It has been something of a political week (though not by design) on the Wire so I suppose it's appropriate that this is the current
favourite scene. I selected it before the last, but it's arrival is timely.
The ending scene from
The Great Dictator is a heartfelt plea that remains surprisingly relevant. The mention of the "aeroplane and radio" is easily applied to modern transport and communication. "The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all." As for prejudice, greed, war... we haven't outgrown those either.
At this point in the film, Charlie Chaplin is less a character than his self and looks directly at the audience. It's startling and the conviction with which he delivers the speech is hypnotic. Below are the original speech as well as an effective version from
Duffy23 featuring music and mixing from the brilliant
Lasse Gjertsen.
Here is the full text of the
Look up, Hannah speech:
"Hope... I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business - I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say 'Do not despair'.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish...
Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written " the kingdom of God is within man " - not one man, nor a group of men - but in all men - in you, the people!
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers - in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting - the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings - and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow - into the light of hope - into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up."
Links:The Great Dictator (Roger Ebert)The Great Dictator WikiThe Great Dictator (BFI)
The opening to Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia is sublime not only for its hypnotic content, but the way in which it establishes the rules of the world in which the film is set (which is our own). Complicated though coherent with numerous characters who have more depth than others given ten times the screen time, it is a modern masterpiece.
The Big Lebowski split critics and audience as it was released. Of its ample clutch of standout scenes, the Gutterballs sequence harkens back to MGM's classic musicals and Looney Tunes with several twists and bowling imagery. While others may try to combine disjointed elements like this, the Coen brothers do so deftly to create classic scenes like this.
The film isn't perfect; it's a musical with some off-kilter, retro Bollywood-style dubbing but this scene works. The performance, the song, the tone, the set... it has taken a permanent place in me since seeing it 25 years ago.
Jim Jarmusch certainly ranks among my favourite film makers and I can track key events in my life through the release of his films. I saw Dead Man on the day of its release(1996) in London and having seen Jarmusch's earlier works, this was surprising. I have several scenes I love in this film, but the one scene that has lingered with me all these years is one in which the protagonist William Blake(Johnny Depp) embraces a dead fawn in the forest.
Aesthetically, the way the black and white film exaggerates the textures of the leaves, the fawn, the fur of Blake's coat, and the plaid of his trousers is rich and earthy. The appearance of his black hat in the top-down view of the scene is almost like a hole in the ground. Everything blends and in death, everything returns to the earth and in the stillness of this scene, it looks beautiful and tranquil.
Milos Forman's biopic of Andy Kaufman, Man on the Moon was received with mixed reviews and tepid box office, but a number of the negative reviews seem to have missed the point as much as those who felt compelled to label Kaufman a comedian. For me, Milos Forman managed to create a biopic that deftly captures the spirit of its subject with Jim Carrey putting in a solid performance.
The English Patient is one my favourite books and films. To me, it is incomprehensible that anyone would find the film boring. It's one of the most engaging, visually stunning, tense, erotic and rich stories in cinema preserving the strongest themes of the book from which it is sourced. Indeed, Michael Ondaatje worked closely on the film and was happy with the result.
