By Benito Rakower, Ed.D.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the narrator wonders if “personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.” That seemed to provide the ultimate truth about the American scene. Even more, the idea extends the abstractions of Freud regarding unconscious motivation. It establishes the visual as the pre-eminent reality of social existence.
The greatest novels leave us with moments in which the writing allows us to see a particular gesture. Afterward, it is the vision of that gesture we retain in our memory and the words dissolve. In The Great Gatsby, it is Jay Gatsby standing alone at night at the end of his dock looking at the green light coming from Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s dock across the bay. Jay extends his arms and hands as if to reach and possess that light. The unappeased power of his yearning is shown in that gesture.
In one of the films of my fall film course, a young man appears at the registration desk of the college at Oxford which he will be attending as a student. The robustly impressive official, wearing a formal black hat, makes a somewhat facetious, welcoming remark. The student’s face is suddenly frozen in hatred. He is not amused and responds with devastating harshness. It is the sort of response that makes a stranger into an enemy forever. When I first saw the film, I winced because I knew the student was utterly wrong. More than that, he had no understanding of the British class system whose highest reaches he had somehow penetrated with talent but without “grace.” He has no understanding of noblesse oblige and its implied charity. The concept of a social barrier is epitomized in that gesture.
In another film, Julie Christie, playing an enterprising young woman in the “Wild West,” first meets Warren Beatty in a saloon. He, too, is an enterprising newcomer, with his own brand of swagger. Julie Christie’s swagger is feminine and authentic. Beatty’s is masculine, contrived, and fragile. Before they converse, Julie Christie sits down to eat a lumberjack’s version of a hearty breakfast. She devours it with unladylike gusto. One knows her immediately to be the most beautiful and strongest woman in the region. In like manner, she consumes and dominates the film.
Students will undoubtedly find their own favorite film gestures when they attend my upcoming fall 2017 LLI film series “Film Masterpieces.”
Film Masterpieces – Eight of the Most Ambitious American and European Films
Fridays, October 13, 20, 27; November 3, 17; December 1, 8, 15 (No class on Nov. 10, 24, 2017),1:30-4:00 p.m.; Film discussion: 4:00-4:30 p.m. (Full 8 weeks or Last 4 weeks option available)
To register for the eight-week course, click here.
To register for the last four weeks, click here.
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