As this year’s awards season comes to an end this weekend, if history has proven anything, it’s that one must not judge a film’s legacy by the amount of trophies or box-office it receives. In fact, it’s often quite the contrary: as the years go on, under-appreciated (or even initially mis-understood) films start to find an audience and are prime for a re-evaluation. A new video essay explores this process, primarily through three paramount examples, and how time is perhaps the only thing that matters.
Coming from Andrew Saladino’s The Royal Ocean Film Society, the five-minute video essay The Story of the Re-Evaluated is a brief overview of this, showing the initial reception of Michael Cimino‘s ambitious flop Heaven’s Gate, Michael Powell‘s dark character study Peeping Tom, and Eric von Stroheim‘s studio-mangled Greed, and how these films have been re-embraced.
In the end, the question is asked which recent films may have gone overlooked that may have a more promising future of appreciation. When it comes to last year, my picks would be Sunset Song, Silence, and Knight of Cups, but I’d love to hear yours. Check out the video essay and chime in below in the comments.
What are your favorite films that weren’t well-received upon release? What films deserve to be re-evaluated?