Why do we need to return to film classics?

Abstract

Introduction
Javier Alcoriza

Discussion
Gonzalo Aguilar, Karen Fiss, Patricia Keller, José Antonio Pérez Bowie and Hidenori Okada

Conclusion
Javier Alcoriza

What is a classic? The question has been so oft repeated that it seems to direct interest on itself rather than on its answer. However, one answer has been that reading the classics –and we should say with even greater conviction, viewing classic films– sharpens our gaze. We should see the classics to improve our visual capacity. This answer focuses on a human faculty rather than on the object to which it is applied, on an action rather than a result. In this way, the classics would become qualified judges of the world we contemplate in books and films. The question about the need for the classics was, first and foremost, a question about the existence of the classics themselves, about the definition of a classic, and secondly, a question about whether they are necessary; a question about the need for something, as when a critic would claim that a book is worthless unless it is worth a lot, or that if a book is not worth reading twice it is not worth reading once. In a first, perhaps highly superficial but nonetheless indispensable attempt to answer, we can conclude that the classics are those films that we have to watch again or, at least, that we have watched with the indelible feeling that it should not be the only time we watch them. Thus, the classics make a timeless demand for our attention, based on the inclination to consider them eternal, even though, or precisely because —as has been highlighted in our discussion— they are deeply rooted in the materiality of the factors that affect their production.