There are so many potentially enjoyable films out there that it seems a waste of time to watch a film that one has already seen. And I rarely do. And yet recently I watched two films that I have seen not just once but a few times before. And it got me thinking about what makes a film so good. It is definitely not high production values, a stellar cast, dazzling special effects or frenetic action, the stuff that seems to power the blockbuster films. Instead it is good writing, direction, and strong character portrayals.
One film was The Castle a 1997 low-budget Australian film that I have praised highly before. ‘Low budget’ hardly does it justice. The cast is largely unknown outside Australia and it took less than two weeks to film at a cost A$750,000. To save costs, the name of the family (Kerrigan) was chosen so that the film makers could use trucks that belonged to an actual towing company with that name.
The Kerrigan home, in the outer Melbourne blue-collar suburb of Coolaroo, is filled with love as well as pride in their modest lifestyle, but their happiness is threatened when developers attempt the compulsory acquisition of their house to expand the neighbouring airport.
The Kerrigan house is built in a largely undeveloped housing tract, on a toxic landfill, and directly adjacent to an airport runway. Despite all this, sweet-natured family patriarch Darryl (Michael Caton) believes that he lives in the lap of luxury. He busies himself by driving a tow truck, racing greyhounds, and constantly adding (and only half-finishing) renovations to the house. The rest of the Kerrigan clan shares and supports his enthusiasm in every way.
The David versus Goliath struggle between them and the the developers forms the basis of the plot. The Kerrigans are a close-knit, loving, naive, and earnest family with a doting father who is immensely proud of his family that finds enjoyment in what the rest of us might consider mundane or even undesirable. With such films, there is always the risk of condescension, of making fun of unsophisticated people, but that danger is avoided here. The innate decency of the family is what dominates the film and means that you are with them all the way. It is an absolutely wonderful film that I will undoubtedly watch again some time in the future.
Here’s the trailer.
The other film The Third Man (1949) is very different and repeatedly watchable for the same reasons: good writing, direction, and strong character portrayals. It was also shot on a relatively small budget, though not as extreme as The Castle. Set in the ruins of post-war Vienna, it follows Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp westerns, who arrives just in time to learn that it is the day of the funeral of his boyhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) who had invited him to come but had died in an accident. Martins is puzzled by inconsistencies in the story of Lime’s death and is disconcerted by a British army officer (Trevor Howard) who hints that Lime was an unsavory character. Martins investigates and falls in love with Lime’s girl friend Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), who does not reciprocate.
The film is moody, in black-and-white, with plenty of shadows and odd camera angles. No one who has seen the film will ever forget the music score, as described by Roger Ebert.
Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed’s “The Third Man”? The score was performed on a zither by Anton Karas, who was playing in a Vienna beerhouse one night when Reed heard him. The sound is jaunty but without joy, like whistling in the dark. It sets the tone; the action begins like an undergraduate lark and then reveals vicious undertones.
There are some unforgettable set pieces. One is the the scene where Lime and Martins meet on a Ferris wheel and another is the ending with a very long, silent shot of Anna walking along a long straight road directly towards the camera, with Martins standing by the side of the road, waiting for her. We do not know if she will ignore him or whether they will join up and walk off together and the tension is palpable.
(A minor point. I have written before of a pet peeve of mine in films where a character who is shot from the front is thrown violently backwards, sometimes crashing through a window. This is utterly absurd. In older films, as in this one, the character who is shot just stops and then slowly falls to the ground. That is how it should be. But in modern films, the shot character gets flung back as if they had been hit with a cannonball.)
Here is the trailer.
“But in modern films, the shot character gets flung back as if they had been hi with a cannonball.)”
You’re assuming someone hit by a cannonball fully absorbs the momentum of the cannonball… They’d need to be wearing cannonball resistant plate armour for that, else the ball just passes through and imparts its momentum to the wall behind.
To get the movie effect I suspect you need a giant slingshot that fires basketball sized water balloons. Bonus, a lot less lethal (but still dangerous!)
I just watched The Big Lebowski again. What made it worth watching again for me was that I had almost completely forgotten it, except for a vague feeling of having enjoyed it and memory of a few iconic scenes, such as the staircase dream sequence. I find it very hard to believe that I could have ever forgotten so much of it. I’d swear I could never forget it again, only I already have once!
I think one’s most favourite films are always going to be watchable again. For example, I never get tired of rewatching Run Lola Run (Lola rennt, German with subtitles).
“What makes a film worth watching again?”
Music to sing along:
It’s astounding, time is fleeting …
lol @3…
i’ve watched Hard-Boiled, AKA Hot-handed God of Cops, like a bazillion times. chow yun-fat and tony leung vs. anthony wong and philip kwok. pewpewpewpewpewpew probably somebody flew back through a window at some point.
i loved lola rennt but haven’t seen it in a million years. the movie is practically designed to be memorable. i like how much of a pathetic loser moritz bleibreu is in that thang, and how franke’s magical powers worked. so cool.
Hard Boiled was brilliant, I’d love to see it again. Haven’t seen it this century.
I’m very much with Mano here… OK, I have watched the original Star Wars trilogy more times than I can readily count, but at this point in my life I’ve no interest in watching any of them again. The films I absolutely would rewatch at the drop of a hat are things like Casablanca or The Big Sleep, and I’d pay quite a lot of money for the chance to watch Baraka again on the big screen (which would be the third time) in either the 70mm print or the 8K restoration… Oh, and there’s always the The Muppets Christmas Carol!
if you like chow yun-fat, find and watch God of Gamblers. an action comedy.
Good acting, interesting plot, eye-catching visuals/sets (NOT CG if possible) , and a deserving ending are still the success formula for timeless movies that can be watched over and again (or: plenty of laughs). A short list of flicks I can re-watch most any time:
1. In the Heat of the Night 2. Shawshank 3. Singin’ in the Rain 4. M*A*S*H the Movie 5. Victor Victoria! 6. Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (I mean, Frankensteen!!!) 7. Chinatown 8. a few others
Perhaps I am not ‘the guy’. Movies have about a short-story’s-worth of information. Spending that long watching them again instead of reading a new short story seems wasteful to me.
I have found I am old enough that I have forgotten some movies I found good. Some of those I discover worth watching again. Usually it’s when I find someone else enjoys the movie but thinks something happened that I didn’t remember or interpreted differently from them.
Me too.
For me atleast , it seems to have very little to do with the movie itself , and very much to do with when I watched (things that i watched during my teen years!) or with whom I watched them (memories!) . The quality of the movie itself doesn’t seem to make a difference to me (Potboiler Bollywood movies can make the cut , usually with some version of the Big B in them)
(Relatively) Low-budget film that is critically acclaimed: The 1966 French SF film Alphaville used a recently built part of Paris with “neo-brutalist” architecture as a vision of a harsh authoritarian future city.
A movie I have watched a few times and would gladly watch a few more is Tampopo. All you wanted to know about ramen noodle soup, as well as plenty of anecdotes about Japanese food culture in the 1980s.
I watched ‘Being There’ twice to see if I could figure out the ending. It still baffles me.
Some SF films with intricate plots require more than one viewing to “get” it.
And films by Tarkovsky (typically three hours) are full of symbols you probably don’t notice at first.