welles finally appears as the insidious Harry Lime with that sly eye and twisted smile we realize Holly Martins is in over his head. After the mysterious events unfold we come to the haunting end of the film as Martins leaves the city of Vienna, a throwback to his arrival at the beginning. The Third Man is a great film.
And it’s even better the third time around.
However, some things do not improve upon rediscovery. For another movie example, there is the big-screen movie remake of one of my favorite TV shows as a kid, Lost in Space. I sat in the theater and the action began immediately as the film opened with a dogfight in space. Add a few cameos from the original series, a nod to the original Jupiter 2 spacecraft, state-of-the-art special effects, and an updated interpretation of the characters and story, and you have one happy movie-goer. The revamped theme song over the end credits added the perfect touch. I walked out of the theater loving Lost in Space.
I saw it at home on DVD about a year or so later. Maybe it was the smaller screen, maybe it was that I knew the outcome of the movie, maybe it was flaws that went unnoticed upon the initial viewing, but I did not enjoy Lost in Space when I rediscovered it. When I played it a third time I stopped it in the middle of the movie. Today Lost in Space is one of my least favorite movies, if it can indeed be in a list with the words “favorite” and “movies.”
Many of our original impressions can be credited to expectations. How do I think this food will taste? What is the artist’s style like? Will the movie be good with this actor? But we should be prepared to have our expectations challenged. We should let the wondrous things within this world reveal themselves to us, and often we must let that happen a second, or even a third, time. Sometimes more. When we hear something we do not agree with sometimes we should ask ourselves why does someone else believe it, what are the points they consider valid. Atticus Finch called it “walking around in someone else’s skin.” Sometimes we can see something new in something we’ve seen before by reexamining it, by reevaluating it, by rediscovering it. A 20-year-old should not think like a child; a 40-year-old should not think like a 20-year-old; years of experience should shape our understanding of the world around us.
But sometimes we become too comfortable, too complacent. We stagnate and cease to move forward with our lives, and then wonder why we are in the situations we find ourselves. We often feel trapped, isolated, alone, or confined. Why? Maybe because there is something more to the world we live in than we noticed the first time, mysteries waiting to be revealed. Maybe, to reference another movie, “there’s something there that wasn’t there before.”
Let us not be consumed by arrogance and/or ignorance. We may not like or agree with what we rediscover, but at least we will have made the journey, and that is what discovery is all about, knowing something we did not know the first time. Keep searching, keeping looking. Keep moving. There’s something there waiting to be discovered.
