application/pdf
2036-461X
19050
5
en
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
"You haven't seen it unless you have seen at least twice": Film Spectatorship and the Discipline of Reapet Viewing 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
4
Thematic issue / Section thématique
2004-10-01
2022-11-20
2004-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Vinzenz Hediger
2004/10/01
Ruhr Universität Bochum
2036-461X
5
en
"You haven't seen it unless you have seen at least twice": Film Spectatorship and the Discipline of Reapet Viewing 
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19050/17257
4
“YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST
TWICE:” FILM SPECTATORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF REPEAT
VIEWING
Vinzenz Hediger, Ruhr Universität Bochum




                     For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates
                                       the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.
                                                                          Walter Benjamin, 1937

                                            It’s a ritual and fun thing to go into a videotheque.
                                                      George Atkinson, video store pioneer, 1985


   This essay is about frequency in spectatorship. It addresses a question that has not
been at the center of research on film spectatorship so far: namely, how many times
does a given spectator usually watch a film? More specifically, this essay is about the
repeat viewing of individual films. Without doubt, the practice of repeat viewing has
always been part of the repertoire of cinema going. As I would like to argue, however,
repeat viewing has only in the last three decades become a culturally and economically
significant pattern of spectator behavior, at least in the Western world (a study of repeat
viewing in Indian cinema, for instance, would pose different problems, and certainly
yield different insights). Prompted partly by the introduction of new technologies such
as the VCR and the DVD, repeat viewing has not only become a major factor in the eco-
nomics of film production and consumption. The practice of repeat viewing also marks
an important shift in the overall practices of film reception. That is, shifts in the way
films are viewed, and how their visibility is organized. By extension, repeat viewing
marks a change in the way cinema relates to and informs culture.

  In order to tackle the problem of repeat viewing, the notion of practice – by which I
mean a sustained pattern of behavior regulated by institutional and discursive frame-
works – is of particular importance. Research on film spectatorship has mostly been
concerned with the question of meaning. In fact, cultural studies, semio-pragmatics
and historical reception studies have all in similar ways re-located the site of the pro-
duction of meaning from author and text to audience and spectator. This has led to the
point where “immanent meaning in a text is denied,” to quote the radical hypothesis
that informs Janet Staiger’s research into film reception and the construction of cultur-
al meanings.1 From such a perspective, the construction of cultural meanings is to be
understood as an event informed by highly specific historical conditions and discursive
formations. Based on this assumption, one could treat each viewing of a film as a sepa-
rate event and study how repeat viewing effects the meaning of the film across a series
of screenings. However valuable such a microscopic approach to the question of the

­24                                                                CINEMA & Cie, no. 5, Fall 2004
                                 “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

construction of meaning might be, I would like to propose a different perspective.
Rather than a question of meaning – how does repeat viewing effect the meaning of the
film? – I would like to address a question of significance. What does it mean that an
important section of the film audience views the same films repeatedly? How did the
practice of repeat viewing come about, and what are its cultural implications?
   In order to briefly illustrate what I think is at stake in the practice of repeat viewing,
I would like to cite some anecdotal evidence. Recently, over an excellent Thai dinner
after a film screening in Stockholm, the conversation turned to the subject of repeat
viewing. While everyone at the table routinely admitted to being a repeat viewer, the
person who was the most specific in her description of her own practice of repeat view-
ing was the only one who was not a film scholar, an archaeologist from Denmark in her
late twenties. “I like to watch films repeatedly,” she said, “and pay attention to different
aspects of the film: Color, lighting, the music, acting.” For instance, she had first seen
Lagaan, the globally successful Bollywood film about a turn-of-the-century cricket team
of insurgent Indian peasants, in the cinema and then watched it eight more times on
video; quite an investment, given the film’s three-and-a-half hour running time. When
she first began to watch films repeatedly, she continued, she had felt “like a vegetable.”
“I thought I was not allowed to do it [i.e. watch a film more than once].” After a certain
time, however, she found her enjoyment of the films far outweighed her unease and
decided not to feel bad about repeat viewing anymore.
   This account is interesting partly because it highlights both the institutional and dis-
cursive frameworks that regulate the practice of repeat viewing. The institutional
frameworks include enabling technologies such as the VCR. They also include organi-
zational forms such as the patterns of film distribution, in which a film is first distrib-
uted to cinemas and then, with a hiatus of few months, rented or sold to patrons in
video stores for home viewing. The discursive frameworks include norms of acceptable
behavior, such as the one invoked in my friend’s statement that, even though no one
had ever explicitly told her so, she felt she was “not allowed” to view films repeatedly.
Practices, insofar as they are regulated behavior, involve an element of discipline. In
this case, one could even talk about a shift in discipline: a shift from the discipline of
not watching films repeatedly to the discipline involved in watching a three-hour films
eight times on video. This shift is quite significant. In fact, as I would like to show in
this essay, my friend’s statement, for all its historical specificity, encapsulates what you
might call the psychological history of repeat viewing. I will argue that for repeat view-
ing to become a widespread cultural phenomenon, certain changes in the institutional
framework of film spectatorship had to occur, but they had to be accompanied by a
change in the discursive framework as well: most notably by the emergence of what I
propose to call the discipline of repeat viewing – or rather, to adopt Francesco Casetti’s
term, by a re-negotiation of a discipline of novelty into a discipline of repeat viewing.
   This piece of anecdotal evidence is relevant also because it points to the method-
ological difficulties a discussion of repeat viewing necessarily entails. The practices of
film reception are always difficult to reconstruct. Like all everyday behavior, spectator
behavior is ephemeral. Where no systematic records of reception activities survive –
and they almost never do –, one has to rely on reviews and other published protocols
of reception (Janet Staiger’s approach),2 or on the traces left of film reception in liter-
ary texts (Yuri Tsivian’s),3 while attendance patterns may also be traced through demo-
graphic data (an approach variously used in studies of the nickelodeon era in New

                                                                                          ­25
VINZENZ HEDIGER

York by Ben Singer, William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, for instance).4
Furthermore, as Janet Staiger reminds us, “the entire history of cinema in every period,
and most likely in every place, witnesses several modes of cinematic address, several
modes of exhibition and several modes of reception.”5 I would like to argue, however,
that it is still possible to describe certain dominant patterns of film viewing for partic-
ular periods, particularly if one takes into account information about both the insti-
tutional and discursive determinants of spectatorship as well as records of actual
observable behavior. Accordingly, in this essay I propose a number of hypotheses
about patterns of repeat viewing based on an account of viewing habits and practices
that draws on a variety of sources. With a particular focus on the situation in North
America, I will try to reconstruct repeat viewing practices based on a discussion of dis-
tribution and exhibition practices as well as on articles published in trade papers and
archive documents specifically dealing with the question of frequency in spectator-
ship. At this point, however, the evidence on which my account is based is preliminary
at best. Far from a comprehensive history of repeat viewing, then, this essay proposes
a first look at the problems of historical research about repeat viewing as much as it
tries to sketch the outlines of a theoretical account of the emergence, or re-negotiation,
of the discipline of repeat viewing.
   How many times, then, does a given spectator usually watch a film? In the classical
Hollywood era, the most likely answer to this question would probably have been “only
once.” Repeat viewing was always an option and was certainly practiced as occasional
traces left in art and literature suggests. Consider Cecilia (Mia Farrow) in Woody Allen’s
Purple Rose of Cairo (Orion 1985) who returns to the same 1930s movie over and over
again until the main character steps down from the screen and into her life, or the pro-
tagonists of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road who spend a night in an all-night movie theater
of the 1940s watching, and sleeping through, the same B-film for hours on end. Repeat
viewing was, however, a practice not favored by a distribution system almost fully
geared to novelty. Up until the early 1940s, film production ran from 500 to 800 films
annually, and films were distributed through a system of runs, zones and clearances
that favored rapid turnovers. Accordingly, films hardly ever stayed on the bill for more
than one week or even a few days. An average film took two years to descend the ladder
of the distribution system, from urban first run in prestigious movie palaces, to lower-
run and rural theaters.6 After their two-year distribution period, most films were with-
drawn and disappeared into the vaults of the studio. The prints were destroyed, and
sometimes even the negative (one of the reasons why only just over ten percent of the
filmic record of the American silent period survives). Easily the best chance an average
film had for an afterlife was to be remade ten years after its original release, but under
a different title. Accordingly, if you didn’t catch a film in its first round of release,
chances were slim that you ever got to see it again.
   One could argue, of course, that the experience of repeat viewing was supplied to
audiences of the classical period through the formulaic and repetitive nature of screen
entertainment. The process of repetition was rather more complex, however. Producers
tended to break successful films down into their component elements and reuse them
in new combinations, or they would try to cash in on a successful film with covert
remakes a few months later.7 To a certain extent, film viewing in the classical era meant
indeed going along with the repetitive rhythms of formulaic entertainment (as, in fact,
it does today). Repeat viewing, however, is something else again.

­26
                                 “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

   What opportunities then, if any, did the moviegoer have for repeat viewing? One
could certainly go to see the film every night (or day) during its run, or one could try to
catch a film again on a lower rung of the distribution system, in a second-run or neigh-
borhood theater. Furthermore, opportunities for repeat viewings during its first period
of release varied according to period, area and type of film. In the so-called silent period,
major productions regularly enjoyed long runs in metropolitan areas. De Mille’s origi-
nal The Ten Commandments ran on Broadway on and off for three calendar years and
a record-breaking total of 62 weeks in the time period between 1923 and 1925.8
Similarly, the Grauman’s Chinese theater in Hollywood showed only three films in its
first full year of operation from March 1927 through February 1928.9 In both cases, the
long runs are partially explained by the fact that movie-palace film showings were
accompanied by elaborate and expensive stage presentations. On par with the most lav-
ish stage shows, these film shows competed with regular theater productions as well as
with films shown in other film theaters. As a result, they followed the same logic of
playing long runs whenever possible.10 With the disappearance of the stage shows in
the sound period, first-run engagements were cut back to a few weeks. In the 1940s, a
six-week premiere engagement in the 6.000-seat Radio City Music Hall in New York, the
world’s largest movie theater, was considered a newsworthy item. Up until 1952, for
instance, only four films had ever had a run of ten weeks at the Music Hall. The record
holder with a run of eleven weeks was MGM’s Random Harvest from 1942.11
   Other than prolonged first runs, re-releases offered the best opportunities for repeat
viewing. Re-releases were quite common throughout the classical period. Even though
they became standard practice in the 1930s, however, they were not a steady feature of
the distribution system as it emerged in the mid-1910s. The distribution system of the
classical period replaced an earlier system in which films were shorter, but had poten-
tially longer life spans. Prior to the mid-1910s, producers and distributors listed their
films in catalogues, and exhibitors booked them according to title or genre. Films usu-
ally stayed in the catalogue as long as prints were available (and sometimes even
longer). In the system established after 1914, feature film producers and distributors
controlled the flow of product and dictated the availability of films and the terms on
which they were available to exhibitors. The focus of the system was on new releases
and big films, which were sold in conjunction with less attractive productions (the
practice of “block booking”).12 The newer and bigger the big films, the better the out-
look for profit: this was the basic formula of the system. Old films held little value in
this system beyond their two-year distribution life span. With its short runs, however,
the system was actually quite wasteful. Films were routinely withdrawn before they
had exhausted their potential audience. A Gallup study from the 1940s recommends
that stars make four films a year, so that their fans get a chance to see them at least once
every year.13 Among other things, this implies that an average film would sometimes
only reach as little as a quarter of its potential audience. Accordingly, producers
thought about ways to better exploit their library of films as early as 1919, when the
Goldwyn studios briefly reverted to the practice of publishing a catalogue of all their
available films, including older ones.14
   Re-releases were a way of addressing the same problem within the confines of the
established system. In normal times, however, re-releases were usually limited to a few
major films, particularly to those that had been box-office successes during their origi-
nal release. The list of such films includes early De Mille and Griffith films15 as well as

                                                                                          ­27
VINZENZ HEDIGER

films such as The Ten Commandments (Paramount 1923, C. B. DeMille), Ben Hur (MGM
1925, F. Niblo), Cimarron (RKO 1930/31, W. Ruggles), and of course Gone with the Wind
(MGM 1939, V. Fleming), which for three decades served as a kind of life insurance for
the distributing studio: whenever MGM was in trouble, it would re-release Gone with
the Wind, always successfully. On occasion, a film would be re-released as an advertise-
ment of sorts for the sequel, as in the case of First National’s Tarzan of the Apes in
1918.16 Furthermore, a film like Birth of a Nation was almost permanently on release
throughout the silent feature period, while Pathé paid half a million dollars for the re-
issue rights to four Chaplin comedies from the teens, exactly the same sum that First
National had paid for the original release rights of the same four films in 1917 (the films
were A Dog’s Life, Shoulder Arms, A Day’s Pleasure and Sunnyside).17 Similarly, RKO
re-released Disney’s Snow White in 1944, seven years after its original release, and man-
aged to obtain a percentage of the box office revenue comparable to that of current A-
films.18 Re-releases were usually marketed to exhibitors at rates significantly below
their original release rates, and sometimes even below the rental rates for B-films. By
contrast, Griffith, Chaplin and Disney belonged to a select group of artists whose films
never lost their value at the box office. As I discuss below, the enduring appeal of the
Disney films even contributed to the emergence of the formerly independent anima-
tion studio as one of the six major global media conglomerates in the 1980s and 1990s.
   In the mid-1930s, re-issues became a standard practice with the introduction of the
double bill.19 Exhibitors feared product shortages, and distributors began to supply
them with older films for the second spot on the bill, which was normally occupied by
a B-film. Since both exhibitors and distributors favored well known, previously suc-
cessful films and particularly costume dramas, the re-release would sometimes end up
in the top position on the theater program.20 In 1934 in particular exhibitors booked re-
releases of major productions for image reasons. Under pressure from the Legion of
Decency, the industry had adopted the production code and was engaged in an effort to
fend off criticisms that it was corrupting the morals of American people with a variety
of public relations initiatives. Among those measures was the production and distribu-
tion of “making of…” short films that highlighted the healthy, orderly and industrial
character of film production in Hollywood studios.21 Re-releases served a similar pur-
pose. Although distributors adamantly denied that they acted on a coordinated plan,
the sudden reappearance of such of high quality films as Cimarron, Flying Down to Rio
(RKO 1932) or Little Women in theaters in 1934 reminded both audiences and the
industry’s critics of what the Hollywood studios thought was the best that they were
capable of in terms of both morals and art.22 Furthermore, in the mid-1930s producers
and distributors began to strike 16mm prints of films that had run their two-year
course of distribution in theaters. These 16mm prints were destined to what in the age
of cable and home video came to be called “ancillary markets:” they were sold to own-
ers of 16mm equipment for home viewing – Universal called their selection of films for
sale the “Home Film Library” –, or they were distributed to non-theatrical venues such
as community centers and churches.23 Occasionally, re-releases gave rise to controver-
sies themselves, albeit only within the industry. In 1935, for instance, some exhibitors
asked distributors to end the practice of the re-release altogether. Small independent
exhibitors had developed a technique of booking old films with popular stars and play-
ing them against the newest film with the same star when it was showing in a compet-
ing theater. Sometimes, the small exhibitors even went so far as to mislead the audience

