Research in Progress, June 7, 2021.
Quitting/No Quitting
Out of the Past, 1947:
Kirk Douglas to Mitchum: I fire people, but you don’t quit. You’ve started something, now you’ve got to finish it.”
Blackboard Jungle, 1955
Glenn Ford, the tough but idealist teacher would not quit, despite all the problems in and out of the classroom.
Rio Bravo, 1959
In a confrontation between Wayne’s and Dean Martin in the second half of the film, Wayne reproaches Dean, “You wanna quit, quit, go ahead and quit.”
In response, Martin slaps him across the face. Wayne then says: “It’s the second time you do it. Don’t ever do it again.”
Technology and Individual Freedom
Aubrey Singer:
“Man, the individual man, recognizes that in using these machines and adapting himself to their techniques, he must assume their attributes. This is the moment of terrible truth, for in gaining ‘the sweet fruition of an early crown,’ the individual risks submerging his humanity and becoming a digit in a socio-cybernetic system.”
In her review of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, which was negative (and unfair), Pauline Kael nonetheless has made an astute observation: “It’s the feeling of freedom from respectability that we have always enjoyed at the movies that is carried to an extreme by American International Pictures (AIC) and the Clint Eastwood Italian Westerns–they are stripped of cultural values.”