![\"Benito](\"http:\/\/wordpress.fau.edu\/lifelongexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2015\/11\/rakower.jpg\")
<\/a>By Benito Rakower, Ed.D.<\/p><\/div>\n
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In F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s novel, The Great Gatsby<\/em>, the narrator wonders if \u201cpersonality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.\u201d\u00a0 That seemed to provide the ultimate truth about the American scene.\u00a0 Even more, the idea extends the abstractions of Freud regarding unconscious motivation.\u00a0 It establishes the visual as the pre-eminent reality of social existence.<\/p>\n The greatest novels leave us with moments in which the writing allows us to see a particular gesture.\u00a0 Afterward, it is the vision of that gesture we retain in our memory and the words dissolve.\u00a0 In The Great Gatsby<\/em>, 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\u2019s dock across the bay.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 The robustly impressive official, wearing a formal black hat, makes a somewhat facetious, welcoming remark.\u00a0 The student\u2019s face is suddenly frozen in hatred.\u00a0 He is not amused and responds with devastating harshness.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 More than that, he had no understanding of the British class system whose highest reaches he had somehow penetrated with talent but without \u201cgrace.\u201d\u00a0 He has no understanding of noblesse oblige<\/em> and its implied charity.\u00a0 The concept of a social barrier is epitomized in that gesture.<\/p>\n In another film, Julie Christie, playing an enterprising young woman in the \u201cWild West,\u201d first meets Warren Beatty in a saloon.\u00a0 He, too, is an enterprising newcomer, with his own brand of swagger.\u00a0 Julie Christie\u2019s swagger is feminine and authentic.\u00a0 Beatty\u2019s is masculine, contrived, and fragile.\u00a0 Before they converse, Julie Christie sits down to eat a lumberjack\u2019s version of a hearty breakfast.\u00a0 She devours it with unladylike gusto.\u00a0 One knows her immediately to be the most beautiful and strongest woman in the region.\u00a0 In like manner, she consumes and dominates the film.<\/p>\n Students will undoubtedly find their own favorite film gestures when they attend my upcoming fall 2017 LLI film series \u201cFilm Masterpieces.\u201d<\/p>\n To register for the eight-week course,\u00a0click here.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/u><\/strong>Film Masterpieces \u2013 Eight of the Most Ambitious American and European Films<\/em>
\nFridays, 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)<\/p>\n