­28
                                 “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

and advertise the re-release as a new film. Not only did such rogue behavior attract
away part of their competitors’ audience. Since rentals for re-releases were significant-
ly lower than for new releases, the unruly exhibitors also stood to make a nice profit
from their scheme.24
  While the bulk of re-releases were older A-films, re-releases could include more
recent and less exceptional films in times of need. This was the case particularly in the
1940s and during the war years, when the industry output of films dropped by 24%
from 536 in 1940/41 to just below 400 in 1945.25 This drop in production was due to war-
related shortages in personnel and material, as well as to the 1940 anti-trust consent
decree, which outlawed block-booking and forced to studios to produce fewer, but high-
er budgeted films (since every film had to be sold on its own strengths).26 The lack of
suitable films was further exacerbated by the extension of first-runs in metropolitan
theaters, which delayed the arrival of new films in smaller theaters.27 To fulfill the pro-
gramming needs of lower-run theaters in the war years, the distributors would fall back
on their catalogue of already released films and used old A-films to replace the B-films
they no longer produced in sufficient quantity.28 In order to guarantee an adequate sup-
ply of films, studios even temporarily halted their practice of destroying prints after the
standard two-year distribution period.29 While some studios, such as MGM and United
Artists, refrained from re-releasing their films, re-issues were an important source of
income for others, most notably RKO and Columbia. Columbia landed an unexpected
success with the re-release of two Frank Capra films, It Happened One Night and Lost
Horizon in 1943, to the point where the studio had to dig into its limited wartime sup-
ply of raw stock to strike new prints.30 After the war, re-releases kept up, partly because
a significant number of independent exhibitors had entered the field during the
wartime boom years and demanded to be supplied with films.31 Generally speaking, re-
releases continued to stand in for and replace B-films on the distribution schedule, as
they had first done in the 1930s when the double bill was introduced.32 Furthermore,
re-releases in the theater anticipated the broadcasting of old films on television. In 1948,
Paramount-Publix company head Barney Balaban said he would refuse to release
Paramount films to the emerging medium of television because he didn’t want to hurt
the re-release business.33 After long hesitations and negotiations, the studios eventual-
ly released and actually sold their pre-1948 films to TV in the mid- to late 1950s, when
many of the independent exhibitors who formed the primary market for re-releases had
already succumbed to the post-war crisis of the theatrical market.34 Rather than mark-
ing a lasting break, Balaban’s refusal of 1948 points to a continuity: re-release theaters
and television stations were indeed in the market for the same product, and the same
audience. Later on, films such as Wizard of Oz or It’s a Wonderful Life became
American cultural icons mainly through their annual, quasi-ritual re-broadcasting on
Halloween (Wizard of Oz) and Christmas (It’s a Wonderful Life). One could argue that
in both economic and cultural terms, such television broadcasts of old Hollywood films
continued a practice that had already begun to emerge in the cinema of the 1940s.35
  However, this doesn’t mean that the cinemagoers who attended re-releases in the 30s
and 1940s were all repeat viewers. As Yuri Tsivian points out, “in terms of saliency,
reception is related to production as mould to cast.”36 The same could be said for the
relationship between distribution and presentation practices and spectatorship. If the
classical distribution system was almost fully geared to novelty, so were the cinemago-
ers. There are few indications that audiences systematically used the opportunities for

                                                                                          ­29
VINZENZ HEDIGER

repeat viewing that I tried to outline above. Very little information is available about
repeat viewing during long first-run engagements. As for viewing a film repeatedly on
different rungs of the distribution ladder, one has to keep in mind that audiences of the
classical period were to a large extent differentiated according to the price levels of the-
aters. People who were willing to pay high attendance fees to see the film in pristine
print quality on its first engagement in a downtown movie palace were most likely not
in the habit of going to a lower-quality second run house to see the same film again. As
for the re-releases, some evidence suggests that re-releases and return engagements of
major box-office successes were targeted at repeat viewers. During a re-release of Ben
Hur in 1928, one exhibitor in Salt Lake City booked the 1925 MGM production twice in
five weeks for one-week engagements and advertised the film with a special trailer
“stressing the fact that Ben Hur should be seen more than once to give full enjoyment.”
It is important to note, however, that this campaign does not so much reflect an estab-
lished habit of repeat viewing as it indicates that repeat viewing had to be actively
encouraged. Most of the evidence suggests that audiences for return engagements and
re-releases consisted of first time customers and of people who had missed the film on
its first run. In 1918, First National circulated a story in trade papers about an exhibitor
from Mount Vernon in upstate New York who had booked Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms for
three return engagements and sold out his theater for all shows on all four play dates.
He had to bring the film back by popular demand, he claimed in a letter to the distrib-
utor, since patrons who had missed the film on its previous engagements wrote to him
asking for another showing of the Chaplin comedy. Clearly, the distributor fed this
story to the trade papers for business-to-business advertising purposes, in order to
encourage other exhibitors to book the film for similar return engagements. However,
the story also exemplifies the workings of the distribution system. The Mount Vernon
exhibitor only booked the Chaplin film for short runs of two days at a time, and the
return engagements were meant to fully exhaust the potential audience for the film
rather than to generate additional revenue from repeat viewings (although one cannot,
of course, exclude that there were repeat viewers in the audience).37 Interestingly, it
took four engagements to reach the point of saturation.
   The re-release audiences of the 1930s and 1940s were not necessarily repeat viewers,
at least judging by the reports of exhibitors. When re-releases became an important
source of income during the war years, exhibitors and distributors attributed the popu-
larity of the old films to demographic and economic factors. From the boom conditions
of the wartime economy a new audience of juvenile cinemagoers with money to spare
had emerged. Apparently, these avid new cinemagoers wanted to get the most out of
their pocket money and preferred to spend it on the relatively cheap re-releases rather
than on more expensive new films.38
   Even in the 1940s, then, when conditions were more favorable, repeat viewing did not
become a widespread practice among moviegoers in North America. Cultural factors
account for this as well. In early 1942, Gone with the Wind, an exceptional film by any
standard of the industry, was about to enter its third round of release, roughly two and
a half years after its Atlanta premiere. In order to evaluate the remaining revenue poten-
tial of the film, producer David O. Selznick commissioned a series of market research
studies from George Gallup’s Audience Research Institute in Princeton. Selznick was a
pioneer of market research in the film industry. As early as 1939 he used Gallup’s
research methods to test parameters such as audience reaction to the casting of Vivien

­30
                                 “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

