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Borges was not wrong about the endurance, and the reasons. I'd guess that few under-30 year olds, even here, know of the movie, and even fewer have seen it. Bu
by ableal 11y ago
Borges was not wrong about the endurance, and the reasons. I'd guess that few under-30 year olds, even here, know of the movie, and even fewer have seen it.
But then, Borges' reasoning would apply to most anything not made recently. There's a very small cadre of writers/creators aware of anything not produced in their lifetime.
(Furthermore, Borges could not guess at the time that Citizen Kane would be anointed as one of the show pieces of "the seventh art" for a few decades - a fate that could probably have been bestowed upon a few other contemporary movies, but was not.)
- hullo 11y agoWhat is endurance, then, really, if it is up to the cultural whims of the young? Has Beethoven not endured because: Rihanna? Hamlet because: Twilight?
- recuter 11y agoAnecdotal evidence to the contrary: I am 25 and this has been one of my favorite movies since first seeing it around ten years ago. Few under-30 year olds have even given The Beatles or Pink Floyd a proper listen either or know of Ferris Bueller's Day Off - I'm serious, mass cultural memory is not very long. But I think you'll find that all of the above will be mentioned in discussions of 20th century movies and music long into the future. Citizen Kane definitely stands the test of time.
- olavk 11y agoMuch of the praise for Kane is because it used groundbreaking cinematography, which have influenced many later films. But to appreciate that, you have to know that Kane was the first movie to use these techniques. The movie (like many historically groundbreaking movies) will be underwhelming when seen without this knowledge. A popular classic like Cassablanca have endured due to strength of story and acting, something which ages much better than "groundbreaking at the time".
- manachar 11y agoInterestingly, I use Casablanca as my go to example of a classic that younger audiences find boring, predictable and cliché. By the time most viewers today see Casablanca they'll have already seen most of the scenes ripped-offed, parodied, homaged, or referenced. For the first time viewer it won't feel like the original and instead will feel like an old black and white copy with a strange style of overacting.
- krylon 11y agoFor me, it was quite the opposite - when I saw Casablanca for the first time, I remembered all the scenes from it being parodied or quoted, and I thought, "so that is where those came from". The same happened to me watching The Wizard of Oz. Suddenly I remembered all those scenes from the Simpsons which I did not get before and was like, "now I get it". There is an episode of Star Trek DS9 where a character almost literally quotes the speech at the end of The Third Man (given, incidentally, by Orson Welles). Had I not seen The Third Man, I would have thought it was just a stupid monologue, but knowing where it came from changed the tone and gravity of that scene completely.
- ableal 11y agoBorges has a story for that ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Qu... - where a book now being rewritten identically word for word is, of course, a completely different book ...