I was under the impression The Searchers received generally favorable reviews but was considered par for the course for John Ford–an entertaining western but nothing truly special like his Oscar-winning efforts (e.g., The Grapes of Wrath or The Quiet Man).
For a video game example, according to metacritic the 3rd Highest Rated Game of All Time based on critic reviews is “Grand Theft Auto IV” released in 2008.
When the 10 year anniversary hit and critics started to rereview it, most reviews were very critical of it and nowadays it’s more of a punchline than held in revere like it’s PS2 predecessors.
One data point does not an argument make, but if it makes you feel any better, when I was an English lit undergrad in the late '90s, Being There was assigned reading. I don’t know who the hell Jim Thompson is.
That review was typically pathetic, even for RS.
I would submit Their Satanic Majesties Request as having undergone even more of a critical reappraisal. At the time (1967?) it was dismissed as an imitation of Sgt. Pepper. Hindsight has proven that not to be the case.
I didn’t see it when it was in the theaters, but when I did see it several years later, I understood why so many people didn’t like it, which was why I didn’t pay money to see it while it was in cinematic release.
I loved it, but yeah, the reason so many people didn’t like it was because they were LIVING it.
He was also lauded.
Then maybe it should be included because, as racist as the story is, it’s difficult for a film critic today to deny the importance of its role in cementing film grammar and technique. Critics in 1915 might not have been able to wrap their heads around that aspect without any context.
In this regard, you could also include Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I wouldn’t say the critical response has changed much.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was extremely popular as a novelist in his own lifetime.
How about Labyrinth, the David Bowie movie?
Computer Games are different, especially PC ones. They run like crap until the hardware picked up. I gave up on GTA IV on the PC, the driving was horrible except on the top end video cards. Five years later when I played it, it played ok. Game was ok.
I always thought III, Vice City and Andreas were the big classics of the GTA franchise. It’s perhaps miscreditation, such as Star Wars getting all the credit, when the best movie was very much more Empire Strikes Back.
There’s definitely been a reappraisal of it.
The music of the Carpenters, with a focus on Karen Carpenter’s singing. I was just a kid when they were first popular, but I can remember how older kids and young adults thought they were the dullest thing imaginable. A review I can’t find at the moment (in Rolling Stone I think) of a live show spent more time criticizing their clothes and haircuts than than the performance. In High Weirdness by Mail, the Subgenius Church founder Ivan Stang listed a Karen Carpenter fan club as one of the nut groups, marveling that “these people (were) serious, trying to convince us that ‘Skinny’ was the greatest singer of all time”. The Carpenters image as perfectly content youngsters (in contrast with the anger of much of the era’s music) seemed to make critics overlook the depth and suffering beneath some of their best material, which got another look following Karen’s sad death. As Johnny Marr put it (not the British musician, but the California author of the zine “Murder Can Be Fun”), “‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ never sounded the same again”.
I don’t know much about art, but her musical performances still make me cringe. But don’t take my word, take Chuck’s.
Jack Kerouac’s On The Road was initially dismissed as “beatnik drivel.” In his initial Annotated Alice, Martin Gardner referred to it as “Jack Kerouac’s Forgettable novel.”
So forgetable people still talk about it 70 years later.
My father was very surprised, and somewhat chagrined, that I never read The Song of Hiawatha. When he was in high school and college (1930s), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the giant figures in American literature, and “Paul Revere’s Ride” and The Song of Hiawatha were required reading for every student.
When I was in high school and college (1980s), Longfellow was marginal. We were expected to know the name, but I don’t think we were required to read any of his works. “Paul Revere’s Ride” was a footnote, and The Song of Hiawatha had gone down the Memory Hole.
In 1997, there was a TV movie of the story, with all of the major roles played by Native American actors. Russell Means played Hiawatha’s father. Which leads me to believe that actual Native Americans don’t hate the poem as much as white political activists think they should.
I’m familiar with the opening of Hiawatha, because a) my grandfather had a copy which I think I read parts of, b) I’ve heard the parody (The Modern Hiawatha - Collection at Bartleby.com), and most importantly c) in an episode of “I Love Lucy” Lucy repeatedly recites the opening of the poem (which she memorized in high school, about the time your father was in high school, probably).
I can say with absolute confidence that every artist and work of art mentioned in this thread was lauded by someone. What’s your point?
Two words: Bob Dylan. From folk music iconoclast to Nobel Prize winner.
You can’t get a bigger reappraisal than that.
I think Warhol is sort of in the declining end of the fame bell curve: the summit is when they’re so popular you can’t get away from an artist or work, so everyone is forced to have an opinion on it, so ironically, at the peak, they seem to be pretty unpopular because people who don’t like them get tired of them. Nowadays, people are more likely to be exposed to Warhol if they are already inclined to be positive.
Actually, what you probably think of as the opening of The Song of Hiawatha isn’t. That “By the shores of Gitchee-goomi” part comes well into the poem, which is itself pretty long – it’s book-length. People who think they had to read all of The Song of Hiawatha in school have almost certainly only read a relatively short excerpt from it.
Here’s how it really begins: