8 Small Details You Only Notice Rewatching Donnie Darko
4. "Cellar Door"
Once you've completed an initial viewing, and ironed out some of the weirdness, rewatching Donnie Darko gives viewers the opportunity to appreciate some of the more tempered highlights.
One scene that stands out is the classroom sequence where Drew Barrymore's Karen Pomeroy explains to Donnie why she has written the words "Cellar Door." She responds:
"This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that Cellar Door is the most beautiful."
If you are having your rewatch accompanied by the director's commentary, Richard Kelly cites the quote as being said by Edgar Allen Poe. However, its lineage is not so clear. It is often attributed to J. R. R. Tolkien, who made the observation in his 1955 essay "English and Welsh":
"Most English-speaking people ... will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful."
The earliest known use of the aphorism is in Cyrus Hooper's 1903 novel Gee Boy. Yet, even here it hints at an alternative previous source.