Leigh in the main role of Gone with the Wind, and he kept on relying almost entirely on
market research in his production, casting and marketing decisions throughout his
career.39 Not content with the box office results of Gone with the Wind so far, spectacu-
lar and unparalleled in the history of screen entertainment as they may have been,
Selznick was particularly interested in the potential revenue from repeat viewers in the
film’s third round of release. The Gallup reports yielded some interesting results. Among
the major box-office success of the previous three years, Gone with the Wind was the
film with by far the highest revenue potential in re-release.40 As of 10 February 1942,
51,980,000 cinemagoers had seen the film. Roughly 11% of these, an estimated
5,489,000, were repeat viewers. But if these figures looked as if they could be signifi-
cantly improved upon, the potential number of repeat viewers remained relatively lim-
ited nonetheless. Of the third-run audience, Gallup predicted, only 34% would be
repeat viewers.41 This had to be attributed at least in part to an aversion to repeat view-
ing that the Gallup study detected among moviegoers. Apparently, there was a general
attitude that everyone who went to see a film more than once was, as Selznick himself
bluntly phrased it, “something of a booby”(“vegetable” would have been another appro-
priate term).42 Repeat viewing was considered to be regressive behavior not suitable for
grown-ups and self-respecting, mentally healthy moviegoers (a practice for outsiders,
you might add, like Woody Allen’s Cecilia or the heroes of Kerouac’s On the Road). To
the extent that Gallup’s “measurements of desire” are any indication, they suggest that
the discursive frameworks of film viewing in the classical period provided audiences
with a focus on novelty, or a discipline of novelty, which corresponded to a similar focus
in the institutional frameworks. It is at least interesting to note that MGM and United
Artists, two studios known for the high quality of their films, were not willing to join
the re-release business in the 1940s (although MGM had re-released some of the films in
the industry’s image campaign in 1934). Maintaining the notion that the quality of
these studios’ (or anyone’s) films was somehow related to their novelty was obviously
considered to be more important, i.e. more economically valuable in the long run, than
the additional revenue from re-releases.
   Selznick, on the contrary, never one to stick to old formulae when it came to the mar-
keting of his films,43 devised an advertising campaign for Gone with the Wind’s third
round of release that was actually more of an educational campaign meant to alleviate
the audience’s suspected fears of repeat viewing. Selznick’s campaign followed along
similar lines as the campaign organized by the Salt Lake City exhibitor mentioned
above on behalf of Ben Hur in 1928, but it used stronger rhetorical hooks. The theme of
the campaign was established by a quote from Bosley Crowther, film critic of the New
York Times and thus bearer of the highest possible degree of cultural prestige in his pro-
fession. In a review of Gone with the Wind, Crowther wrote that “You have not seen it
unless you have seen it at least twice,” and Selznick planned to use this quote through-
out the campaign. Clearly, this was an attempt to turn the established discipline of nov-
elty on its head: Crowther’s quote implied that at least in the case of Gone with the
Wind single viewings, rather than being a pattern of culturally acceptable behavior,
were actually useless and devoid of cultural value. Furthermore, the campaign would
employ popular stars such as Spencer Tracy as role models and indicate to the audience
how many times these idols of consumption had seen the film.44 Your favorite screen
idols kindly suggest that repeat viewing is OK while the country’s foremost cultural
authority on film steps in to tell you it’s actually mandatory: a strategy that might be

                                                                                          ­31
VINZENZ HEDIGER

characterized as the good cop/bad cop approach to the enforcement of the discipline of
repeat viewing.
   However much, or little, these campaign ideas eventually contributed to the box-
office results of the film, the general trend of the following years was to go in
Selznick’s direction. When MGM was readying Gone with the Wind for yet another re-
release in 1954, market research indicated that there was a potential audience of 20
million viewers. Roughly 5 million were teenagers who were aware of the film but had
never seen it. Fully half of the 20 million were going to be repeat viewers, an improve-
ment of 16% over the 34% of 1943.45 In 1966, ten years after its original release,
Paramount sent The Ten Commandments into re-release. According to a market study
by the A.J. Wood Research Company, more than 60% of those who had originally seen
Cecil B. DeMille’s bible epic, the first film ever to gross $100 Million worldwide, want-
ed to see it again in theaters. Repeat viewers accounted for more than half of the film’s
potential audience.46 By the mid-1960s, repeat viewing was beginning to take hold in
other quarters as well. According to a New York Times report from 1965, audiences at
revivals of Humphrey Bogart films that were described as collegiate and post-colle-
giate by the journalist “shouted the dialogue” throughout the film.47 Obviously, these
audiences were familiar enough with the films through previous viewings to memo-
rize the dialogue.
   In all likelihood, they had gained their familiarity with the film through television
broadcasts, rather than through repeat viewings in the cinema. In the mid to late 1950s,
broadcasts of old Hollywood films became a standard feature of television programs.48
Movies on television were limited to pre-1948 films and to the non-network program-
ming slots of regional television stations that bought the films directly from the com-
panies to which the studios had sold the rights. Television stations in metropolitan
areas such as New York showed more films, and a more diverse selection, than stations
in smaller cities. In New York in the late 1950s, for instance, more than one hundred
films aired each week on different stations, mostly during the daytime or in late-night
slots. Never before, not even at the height of the re-release wave of the 1940s had there
been so many previously released films available to film viewers, let alone in their
homes. One can safely assume that the audiences for these films included numerous
repeat viewers, since the films rotated, which means they were shown once every three
or six months. Meanwhile, the networks limited their film broadcasts to “specials” such
as the annual Wizard of Oz showing on CBS. The networks began broadcasting
Hollywood films in earnest in the early 1960s, with the advent of color television.
Rather than pre-1948 films, the networks showed relatively recent box-office successes,
and they programmed the films in prime-time slots. NBC led the way with “Saturday
Night at the Movies,” a program which kicked off with the network premiere of How to
Marry a Millionaire (TCF 1953) in September 1961. RCA, a pioneer in color television,
owned NBC and used the program to promote sales of color television sets. In 1962,
ABC, third among the three networks in terms of ratings, started its own program with
recent Hollywood films, and finally in 1965/66, CBS joined in as well. The networks’
screenings of films quickly established a new pattern of exhibition for films. Films were
first shown in theaters, then twice on network television (“premiere” and “rerun”),
before they were passed on to local and regional network affiliates and independent sta-
tions for their late-night programs. Screenings of recent Hollywood films were nation-
al events, with nearly 40% of all television sets tuned in when Alfred Hitchcock’s The

­32
                                “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

Birds (Universal 1963) had its network premiere in 1968. Other films such as The Bridge
on the River Kwai (Columbia 1957, D. Lean), shown in 1966, or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(MGM 1958, R. Brooks), shown in 1967, scored similar ratings. Some older films were
even more successful. Gone with the Wind, which had been released to theaters for the
last time in 1972, was shown on television in two parts in 1976. As many as half of all
television sets in the US were tuned in to the film.49
   The changes that occurred in the institutional frameworks of film viewing in the
1960s significantly increased the opportunities for repeat viewing. The breakthrough
to a widespread practice of repeat viewing, however, came in the 1970s. In the early
1970s, midnight movies became a regular feature of cinema programming in metro-
politan areas such as New York. Films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show began to
attract filmgoers who dressed up as the film’s characters and turned the screenings
into parties. Film-going parties were a regular feature of teenage viewing habits in the
1950s and of the New York underground in the 1960s.50 The midnight movie parties of
the 1970s were based on quasi-ritual repeat viewings of the same films, and they
appealed to a somewhat broader audience. With the premiere of Star Wars in 1977, the
habit of repeat viewing in theaters became a common phenomenon . According to
reports, some particularly devoted fans saw the science fiction adventure film more
than a hundred times during its long premiere run in theaters, a phenomenon that
reoccurred in a similar, albeit less pronounced fashion twenty-one years later with
Titanic (TCF/Paramount 1997, J. Cameron).51 Part of the attraction that Star Wars held
for repeat viewers came from the improved sound quality. Star Wars was the first
major film to be released in Dolby stereo. The spectacular sound effects lent the view-
ing experience an entirely new quality, which for many viewers apparently took more
than one screening to exhaust its appeal.52
   Even more instrumental to the entrenchment of the practice of repeat viewing than
theatrical sound was another technological innovation, the VCR. First marketed in the
mid-1970s as a device for “time shifting,” for recording and deferred viewing of televi-
sion programs, the VCR became popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a machine
for watching movies.53 In fact, part of the reason why JVC and Matsushita’s VHS system
rather than Sony’s Beta system became the standard video format was that VHS offered
a recording capacity of two hours as early as 1978, which made it possible to record and
play entire films, while the more expensive Beta system worked with one-hour tapes.
In the 1980s, renting and buying films on video quickly became a standard element of
film viewing practices. The growth of the home video market in the 1980s and 1990s
was nothing short of spectacular. By 1998, 84,6% of TV households in the US also
owned a VCR.54 In the late 1990s, theatrical box office accounted for 25% of the revenue
of an average Hollywood film, while more than 50% came from home video (and later
DVD) rentals and sales.55 Contrary to fears expressed by the Hollywood studios in the
early 1980s, none of this growth came at the expense of the theatrical market. Instead,
the theatrical market itself continued to grow in the last twenty years.
   To an important extent, the rapid growth of the home video market can be attributed
to repeat viewing. The VCR made it possible to rent or buy films one had seen in the-
aters and on television and watch them again at will. Furthermore, with the VCR films
became collectors’ items. As early as the late 1970s, video dealers realized that many of
their customers wanted to own their favorite movies. While collecting films on 16mm
had been a cinephilic activity at least since the 1930s (remember Universal’s “Home

                                                                                         ­33
VINZENZ HEDIGER

Film Library”), film collecting became an industry in the era of home video, a trend that
has become even more pronounced since the introduction of the DVD.56 In the 1990s,
video rentals in the US contracted slightly from $4.4 billion annually in 1992 to $3.9 bil-
lion in 1998. In the same period, video purchases almost doubled from $386.8 million
to 676,3 million, a further indication of the growing importance of both film collecting
and repeat viewing.57
   The company that benefited the most from the home video boom and the new culture
of collecting films was Disney. Home video revenues importantly contributed to
Disney’s growth over the last twenty years from a minor Hollywood studio to one of the
seven largest media corporations in the world. In 1996, for instance, Disney video sales
alone accounted for 35% of the total volume of the so called sell-through market, the
market for purchased videos.58 An important share of this revenue came from the mar-
keting of classic Disney animation films. Video copies of these films were rented and
purchased mostly by families with children and destined for repeat viewings by chil-
dren. While children had always been a core group of customers for the Disney
Corporation, home video allowed Disney to increase its hold on the children’s market.
The success of Disney films on video is largely due to the fact that children are without
doubt among the most avid repeat viewers of films (as they are, and used to be, the most
avid repeat listeners of fairy tales). While children used to go the cinema before, the
enabling technology of the VCR significantly increased the number and extent of
repeat viewings of films by children. If repeat viewing was considered a childish pat-
tern of behavior by audiences of the classical period, it is now to an important extent a
behavior of children indeed.
   Along with the VCR, cable TV emerged as a major outlet for repeat screenings and
viewings of films in the 1970s.59 Cable and pay TV and home video again modified the
patterns of exhibition for films. The theatrical release now constitutes a “showcase” in
which the film is established as a brand, before it is further exploited first in the pay and
cable TV and then in the home video markets. Meanwhile, network TV screenings of
films have become less significant. While in 1980 network fees still accounted for
10.8% of the revenue of an average film, they were down to 1.4% in 1995 (which is part-
ly due to the relative growth of the revenue from cable and video).60
   Our understanding of the institutional framework of repeat viewing would not be
complete, however, without a discussion of another significant shift in the modes of
film presentation that occurred in the 1960s. Up until the 1960s, films were mostly
screened continuously, and movie going was mostly casual. Even in movie palaces of
the silent feature era, where film screenings where accompanied by stage shows, spec-
tators arrived and left at will, and not at specific hours. In 1916, S.L. “Roxy” Rothapfel
(or Rothafel, as he later called himself), then already a famous movie palace impresario
noted for his elaborate stage presentations, rented the Knickerbocker theater on
Broadway and temporarily ran it as a movie theater. While Rothapfel offered the usual
composite programs of short and long films and stage numbers, he also introduced a
new policy of continuous performances.61 After just a few weeks, the owners of the
Knickerbocker, which had previously been a relatively prestigious legitimate theater,
filed a lawsuit against Rothapfel, demanding his eviction on the grounds that he deval-
ued their property by “showing [motion] pictures continuously at popular prices.”62
Continuous shows, the brief stated, were a feature of “third class entertainment” and
should not be associated with the name of the Knickerbocker theater in the public

­34
                                 “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

mind. This lawsuit is significant because it points to an important difference between
the institutions of the theater and the movie palace. As much as Rothapfel and other
movie palace impresarios aimed to make cinema the rival of the legitimate stage: the
institution of the legitimate stage included an entire apparatus of measures of social
control such as dress codes and fixed show times that were not integrated into the pro-
tocols of movie going. Even at its most culturally ambitious, the movie palace remained
a relatively anonymous site of casual entertainment. In the theater, as French theorist
Jean Deprun wrote in an article in 1947, you never escaped the gaze of the social eye,
whereas in the cinema you could.63
   Throughout the classical period, fixed show times and numbered seats existed in the
cinema as well, but they were strictly limited to the so-called “road shows,” the first-run
engagements of certain major productions which were handled like theater perform-
ances on the road. In the 1950s, however, some movie theaters in New York began to
advertise their show times, apparently at the behest of their customers.64 Then, in 1960,
Alfred Hitchcock went on a mission to educate his audience into becoming docile and
disciplined moviegoers. Every single piece of advertising for Psycho included the line
“The Picture You Must See from the Beginning … or Not at All.”65 This was not a hollow
warning. Theaters strictly enforced a policy of making latecomers to wait in line for the
next show. Furthermore, the theater had to be vacated by the audience at the end of
every screening. In the case of Psycho, there were artistic reasons for this change: Janet
Leigh’s star disappearance trick worked only if one saw the film from beginning to end.
Fixed show times and the so-called “fill and spill” technique in which the theater was
emptied after every screening soon became standard practice. “Fill and spill” made sure
that viewers saw the film one time per session and paid for each viewing. Furthermore,
the theater owners considered the long lines of patrons waiting for the next show of
successful films such as The Godfather an additional advertisement for the film.
   Perhaps paradoxically, the shift to fixed show times that assured a practice of single
screenings in the cinema is an important element of the discipline of repeat viewing. As
early as 1971 Stanley Cavell, for whom the pleasure of the continuous movie show was
partly in “enjoying the recognition […] of the return of the exact moment at which one
entered, and from then on feeling free to decide when to leave, or whether to see the
familiar part through again,” deplored the change to fixed show times and considered
it a claim on his privacy.66 Fixed show times reorganized the relationship between film
and spectator. Rather than a “text in itself,” the film now appeared as a “text for me,” as
Yuri Tsivian points out.67 The fixation on the individual film and, if you will, the sys-
tematic personalization of the relationship between film and spectator is one of the cru-
cial features of the framework of film viewing that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
Even though they may not be the dominant overall pattern of film consumption, film
collecting and the individual’s repeat viewing of his or her favorite films on video best
epitomize this new system.
   On an economic level, both the individualization of the film and the personalization
of the relationship between film and spectator function to improve the efficiency of
film marketing. On the occasion of the premiere of The Godfather in 1972, Charles O.
Glenn, Paramount’s head of advertising, could still claim that “in fact, the average life
of a motion picture is 16 months, through all of its releases, worldwide.”68 The devel-
opment of the home video market, first driven by independent video store owners, but
soon brought back under the corporate control of the major Hollywood studios, poten-

                                                                                          ­35
VINZENZ HEDIGER

tially extended the life span of Hollywood films ad infinitum. The Godfather continues
to do excellent business in video rentals and sales on DVD to this day. Furthermore, cou-
pled with the introduction of the wide release in film distribution in the mid-1970s,
through which distributors make new films available to all cinema goers in the first
week of release with several thousand prints, the development of the home video mar-
ket has significantly improved the chances for a film to reach its entire potential audi-
ence. David O. Selznick wanted to enhance the market penetration of his films and
compensate for the overall lack of efficiency of the classical distribution system when
he devised his campaign in favor of repeat viewing. The changes in the framework of
film viewing that brought about the current discipline of repeat viewing represent a
solution to those problems.
   On a social level, the personalization of the relationship between spectator and film
is intertwined with a privatization of film viewing. With television, and even more so
with the VCR, film viewing turns from an activity conducted in public spaces to one
confined to the privacy of the home. This privatization of media consumption can be
read in different ways. One the one hand, it may be seen as an intrusion of the culture
industry into the last recesses of one’s private existence, and thus as an elision of the
boundary between the private and the public (or yet another claim on one’s privacy).
This was Adorno’s reading of television in 1953.69 In the particular case of home video,
one could argue that the privatization of film viewing further contributes to a com-
modification of the film experience. With regard to the promotional narratives of the
“making of…” films that accompany every major film release, Barbara Klinger argues
that these “mini narratives … encourage the spectator to internalize the phenomena of
the film by becoming an expert in its behind-the scenes history or by identifying the
subject matter of a film with his or her own experience.”70 From this standpoint, the
“bonus materials” on DVDs such as “making of…,” trailers and interviews may be seen
as a crucial factor in the process I propose to call the personalization of the relationship
between film and spectator: They constitute a ready-made opportunity for the view-
er/owner to further intensify his or her engagement with a film, particularly as the
viewer watches the film in the privacy, or “privacy,” of his or her home.
   On the other hand, the VCR and the DVD player allow the viewer to recuperate
some of the freedom lost in the introduction of fixed show times in the cinema, and
gain additional liberties into the bargain. When Goldwyn tried to revive the use of the
film catalogue in 1919, one trade paper claimed that films would now be available like
books: “The best product of each company will remain in demand,” the Moving
Picture World wrote, “just as published fiction appears and either takes its place on
the shelves or falls into the obscurity it deserves because of its lack of merit.”71 In a
similar fashion, Alexandre Astruc envisioned the library of the future in his 1948
essay “Naissance d’une nouvelle avantgarde: la caméra-stylo:” “Le jour n’est pas loin
où chacun aura chez lui des appareils de projection et ira louer chez le libraire du coin
des films écrits sur n’importe quel sujet, de n’importe quelle forme.”72 Astruc’s utopie
du film-livre has become a reality with the introduction of home video: viewers can
now select and view films almost at will, indeed as one would select a book from a
library or a bookstore. Apart from contributing to a commodification of the film expe-
rience, then, the privatization of film viewing also represents an increase of what
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann calls the “individuality of the individual:” an
increase in the possibilities available to the individual to express and experience his

­36
                                 “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

or her individuality.73
  And finally, there is the question of ritual. In his essay on the work of art in the age of
mechanical reproduction, Walter Benjamin argued that mechanical reproduction eman-
cipates the work of art from its dependence on ritual. Where the work of art used to be
an auratic object for concentrated and attentive contemplation, mechanical reproduc-
tion has created a new regime of engagement with art that is characterized by distraction
rather than contemplation, and where the full appreciation of art is not limited to the
authority of a few priest-like experts, but where everyone becomes an expert – a change
best exemplified, indeed, by the new medium of film and its urban audiences. It remains
highly debatable whether technological change alone, as Benjamin suggests, can bring
about a new regime of perception, or whether it is not rather a new regime of perception
that favors the development and employment of certain technologies.74 Furthermore,
not everyone agrees that cinema as an instance of mechanically reproduced art emanci-
pates art from ritual. Jean Deprun, for instance, holds that, on the contrary, cinema reat-
taches art to religious ritual while the bourgeois institution of the theater marks a break
with, or rather a betrayal of the ritual nature of spectacle.75 In a similar vein, but with a
different historical perspective, Dudley Andrew argues that cinema constitutes a social
ritual, but one that is undermined by the introduction of television since home viewing
leads to a particularization of the audience.76 Perhaps paradoxically, one could lend fur-
ther support to Andrew’s claim that cinema is, and remains, a social ritual by arguing
that only with the help of television does cinema truly become a collective ritual. From
1975 and Jaws onwards, network television advertising campaigns for films have formed
the basis of the wide release distribution pattern, and they have consistently contributed
to focus the audience’s attention on individual films on the occasion of their premiere to
a degree not heretofore known in the history of cinema (with the possible exception of
the premiere of Gone with the Wind).
  Whatever the status of cinema as a social ritual, however, there is no doubt that the
discipline of repeat viewing constitutes a regime of engagement with mechanically
reproduced art that is not characterized by distraction, but rather, by concentrated con-
templation, as in the case of the archaeologist who watches films repeatedly in order to
fully appreciate them in their various aspects as works of art. Repeat viewers are experts
in Benjamin’s sense, but they are also concentrated and not distracted viewers.
Furthermore, repeat viewing represents a form of engagement with art that is in itself
a kind of ritual: a secularized ritual based on fun, or a ritualization of fun. The ritual of
repeat viewing differs from Benjamin’s and Deprun’s (or Andrew’s) notions of ritual in
that it is a highly individualized and personalized ritual. At the same time, repeat view-
ing, formerly a behavior typical of “boobies,” is now a ritual shared by large numbers of
people, indeed by a mass audience, and it is often practiced in groups.77 Repeat viewing
has become a deeply entrenched collective celebration of the individuality of the indi-
vidual, based on media consumption and centered on the surplus of meaning that the
personalized relationship to the film offers to the spectator.
  “But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic pro-
duction,” Benjamin argues, “the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based
on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.” As I have tried to argue in
this essay, the politics of the ritualized fun of repeat viewing are to be located on differ-
ent levels: the level of institutional frameworks, the level of discursive frameworks, and
the level of actual behavior. In order to grasp what is at stake in repeat viewing, one has

                                                                                          ­37
VINZENZ HEDIGER

to understand repeat viewing as a discipline articulated on all three of those levels. As
my analysis suggests, the politics of repeat viewing are ambivalent. Repeat viewing, as
it is now practiced, includes a strong element of both economic and behavioral disci-
pline in a Foucauldian sense, as well as some liberating aspects. In order to fully under-
stand how these seemingly contradictory tendencies interact, one has to write a more
comprehensive history of the discipline of repeat viewing, a history that investigates,
among other things, how repeat viewing breaks down along gender lines. As I have also
tried to show, this work still largely remains to be done.



