If there was one movie you could see again for the first time…

…what would it be?

Over the weekend, that question was posed to me by the spiritual progenitor of this site and my youngest son Luke. To be able to see a movie you know you love, but with a fresh set of eyes — no foreknowledge, tabula rasa.

You know what? The question stumped me.

My knee-jerk response was to say The Apartment because it’s my favorite movie. But then I thought, no. While a perfect movie in my view, it’s not what you’d call a spectacle. And there’s something special about being swept up in a big cinematic universe.

So then my mind went to movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. Both great films, especially Raiders. But I can literally still remember what it felt like coming out of the movie theater when I saw both of those movies. Do I really need to see them over for the first time if I can transport myself back to those overwhelming feelings of awe and joy as I emerged from the darkness of the theater?

Then I started to think about movies that surprised me, going into the theater with no expectations, and wham! Great flick. Jean de Florette and Manon des sources did that to me when I saw them at the Telluride Film Festival in 1987. But again, it doesn’t take much for me to recall those memories of leaving the theater and stepping out into the crystalline mountain sunshine.

What about movies I have seen on video, but never in a theater? Things like Repo Man.

Or Back to the Future which I saw on my honeymoon night?

Or Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) which Rebecca and I saw on a weekend getaway to Berkeley?

Finally I settled on a movie. A film that blew my mind. Indeed it perhaps sealed my fate in terms of my lifelong obsession with cinema because nothing I had ever experienced in my life up to that point approximated what I went through in seeing that movie.

What was it?

Cliffhanger! Not gonna tell you. I’ll wait for you to weigh in, then I’ll share the title of the movie in question.

How about you? If there was one movie you could see again for the first time… what would it be?

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