Lec 4 MIT 24.213 Philosophy of Film

they of what moviemaking his life one thing we're mentioning Evans of Anderson you didn't the second time because this won't be no I want to jump that into my thoughts about about Wells I was struck by a sort of a pessimistic message that he acted on in both Citizen Kane and magnificent Emerson's and I've put it out in your in your reading the characters all seem to deal with something about the past and but the message isn't isn't the optimistic sort of like life is short like no enjoy it and it's more that the past is no good to us that we can't rekindle the past we can't have it back it's gone it's dead and the movies well at least the initial version of the Magnificent Ambersons didn't have a happy ending and alterations were done that sort of pleased the audience I mean it was happier I get you'll find that out today I haven't seen it yet and the pessimism sort of surprised me so I I guess I spent some time looking for sort of a deeper positive message in the documentary well he mentions that he doesn't like watching other other people's films and I thought that was really interesting and sort of telling me and he says that it restricts his future work he feels like it sort of takes away his innocence as a filmmaker and then it also in the reading he mentions that he doesn't believe that you need you need any film knowledge to make a good movie then you just need an understanding of culture and of human history talks about having holding up a mirror to nature that's all you really need but at the end of that piece also says a mirror is only America it's your understanding and curiosity about the world at large that's essential over and above the techniques that you get you have to have in order to make a film so that's the element of meaning supplementing technique which he was very sensitive to so so the pessimistic view I read on it is almost as if you saying that you don't want to grow up you don't want to learn the rules of filmmaking or society but if you can maintain your innocence you'll sort of never die you'll never you'll never have regrets in the in the movies in films the characters discipline age and they die there's a there's a scene in the Magnificent Ambersons war is that a newspaper headline an assessment automobile casualties now instead of a representation of the automobile wrecking society like technology is moving forward and yet something about the aristocratic society is dying in some sense and in this sense it's not a not a positive message but there's something powerful in it something about human nature like that that is the way like this like we do dies okay that maybe didn't direct two things first the idea that the young Bennifer should be wrecked physically by an automobile has an ironic place within the structure of the narrative because all of the troubles come out of the time when he prevents his mother from marrying the automobile manufacturer they've got to know if you remember that much from the documentary last week what you saw was the scene in which George the bully George Bennifer says I think automobiles should never have been invented they are a big mistake and the the automaker played by Joseph Cotten says well maybe you're right but there's no stopping them they're going to cover the land and well what happens in the narrative there's no stopping them and then after the Georges and the whole family are destroyed financially he gets hit by a car and it's sort of said the machine is taking its revenge is kind of irony in that but it's all part of the picture of American reality the second point I want to make is more pervasive that goes beyond Magnificent Ambersons of what the IDI was saying about a Wells's outlook not being optimistic if anything pessimistic in a sense but he's pessimistic in the way in which a great pessimist philosopher would be and what I thought of at that moment was Chopin era the 19th century chairman philosopher who thought that life is meaningless there are there are no gods there is no Christian God everything is controlled simply by energy of a material sort which is the will because it's just energy force in nature but it doesn't have any intelligence and we are simply products of that very pessimistic negativistic view about the world we live in and which ideals are reduced to to matter and matter makes no sense right Nietzsche grew up with Schopenhauer and aware and philosophy his first books were a great deal about Schopenhauer and as he got older he rejected him and said what one has to do is not to say no to nature in the negative way that Schopenhauer does but to say yes and pursue ideals even if the world doesn't make sense in the traditional religion so that you get this contrast between a kind of pessimism at Schopenhauer and a kind of negativism in nature Schopenhauer lived - what was that a ripe old age and he had a pleasant their life Nietzsche lost his mind as faculties at least fairly early in his late 40s and had a miserable life until then because there's always had illnesses on which might have been psychosomatic yes so that he was the optimist and the one who lived well was the pessimist at more in one place Nietzsche said I'll get to the point of our worlds in just a second well nature said Schopenhauer called himself a pessimist but but he lived the good life played the flute in the evening he ate well the modern kind of thing the modern world is destroying the same theme as the Magnificent Ambersons and then at the end of this little pessimistic remark you says we're all going to die everything will turn into ash there will be nothing eventually but what of it the sing-sing as long as you can in other words the artist surmounts the negativism in reality by means of his art and so he ends up with this very optimistic point of view I think that is relevant here too I if you asked him our people are gonna go mad or a loose heart because of the theme of magnificent Amberson particularly the way who else presented it he'll say no it's the work of art I find it exhilarating so if you're an artist you can always have a happy life dedicating yourself to your art now if you extend that to science and to practice and whatever is your pursuit of life life will become meaningful as a function of your pursuit rather than your expecting some objective validation because the world is what the traditional or particularly traditional religious view said it was what it is suggested that the invention is worthless he makes a great it's a really great line and he talks about how it's true that automobiles carry people forward but really you Society might actually be moving backwards then there's another point now I think we might have seen it in the clip in the documentary about I think wells is narrated I mean he talks about how back before you know the 19th century the late 19th century people had time for everything I mean then that automobile comes along and people are getting everywhere faster but in fact they had less time for everything well you saw a clip about that in the biography remember the documentary it actually sort of struck me like that that certain message certain timeless and I think of a computer now people always if said I don't know save us time I think that's a bit of nostalgia in wells usually is not that was the point in that discussion in my chapter of him about comparing him to Houstons film the dead Hewson fill was filled with sentimentality and nostalgic world's generally avoids that the way the way James Joyce does but I think this would be one counter instance in which he is nostalgic so I was a little confused as to what well skewing wasn't that so I guess sort of but I thought the positive message that I ended up just feeling as I thought about this for a while sort of what you were saying that from from the sort of pessimistic idea society that we all died can't have the past I mean if you can sort of come to rid the realization that you don't really need sort of material things you don't need success to be happy you should just sort of enjoy what you have and that was I guess the eventual message that I got but it was certain I wasn't on the surface it wasn't obvious because the story or the two movies that was absent have sort of set everybody wanted something wrong just jumping topics when I turn down when I was watching magnets never since it's black and white it's an old movie in so for me it's it's hard to relate to sort of out of touch with the time sleep so I'm sort of lulled to sleep I'm expecting a certain type of character that sort of boring character and I was really surprised I was the character of George she's the main character in the movie he's this brat bratty spoiled kid and I thought it was just a tremendous character because it was so unexpected to encounter this level there's a scene when he's bickering with his aunt did a really childish way I thought it's just a terrific scene because if any of you seen arouse more recent remake for television was on arts and entertainment about two years ago and I thought Tim Holt who plays that part in Magnificent Ambersons was absolutely right and the person who played it and the other one was not anywhere is good do any of you know a movie called the treasure the Sierra Madre very you if you ever seen you'll never forget it and now Tim hold about ten years later that important role in that I thought did you might like to put the two together go ahead so I was really I really I really enjoyed this role George you know I wondered it because well just sort of I've sort of been new and maybe naive filmmaker vitt he had no idea that like you sort of unconventional and the at least have seemed unconventional to me because it's unexpected no I don't want to talk too much about the that was pleasant surprise and jumping around so we heard in the documentary biography that the ending 45 minutes were kind of the end and I thought I thought the endings pretty bad actually it was right bad no I'm sorry the ending of the documentaries i9f said ever since then they mentioned in the documentary that Magnificent Anderson's was kind of short 45 minutes because it completely changed the tone sort of a Buckley abruptly and yet there's um a scene with the aunt and she's overcome with despair she can't even stand up she's really upset and then the very next scene the final scene she's walking down a hallway in you know hospital and she's sort of smiling contented me she seems sort of hopeful and it's just so did the discontinuity of those two scenes next to each other just really doesn't make a lot of sense to me I know so I thought that was a weakness of the film better yet the resulting from the cutting yes from the again destruction did you give any thought to the idea of the myth of the past anything you want to say about that can you talk a little about what you well I think it's a phrase that's used by wells and he says he has a fascination for values that existed in earlier societies that don't exist anymore and that they often provide the key to something and he's he's curious about that I think it's his way of formulating a view about the nature of time past isn't something to be glamorize to be nostalgic about sentimental about because the past is gone but we myth a lot it into mythology myth mythologized it and this often happens in different forms of art and we're sitting here and looking at a great visual portrayal of the myth of The Birth of Venus the painting is Lannister Ilyn I see that even today by Shelley in the end of the 15th century the the myth itself comes out of Ovid in the 1st century AD and by the time of the Renaissance anything related to antiquity was given a great deal of attention so that this is this would be at that time up-to-date version of the myths but the myth itself originates from the past nobody in in Italy in the 15th century thought that there was such a creature as Venus the goddess of love and that she was born on a half shell and that she arose out of the ocean and there was severely the sort of goddesses or is it or the emphasis of wind and and the handmaiden for the God for Venus herself nobody believes that little literally there was a beautiful myth and the the meaning of Welles is that the past is simply dead and what we do in the presence is create myths about it now there's an irony there because without the myths we would lose out on a great many works of art with myths taken literally we are falsifying the past as question is in our scientific age how can we live with both the truth of how things are faced realistically which is what Welles tries to do in his movies until they're chopped up by the studio and beyond his control you know this search for the truth in harmony with an understanding of the beauty of the past and I think that those were the idea of we're all going to die but what of it the water that is make me make a work of re out of the myth but don't be fooled by the myth the quote I give you in or mentioned in the chapter is Wells saying or John Ford John Ford was a maker of myths whereas he Wells wanted to examine them and that's a big difference a maker of mist as I argued that John Huston is in the dead there's somebody who said metalize is the past Dublin 1904 who enjoys the idea of a Christmas party or its own 11 New Year's party 11 days after Christmas and died at the Peace of the effect of the Epiphany that all of that been sentimentalize in terms of what Dublin was like in the drove the good old days right a horse-drawn carriage and so falls that you that don't cause the car tires to skid out of control but drivers gently covers the ground it makes a nice pattern of black and white that's how Houston does it because he's a myth mater the way that God forges mythmaker in this movies about the Wild West which he's pretty sure was nothin like the way he portrays him choice was different choice that wanted examined like a journalist and not only the journalists but invested an investigatory reporter what reality was like in Dublin in that year 1904 and not to fudge about anything Wells is in the joycie tradition wants to be a realist showing what it was really like to have been born in a small town in the Middle West when automobiles were being introduced how the great families who didn't invest in the right thing could lose their shirt the way that the Ambersons do because they they invested in this headlight that doesn't works except when the car is earning it what is it fifty bucks an hour and they pour all their money into it and then you're wiped out that's what reality is like and the family just destroyed the love-affairs end up very badly the movie studios consider that too downbeat remember there was a term that wells used in the documentary so they changed it into a sort of happy ending right that's not what Wells wanted he wanted to examine the myth of the past even the risk of being a little nostalgic about the horse car and to build a work of art so we can live with that you know it's all gonna be destroyed it doesn't matter how long the Ambersons flourished eventually they like everybody else is gonna be destroyed you know the earth isn't me burned up by the Sun one of these thousands of years but the meantime what of it dance through your art there enjoy the moment of creativity so what else is really espousing is the goodness of being alive and being creative even above all in the face of a world that is not responsive to our system of values now that seems to me crucial in understanding everything that he does and that and the myth of the past is what he examines for the sake of articulating that between Michelle yes do you think is well this better work I think Citizen Kane oh girl I wonder if I hadn't been manipulated and been altered actually I think I enjoyed the characters better in - and ever since they were more interesting to me now they're more farming is just from the really entertainment well a lot of senses but overall Citizen Kane well said and forgive me if I'm repeating myself from a previous class world said the trouble with Citizen Kane is that it looks just like a young filmmaker trying to set proofs in the world that he can make movies and that's exactly what it was it's brilliant I mean all of these incredible shots & angles and the dissolves and the structure of it are so a master technician learning his trade or having just learned his trade and showing off which is what we artists always do I mean professors like me and in the Magnificent Ambersons just a year later he's adapting himself to a novel to a surprise winning novel big success which has a narrative in places even sentimental which he is going to manipulate according to his technique but the technique is not as evident he is the foreign thing he didn't invent the story and he invented the story wrote collaborated on the plot of Citizen Kane here he has to adhere to some extent at least to a novel that he admires very much because he was the middle westerner and Soviets for born in Wisconsin and he understands that the myth of the past he says in a dialogue he had with Bogdanovich about this he said that for me the myth of the past the Golden Age they don't always harking back to occurred in grande detour Illinois grande detour is a small town it's very small that his father who was a high living person after his wife died bought and turned it into even for his friends particularly his friends in the arts and people who are down-and-out artists who were down and out on their luck their luck so it was a little paradise it was a little world in which doing I think no cars were allowed and it no electric lights I think it was a little primitive establishment almost sort of a commune in which Wells being a teenager could grow up and have a great time he understood the Middle West and he understood what Parkington was doing in his novel and that gives that that movie a very different orientation from Citizen Kane I I would have thought given the evidence Donovan says in that documentary for instance that if the 45 minutes had not been cut it might have been better than Citizen Kane and maybe one of the few greatest movies that were made maybe the greatest who knows so it's it's a real tragedy that that the world has lost that came out two years ago there so recently I wanted to watch that as well well the remake is based on the original script so some of Wells's material comes back in but it's never doesn't come back in the way Welles would have done it just as though hardly any if any footage the actual celluloid that survived and the rest of what we see of the rest is nowhere in the class of Orson Welles there's a mood in terms of technique so that remake is interesting and that's why I spent the pages discussing it in my chapter but it's not a competitor in both movies the Magnificent Ambersons that the Citizen Kane a sort of a tragedy that changes the past and now you have reality which is sir completely remember in Citizen Kane sort of the myth of the past was the sort of wonderful perfect childhood was playing in the snow and so the tragedy then is sort of personal tragedy where he's taken away from his parents and I mean but personally like I I remember my pastor fondly does it feel like a myth like no tragedy has happened to me yet I don't see anything wrong with sort of fondly remembering past experiences but in in his movies that take some tragedy and it's not clear to me that society's advancement is always a tragedy it's not clear to me that that we shouldn't think fondly or even sort of exaggerate our past because there's something positive about that well there are different interpretations one Wells vehemently rejects in the book called this is Orson Welles which is his interviews with Bogdanovich that I think I told you I read over and over I loved it so much came back recently and that is the sort of psychoanalytic one ascribing this sense of loss in the past to the death of welds his mother now welds his mother died when he was nine years old before that he was a child prodigy she was a music teacher and probably a yeah concert pianist but I don't think she had a great career nursery I think she was also an opera singer yeah she was an opera singer as well but not with the great career and he was a reluctant genius there's a story about his piano teacher who came to the house because they were wealthy and was giving him exercises or a lesson and then suddenly the piano teacher rushes into the next room where his mother was and says mrs. wells mrs. wells and George Orson no George was his name then with George Orson Welles and had the boy has climbed out of the window and is standing on the ledge threatening to jump if we if we don't cancel the cancel the lessons right a kind of suicide bomber and what should I do and she calmly says in the hearing of the boy well if he's going to jump he's going to jump Wells heard that obviously and sheepishly came back but when she died he stopped taking lessons before that he had conducted before he was ten years old he played the violin he played the piano there are even these paper articles about this boy genius as a musician and he never continued he never went on with music after that as I mentioned in Chapter he did write the song Oh mr. Cain he wrote that for that he his great friend was bernard herrmann who wrote the scores for the first two movies Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons and they talked sort of on the same level as fellow musicians so that he knew a lot about music but he never performed or never was active as a musician after his mother died and so one theory is the Rosebud in his life is his mother and his loss of her he denied that he said my mother was nothing like Keynes's brother I'm curious what what impression you all have got from from the documentary about what it took anything from that or wages the world's his life as a whole this creative life what did you think of that right it's business performance in I don't know if the camera can figure out complexion okay I'm surprised that citizen are based on wells performers and citizen can have suppressant he can't really be just stage fright to profile camera you found I don't remember any stage fright there was one moment in a scene when he was like standing up in front of a crowd I'm supposed to be on a ship I think and he said that and there was another part where he's more in Citizen Kane in the documentary was a French actress and he was like there was a French actress describing about how he was avoiding - Oh Jean NoHo the great wonderful French actress yeah that's true he couldn't go on that's the this was in the making of his Falstaff movie called chimes at midnight that he couldn't go on with his ruse that his makeup kit was small Geist about like an intimacy you know one doesn't know the whole story obviously he did have this thing about his appearance some people said of him in real life he had a little button nose I don't know from some pictures that look as if they were without makeup didn't seem to be really that would seem to the extreme but the very impressive noses he has in different roles were the result of a great deal of putting this it was very sensitive about the the appearance of his nose in a performance I don't know that famous stage fright or even that her story is related to stage fright I just don't know well I was I was actually very impressed his demeanor because despite the fact that even he was genius and that his films were so often ill received by production companies and something that he's still seen for what reason because he was sort of ahead of his fire he often no because they wouldn't make money they would make money well you see he said he is too dark which means that they that people wouldn't buy tickets that's what they were I mean you seem very boisterous so he doesn't seem to be sent back which I well in the midst of that debut lien or at the end of that abelian conversation that went on for action was three and a half hours and you saw the shortened version he does say if I I think I went into the wrong business remember that he says ninety-eight percent of my time as a filmmaker who has put into hustling is there he said uh and only two percent and making films and that's not a life the truth is that he was wonderfully entertaining in society he was a great storyteller he was an actor and the producers were all friends of his they used to play cards I'm sure and they invited him to their homes for their parties he went you know for getting money out of them to make more movies and he never got anything they were just stringing him along because he was so entertaining and you know that that's a great sadness that any artist should have to submit to that toward the end he generally paid for most of his movies because he had huge got huge fees advertising as a Mason muscles look at California wine we will we never sell the wine before it's time something like that on television and in different acting roles and he would take any worthless role and it's somebody's movie just because he would get such large fee and then he would pour that into his movies I think that's heroic marvelous but think of what our strength is on him true people when he died and not as much now spoke of him is being terribly overweight because it was so what very fat you remember and famous for his commercials are on television you know just regarding the whole achievement of this great man in at least one heart which is filmmaking not not to speak of the theatre and writing short story writing and other writings as a politician who wrote speeches for Franklin Delano Roosevelt Roosevelt encouraged him to run for Senator Wisconsin though there was much more to him than people recognize but he kept on going and like in the you know what of it just keep on but Donna reports him being very gloomy about the time the documentary was made because of how innocent he was treated by the profession and backed out of it try to calm him down and well said you know he thought you know about the future that's the way you always say over you'll be recognized in the future and well said oh yeah in 40 years they'll love me well it took only about 25 you died 1985 and or now it's nineteen years ago oh and he's now a cult figure and recognized as the great man and genius that he was so even in 1985 he wasn't recognized in that way nope that's the last movie he had he had finished or and was the complete control of was a perfect and that dates back into the 1970s after that there were all of those unfinished things including when will you finish Don Quixote remember he told that the Don Quixote movie and said I'm thinking of finished calling it when we when will you finish that you know thing because that's what his friends old Sonny I think you may remember in the book that I found a an interview with him made about twenty years before he died in which he said he had finished Don Quixote and that he wasn't ready to release it because the trial which based on toughies novel and a very very interesting movie in many ways had been attacked commercially and critically and every by everybody and he said he wasn't ready to release another movie to be attacked that way so that's very sad that part of his life was very very sad but it's still so I feel protective was as I say in the last page or so but I never less admire his fortitude in going on and doing as much as he did what else about the documentary would you like to say since most of you haven't yet and will today see the Magnificent Ambersons Wells has such a great sense of humor in the in the documentary he's always making jokes or telling funny stories and but in his in Citizen Kane which is only well as a film I've seen there isn't really that much humor and this was surprising to me because in Hitchcock's interview Hitchcock seemed very somber he didn't really any jokes or anything but his movies are filled with humor right I think that's very interesting how Wells has such a great sense of humor but he doesn't necessarily put it into his films that's a very good point Hitchcock is humorous and it's a structural device that he mingles with the romance on the one hand and the thrilling the elements of thriller on the other hand if it gets too heavy then the audience loses its patience and the suspense adds so to lighten it up you have to have some comedy but the comedy has to be relevant and if it's a romance movie then you know love and sex are always funny same from the point of view of somebody outside who isn't suffering at the moment right so that that ties in very nicely together now not all of his movies are like that really but the most famous ones the most successful ones are North by Northwest that's a suspense romance comedy and the Cary Grant is the perfect choice because he combines both comedy and romance and then but yeah but even even Saint Marie is witty in places right so that that's a structural element in Hitchcock and it's true of other films many other films of that sort that Hitchcock directed in worlds if you say what is what comedy did he ever write I don't know what sign exactly is amazing let me think well there are comic elements but they're much less structural for instance mr. Bernstein Bernstein norm his you know there are two pronunciations of that name but Welles its Bernstein miss mr. Bernstein the first time he comes in I think it is he falls as if on a banana tearing in the the furnishings and what does he say he says oops as if it were a comic strip and he's always the sort of comic figure and he plays it that way he's a straight man for Kane and we laugh at that this is you know this little subordinate to or says anything you know anything to make the boss happy and then if he laughs about it he laughs about it at his own expense when at the party when Kane is about to go off to Europe and that's he's going to go off to Europe Bernstein shouts mr. Kane there are there are still other antiques or works of art there that you haven't buoyant well what are you going to buy them something like that remember and he's Kane says I'm gonna buy them all whatever all right and then a few seconds later he says I said I promised something like that and few seconds later he says mr. Bernstein you don't expect me to keep my promises do you and Bernstein laughs like the little toady videos and says oh yes he accepts the irony of the deceptiveness of his own boss that's what Bernstein is like and that so that's coming and then what's also comic is the transformation in Bernstein because when the reporter interviews him Bernstein is the chairman of the board right we wouldn't remember the break Thea is a big magnet now and the reporter says I hope you're not too busy and he says now I'm rich I can easily imitate his accent cuz I was born in Brooklyn now no I I plenty of time mr. Thompson is that what it is I'm the chairman of the board I've done nothing to do right so he makes fun of himself that's a comic element that inserted in the right way by Wells but it's not you're right it's not as fullen and powerful of devices comedy and humor are in Hitchcock there's a great deal of humor as you'll find in Robin wah but then waz humor is even subtler than Hitchcock's I mean you know he's more subtler than Hitchcock and even subtler than Wills though Hitchcock can be very subtle though and for me it's subtle but I don't know if I pointed at you when you saw 39 steps and there's the brawl at the beginning in the theater and the stage manager jumps onto stages and gentlemen gentlemen please you're not at home and I remember seeing that many times before the humor of it came to me it's so subtle what he's saying is being the creatures that you are you're probably fighting at home all the time you can't do that here in public in the theatre so it's very rich I think and yet still something so it is as if Hitchcock is not able a great you know suckling hears and everything he does okay anything else now I want to leave enough time and for us to get to the movie without keeping you too late but I also want to have plenty of time to discuss this week's reading which is well distractor and ideas about the biography and the documentary and its ideas about the Magnificent Ambersons in preparation for what you'll be singing did you have more to say it may be that my chapter serves as an instruction to you I prepared you perhaps for what to expect in Magnificent Ambersons one thing I do want to repeat though would emphasize I was repeating what's in the chapter is the way in which Wells is capable of feelings that when usually don't find critics subscribing to him they talked about him playing the king roads remember the way he says and therefore in a very pompous authoritarian even bombastic way fitted without wonderful unmistakable voice of his if you ever hear that voice you know that's Orson Welles though he was very incident of glue aside he dubbed seven of the parts in the trial and nobody can tell he was such a good mimic that he could make his voice sound different and appropriate for the different parts that he wanted but in his ordinary delivery that sorts and was right what he is not given credit for is the depth of feeling that he expresses and that's why I quoted that passage in Magnificent Ambersons that you'll be seeing which he wrote himself based on a much slighter reference in the Booth Tarkington novel but which he makes into a very short paragraph but a very telling moment in the history of cinema and it's about it and presented with a great deal of compassionate feelings for the failure for George minify who falls on his knees in the bed next to the bed of in his mother's bed bedroom where she used to sleep before she died and begs forgiveness for the harm his reek and hoping that she and daughter can't forgiven and then the voiceover gives that paragraph that you read in in the chapter that nobody people all of whom were hoping that he would get his comeuppance would be delighted but nobody would even remember him anymore and or all of that but we are insignificant because they would all be dead or or moved away or something that's part of the myth of the past we think that in the future people are going to be looking back and it's a myth a dr. Samuel Johnson you know the 18th century great man English literature he said if you're ever depressed because of any folk pie you make public anything you do that you're ashamed of or embarrassed by have you've disgraced yourself in some way just remember in a year nobody will remember it ever happens another way of putting it is you know if you think of it what's called under the aspect of eternity suspect a Titanic artists under the aspect of eternity however terrible it might seem to you it's insignificant it doesn't matter you've got to get to a stage where you don't worry about the future or the past because it doesn't matter nobody's keeping score it's not as if anybody will know the power a terrible thing you did when you splashed through your hostess with with your martini and yeah and everyone was horrified doesn't matter history seems to remember the heroic moments much better than say that again the trials people remember those they don't remember once either that's but then correct well the irony is that we have to it's more human life is more than that human life is a mean you if you're of this persuasion if you're not religious if you really just have to put a different filter into the camera but if you're not if you think that what I'm doing is putting a filter in it there's no permanence life doesn't go on very long and may not go on even for the race or the whole university who knows what difference will it make on Cassiopeia some or other remote galaxies what happens in this place at the same time we always live in the present and for us this is like all of these things do matter because they mattered to us and therefore just to say oh it doesn't matter is what the psychopath might say or the sociopath the mass murderer now what there was in a in after the Battle of Waterloo not the battle the battle of Austerlitz Napoleon is walked across the battlefield where the dead were all screwed all around the thousands of French that they lost in that battle and he's reported of having said to one of his marshals a good night in Paris will make up for all this sure I mean you can plant seeds all the time but but the in in the feasibility of the uniqueness of each of these individuals which we except for ours we think of ourselves as unique individuals and after a while you live as long as I do you need to see that everyone feels that way not themselves that's the human tragedy but well I feel about me is what everyone feels and maybe even everything that lives including the chicken that you had for dinner today that's the horror of life well that's then you just can't say well of course it doesn't matter the chicken would have died sooner or later it didn't want to die when it did die and the hostess will will die and nobody will remember about the your faux pas with a martini but at that moment this is your life and it's horrible so the what has to live with the dynamic of these two alternatives and that's also part of the myth of the past well at least the examination of the myth of the past and Welles reveals how compassionate he can be for for George at that moment without saying well of course in the future nobody will remember this or people who who wanted to get his comeuppance don't remember him in the Othello movie that Welles made and acted the main role in he shows much more compassion for this suffering man who suffering from the terrible psychological disease called jealousy then Olivier or Gielgud or any of the famous Shakespearean actors who respond to the magnificence of the poem Pro of the poetry and shout and carry on and scream in accordance with the with the melodrama and we never quite get the sense of sadness and the condition that this man is in particularly in view of the innocence of his wife what he has what he stands to lose when he kills her and said you know allows himself to be humiliated by yargh no yeah well sad that is you get that in Wells production what though it has other faults in it I think the idea that you were saying about how life is sort of meaningless I mean I think that's an insight that's the center of what it is to be to be human I mean reconciling the idea that at this moment like what I'm doing it like I feel it's incredibly important how people are responding to me in reacting to me but at the same time the idea that it's all meaningless I mean that's so hard to like what do you do with those conflicting ideas like yes really insightful we ought to get going in about three minutes I don't suppose any of you can stay after 5:00 the movie is 88 minutes long but in the very quickly I want to remind you of the second paper and that the second paper is more important in the first paper actually on the hold all of you did reasonably well it is a gradation but it doesn't matter where you stand in terms of the grades because the second paper can make up a lot if you got a B+ he could very well end up with an A or an a-minus if you got the less it's harder I don't treat the papers equally what I will do is read them and think of your performance in class for the four borderline cases but the papers are very important in the great and make the main criterion of the grain so that don't be don't be depressed if you didn't get as high a grade for the first papers you thought yeah I it's very hard for us to be fair either in other people's grades or in the process of grading there isn't any mystical scientific perfection and grades so I always try to be a little generous but make up the deficiencies in the second paper you're all clear about what to do in the second paper it's through two weeks from today next week we're going to talk at the very beginning about your papers to get your imagination going start working out an outline or a first draft and I will consult with you about the contents to make sure you know fall into a ditch unless it's a very ascetic pitch and in general you all know my email address send me with any problems I'm very accessible let me know how I can be of help for the second paper I tried on her know for the first paper well I'll try even already for the second paper why not I'm always open for business the mind never the brain never rests and mine does but the brain is always operating remember the second paper is not as limited to a portion of the assigned reading as the first one she can wander a little further but one thing that you all have to really keep in mind is you'd also expected to do more careful outside research some of you did at least a minimum but I think more than half just sort of threw out something without really working at it and doing lots with it it isn't it has to be ten books or ten articles are even more than one article but there's something that you work at as a problem that is relevant to the course and relevant to what you want to say and gives you access to somebody else in order to emancipate yourself from the terrible influence of everything and that's essential for discovering your own creativity on your own so that remember in writing the paper and the length is longer and all the rest remember the footnotes I mean the footnotes and we recount and pages page numbers not that I created any be found on there not being the word count this time all right anything you want to say about the second favor or then why don't we walk over to watch Magnificent Ambersons