1 Janet Staiger, Perverse Spectators. The Practices of Film Reception (New York: New York
   University Press, 2000), p. 162.
2 Janet Staiger, Interpreting Films. Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema
   (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
3 Yuri Tsivian, Early Cinema in Russia and Its Historical Reception (Chicago: Chicago
   University Press, 1996).
4 Cf. among others: “New York? New York!: William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson comment
   on the Singer-Allen Exchange,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 36, no. 4 (Summer 1997), pp. 98-102; Ben
   Singer, Melodrama and Modernity. Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York:
   Columbia University Press, 2000), chapter 6.
5 Janet Staiger, “Writing the History of American Film Reception,” in Richard Maltby, Melvin
   Stokes (eds.), Hollywood Spectatorship. Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences
   (London: BFI, 2001), p. 19. As Staiger argues in this essay, reception practices obviously
   include activities beyond the interaction of spectator and film text, such as talking and read-
   ing about films, film location tourism, naming children after film stars etc.
6 Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures. A History of Movie Presentation in the United States
   (London: BFI, 1992), pp. 57-82.
7 Cf. for an analysis of this process Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), chapter 3. A
   good example for a covert remake is Comrade X (MGM 1940, K. Vidor), a follow up to Ernst
   Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (MGM 1939).
8 “DeMille Film Smashes Record With 62 Weeks’ Run,” Exhibitors Herald, Vol. XX, no. 10
   (February 28, 1925), p. 34.
9 “Film Producers Get Grauman’s Advice First,” Exhibitor’s Herald and Moving Picture World,
   Vol. 90., no. 8 (February 25, 1928), p. 34-35.
10 Cf. Vinzenz Hediger, “Putting the Spectators in a Receptive Mood,” in Veronica Innocenti,
   Valentina Re (eds.), Limina. Le soglie del film/Limina. The Film’s Thresholds (Udine: Forum,
   2004), pp. 291-304.
11 “$538,000 for Miniver,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 148, no. 2 (July 11, 1942), p. 8; “Random
   Joins 6-Week Films at Music Hall,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 150, no. 4 (January 23, 1943),
   p. 32; “‘DeMille’s Show’ Enters 10th Week at Music Hall,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 186, no.
   11 (March 15, 1952), p. 3.
12 For recent studies of the emergence of the classical system of distribution cf. Michael Quinn,
   “Paramount and Early Feature Distribution, 1914-1921,” Film History, Vol. 11, no. 1 (1999), pp.
   98-113; Michael Quinn, “Distribution, the Transient Audience, and the Transition to the
   Feature Film,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 40, no. 2 (Winter 2001), pp. 35-56.
13 Audience Research Institute, Report 150, 1 April 1942. Selznick Archives, Harry Ransom

­38
                                     “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

   Center for the Study of the Humanities, University of Texas, Austin, box 3562, folder 2.
14 “Goldwyn Revives Use of Catalogue,” Moving Picture World, Vol. 40, no. 12 (June 21, 1919), p.
   1783.
15 “Distributing Companies Seeking Longer Exhibition Life for Film,” Exhibitor’s Herald, Vol.
   14, no. 14 (April 1, 1922), p. 61.
16 “Second ‘Tarzan’ Story Permits Exhibitors to Book or Repeat Original Film to Popularize the
   Sequel,” Exhibitor’s Trade Review, Vol. 4., no. 17 (September 28, 1918), p. 1397.
17 “Chaplin Reissues Bought by Pathé for Half Million,” Exhibitors Herald, Vol. 23, no. 3
   (October 10, 1925), p. 30.
18 “Exhibs Balk at Reissues, Claim Curb on New Pictures,” Variety, Vol. 154, no. 8 (May 3, 1944), p. 3.
19 “Marked Trend Toward Reissues and Repeats,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 124, no. 13
   (September 26, 1936), p. 13. For a discussion of double features and the reasons for their intro-
   duction in the 30s cf. D. Gomery, op. cit., pp. 77-79.
20 “Films Become ‘Classics’. Revivals Have B.O. Longevity,” Variety, Vol. 119, no. 11 (September 4,
   1935), p. 5.
21 Cf. Vinzenz Hediger, Verführung zum Film. Der amerikanische Kinotrailer seit 1912
   (Marburg: Schüren 2001), pp. 133-137.
22 “No Concerted Idea Behind Revivals,” Variety, Vol. 115, no. 6 (July 24, 1934), p. 6.
23 Cf. “Extra Gravy from 16mm. Cutting Down 2 Year Old Films,” Variety, Vol. 117, no. 13 (March
   3, 1935), p. 23. As early as the 1910s, the Hollywood studios tried to use small-gauge home cin-
   ema to promote their image as a healthy, family-friendly industry. Cf. Moya Luckett,
   “‘Filming the Family.’ Home Movie Systems and the Domestication of Spectatorship,” Velvet
   Light Trap, no. 36 (1995), pp. 21-36. Starting in 1922, Pathé offered a wide variety of films for
   home viewing on their 9,5-mm amateur format, including Chaplin films and Fritz Lang’s
   Metropolis. Cf. Vincent Pinel, “‘Le Salon, la chambre d’enfant et la salle de village’. Les for-
   mats Pathé,” in Pathé: Premier empire du cinéma (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1994), pp. 196-217.
   Both the home viewing market and the parallel circuits merit further study, particularly with
   regard to the question of repeat viewing.
24 “Shoestring Exhibits Playing Oldie Revivals Have Everybody Squawking,” Variety, Vol. 117,
   no. 2 (December 25, 1934), p. 21; “Film Reissue Practice Seen as an Evil to be Curbed Next
   Season,” Variety, Vol. 118, no. 3 (April 3, 1935), p. 4.
25 “Features Down 24% in Five Years; War Changes Release Patterns,” Motion Picture Herald,
   Vol. 159, no. 13 (June 30, 1945), p. 16.
26 Michael Conant, Anti-Trust in the Motion Picture Industry (Berkeley: University of
   California Press, 1960), p. 36.
27 “Cycle of Reissues and Repeat Dates Due to Extended Runs of Newer Pix,” Variety, Vol. 151, no.
   12 (September 1, 1943), p. 11.
28 Cf. for instance “RKO, N.Y., Sets 3d Reissue Package,” Variety, Vol. 152, no. 8 (November 3,
   1943), p. 5.
29 “Nix 44 Reissues, Repeates. See Protection for the Future,” Variety, Vol. 153, no. 2 (December
   22, 1943), p. 9.
30 “Surprise B.O. of Reissues Eating Up a Lot of Raw Picture Stock,” Variety, Vol 152, no. 2
   (September 22, 1943), p. 9.
31 “Reissues a Postwar Headache. Industry Sees ‘Squeeze Play’,” Variety, Vol. 160, no. 3
   (September 26, 1945), p. 9; “Reissues Still Keep to Wartime Peak in Boff Sales; Repeat Bookings
   Spurt,” Variety, Vol. 161, no. 10 (February 13, 1946), p. 7-13.
32 “Reissue Balloon Deflates B’s. Exhibits Prefer Buying Oldies,” Variety, Vol. 170, no. 13 (June 2,

