The Case for Rewatching

The first time through a film, you are a plot detective. You track who knows what, wait for the twist, and half-listen to everything that isn’t a clue. It is a real pleasure, but it is a narrow one.

The second viewing is where the film opens up. Once the surprise is spent, you notice the staging, the rhythm of the cuts, the line of dialogue that was quietly doing two jobs. The Prestige is the obvious example: it tells you exactly what it is going to do in its opening minutes, and you only believe it later.

It works on the quieter films too. 12 Angry Men is a single room and twelve people, and on a rewatch you stop following the argument and start watching the faces of the jurors who aren’t speaking.

I keep a rule for myself: if a film I loved doesn’t survive a second viewing, I was probably loving the surprise. If it gets better, I was loving the film.