I Used to Love That Movie — Why Don’t I Now?
That a film’s meaning is created not by the film, but by the viewer’s response to it, explains why my viewings resulted in such diverse reactions.
In the days before Betamax and VHS, if you wanted to see old films, you went to revival houses, or those movie theaters that screened older, mostly classic films.
In the early 1980s, I visited a revival house to see Children of Paradise (1945), a revered French film directed by Marcel Carné. The foreign movie impressed me so much I went back five nights later and watched it again. I probably would have gone a third time, but it played at the theater for only one week.
That Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) is a three-hour, black-and-white film with English subtitles gives you some indication of how much the film impressed me. And then, there’s the mime. Did I mention mime? Yeah, the main character is a mime.
Nearly twelve years later, I saw the film again, and needless to say, I had a different reaction.
When I learned the Los Angeles County Museum of Art would be screening Children of Paradise, I told my wife of eight years we had to go — because it was, for me, “one of the greatest films of all time.”
Children of Paradise is often referred to as “the French Gone With the Wind.” Not only is it a lavish, epic, period piece that took a long time to shoot, but it is also draws viewers into a bygone era and tells an engrossing story filled with unrequited romantic longing. And, like Hollywood’s Gone With the Wind (1939), Children of Paradise was deliberately made in two parts and is always shown with an intermission.
During intermission, my wife and I discussed Children of Paradise. She agreed it was well made but didn’t understand why I thought it was such “a great film.” Surprising myself, I agreed with her! Though I was enjoying rewatching the movie, what once compelled me to see it twice in a week was now absent. Perhaps the magic would reassert itself in the second half?
When the film ended and the lights came up, I had to admit the magic was gone. Children of Paradise was still an impressive achievement and a work of art, but it did not affect me the way it had twelve years prior.
At first I didn’t understand why. The film may have been restored, but it had not changed. So why had my reaction changed?
And then the realization came: I had changed.
As reception theorists — and anyone who studies media seriously — will tell you, humans view and engage with media texts like film and television through their own frames of reference: background, race, social class, gender, and sexuality, among other things. In short, “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are,” as the Talmud (or perhaps Anaïs Nin?) instructs.
That the meaning of a film is created not by the film — but by the viewer’s response to the film — explains how an interval of twelve years between my viewings of Children of Paradise could result in such diverse reactions.
When I first saw Children of Paradise, the romantic longing in the film resonated strongly with me, touching and filling an empty place in my heart. Years later, I likely had a different reaction because I had a different frame of reference: that empty place in my heart was no longer there as the relationship with my wife had filled it.
As my wife and I walked up the aisle of the theater to the exit, glancing at our programs provided by the museum, I had a number of feelings. First, I was sad my reaction to a work of art had diminished. But then, I was pleased I’d grown to the point where such representations of unrequited longing didn’t resonate with me the same way.
Finally, I was grateful my wife and I had built a life together — and particularly grateful she didn’t get angry with me for dragging her to a three-hour, black-and-white French film with subtitles. And mime.
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