                                                                                                    ­39
VINZENZ HEDIGER

   1948), p. 5.
33 “TV Hurts Reissues – Balaban. Hence No Par Pix on Video,” Variety, Vol. 170, no. 10 (May 12,
   1948), p. 9-22.
34 For a detailed account of this process cf. D. Gomery, op. cit., pp. 247 passim.
35 Similarly, television series such as Bonanza replaced the action and adventure serials of old,
   the last of which, Columbia’s Blazing the Overland Trail, was released to theaters in 1953.
36 Y. Tsivian, op. cit., p. 178.
37 “Shoulder Arms For Fourth Time,” Exhibitor’s Trade Review, Vol. 5, no. 4 (December 21, 1918),
   p. 218. For a discussion of the distributors’ manipulation of trade paper reports for business-
   to-business advertising purposes cf. also David B. Pratt, “Fit Food For Madhouse Inmates. The
   Box Office Reception of the German Invasion of 1921,” Griffithiana, no. 48-49 (October 1993),
   pp. 97-157.
38 “New Audience, Chiefly Kids with Fresh Defense Coin, Hypo Reissue B.O.,” Variety, Vol. 152,
   no. 7 (October 27, 1943), p. 7.
39 Memo from Victor M. Shapiro to David O. Selznick, 18 February 1939. Selznick Archives, fold-
   er 3562 1. For a detailed account of Gallup’s activities in Hollywood cf.: Suzanne Ohmer,
   “Measuring Desire. George Gallup and Audience Research in Hollywood,” Journal of Film and
   Video, Vol. 43, no. 1/2 (1991), pp. 3-28. For a survey of film audience research up to the late
   1940s cf. Leo Handel, Hollywood Looks at its Audience. A Report of Film Audience Research
   (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1950).
40 Audience Research Institute Report, 25 June 1942, Selznick Archives, box 3562, folder 1.
41 Audience Research Institute Report, 19 February 1942. Selznick Archives, box 3562, folder 1.
42 Memo from David O. Selznick to Louis Calvert, 31 March 1942. Selznick Archives, box 177,
   folder 6.
43 At one point in 1939, Selznick developed plans to release Gone with the Wind simultane-
   ously with 600 prints in order to benefit as much as possible from the national advertising
   campaign for the film. This was at a time when films premiered with just a handful of
   prints, and when there were never more than 300 prints of any given film in circulation. In
   1947, Selznick set up his own distribution unit, Selznick Releasing Organisation, to release
   Duel in the Sun with 300 prints simultaneously in the New York area. He thus anticipated
   the wide release, which is the standard of Hollywood film distribution since the mid-1970s,
   by almost thirty years. Cf. Vinzenz Hediger, “Le cinéma Hollywoodien et la construction
   d’un public mondialisé. Quelques notes sur l’histoire récente de la distribution de films,” in
   Jean-Pierre Esquenazi (ed.), Cinéma contemporain. État des lieux (Paris: L’Harmattan, forth-
   coming).
44 Memo from David O. Selznick to Louis Calvert, 20 April 1942. Selznick Archives, box 182,
   folder 10.
45 “Claims Teens Anxious to See Wind,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 195, no. 11 (June 12, 1954),
   p. 31.
46 “Ten Commandments Re-release,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 235, no. 14 (April 13, 1966), p.
   3.
47 Quoted in Janet Staiger, “Writing the History of American Film Reception,” in R. Maltby, M.
   Stokes (eds.), op. cit, p. 24.
48 In the early 1950s, television stations showed B-films from minor Hollywood studios and for-
   eign films rather than Hollywood films. This is how Martin Scorsese first came in touch with
   Italian neo-realism as a child, by the way: through American television broadcasts of subti-
   tled versions in the early 1950s. Cf. David Thompson, Ian Christie (eds.), Scorsese on Scorsese

­40
                                   “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT AT LEAST TWICE”

   (London: Faber and Faber, 1989 ).
49 D. Gomery, op. cit., pp. 248-250.
50 J. Staiger, “Writing the History of American Film Reception”, cit., p. 22.
51 Olen J. Earnest, “Star Wars. A Case Study of Motion Picture Marketing,” in Bruce A. Austin
   (ed.), Current Research in Film. Audiences, Economics and Law, Vol. 1 (Norwood, NJ: Ablex,
   1985), pp. 1-18.
52 Cf. Barbara Flückiger, Sound Design. Die virtuelle Klangwelt des Films (Marburg: Schüren
   2001), pp. 50-53.
53 For a comprehensive account of the development and introduction of the VCR and
   Hollywood’s reaction to the new technology cf. James Lardner, Fast Forward. Hollywood, the
   Japanese and the VCR Wars (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987). Cf. also Janet Wasko, Hollywood
   in the Information Age (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 113-170.
54 Benjamin Compaine, Douglas Gomery, Who Owns the Media? Competition and
   Concentration in the Mass Media Industry (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlenbaum Associates,
   2000), p. 417.
55 Cf. Harold Vogel, Entertainment Industry Economics, 4th Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge
   University Press, 1998), p. 55.
56 Cf. Barbara Klinger, “The Contemporary Cinephile. Film Collecting in the Post-Video Era,” in
   Richard Maltby, Melvin Stokes (eds.), op. cit., pp. 132-151.
57 B. Compaine, D. Gomery, op. cit., p. 412.
58 Ibid., p. 416.
59 For an account of the emergence of cable TV cf. J. Wasko, op. cit., pp. 71-112; for the current
   state of the industry cf. B. Compaine, D. Gomery, op. cit., pp. 406-411.
60 H. Vogel, op. cit., p. 55.
61 “Rothapfel Opens Knickerbocker,” Moving Picture World, Vol. 27, no. 4 (January 22, 1916), p.
   571.
62 “Knickerbocker vs. Triangle,” Moving Picture World, Vol. 27, no. 7 (February 19, 1916), p.
   1103.
63 Jean Deprun, “Cinéma et idéntification,” Revue internationale de filmologie, Vol. 1, no. 1
   (July-August 1947), pp. 36-38. Trans. by Annabelle J. de Croÿ in
   http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/classics/cl0499/jdcl1.htm
64 “RKO Theatres Advertise Starting Time of Shows,” Motion Picture Herald, Vol. 202, no. 1
   (January 7, 1956), p. 17.
65 For a discussion of this campaign cf. also Linda Williams, “Discipline and Fun: Psycho and
   Postmodern Cinema,” in Christine Gledhill, Linda Williams (eds.), Reinventing Film Studies
   (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 363 passim.
66 Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of Film (New York: Viking,
   1971), p. 11.
67 Y. Tsivian, op. cit., p. 39.
68 “Celebration Of Success: Sales promo Exec Assn. Hears About Godfather,” Variety (May 24,
   1972), p. 4.
69 Theodor W. Adorno, “Prolog zum Fernsehen,” in Gesammelte Schriften, B. 10.2 (Frankfurt/M:
   Suhrkamp 1997).
70 Barbara Klinger, “Digressions at the Cinema: Commodification and Reception in Mass
   Culture,” in James Naremore, Patrick Brantlinger (eds.), Modernity and Mass Culture
   (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 132.
71 “Goldwyn Revives Use of Catalogue,” cit.

                                                                                               ­41
VINZENZ HEDIGER

72 Alexandre Astruc, “Naissance d’une nouvelle avantgarde: la caméra-stylo,” in Du Stylo à la
   caméra… et de la caméra au stylo (Paris: Archipel, 1992), p. 325.
73 Cf. also Stefan Rieger, Die Individualität der Medien (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 12
   passim.
74 As Jacques Rancière points out, the enduring success of Benjamin’s theses among critical the-
   orists has to do with the fact that they are compatible with both Marxist materialist positions
   and Heideggerian ontology, or rather that they permit the passage from one paradigm to the
   other, in that they suggest that modernity is essentially about the deployment of the essence
   of technology. Cf. Jacques Rancière, Le Partage du sensible. Esthétique et politique (Paris: La
   fabrique, 2000), pp. 47-48.
75 J. Deprun, op. cit.
76 Dudley Andrew, “Film and Society: Public Ritual and Private Space,” in Ina Rae Hark (ed.),
   Exhibition. The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 161-171.
77 Interestingly, representations of repeat viewing in films usually are of groups of viewers.
   Nanni Moretti’s Palombella Rossa (Sacher 1989) comes to mind, where the protagonist
   Michele Apicella abandons a water polo game to watch the ending of Dr. Zhivago for what is
   clearly not the first time together with an audience in the stadium bar, or Nora Ephron’s
   Sleepless in Seattle (TCF 1993), where a group of female friends watch An Affair to Remember
   (TCF 1957, L. McCarey), the 1950s tearjerker of which Ephron’s romantic comedy is a covert
   remake of sorts.




­42
