Edward G. Robinson, speaking at an event to honor his hundred-and-first film appearance, in Soylent Green (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973):
“To work, to create, to grow, and to give of yourself: that is one of the chief aims in life. To have experienced it once: that is a great experience. To do it a hundred and one times, well, that’s really a small miracle.”Soylent Green was Robinson’s last film. (He died before its release.) In it, he plays Sol Roth, once a full professor, now a ”book,” a police analyst: ”You know, I was a teacher once, a full professor, a respected man.” With his beard, beret, worn jacket, and Phi Beta Kappa key, Roth looks like a teacher of, say, art history, or comparative literature.
[My punctuation, following the speaker’s pace.]
Underrated movie, I think. Everybody knows and quotes the final line, but few know the rest of it. I appreciate it not so much as a Malthusian portent, but as a sweaty, dystopian police procedural.
ReplyDeleteI knew that line without ever seeing the movie. I liked this movie a lot, esp. the way it presented the dystopia as more or less a given, not something whose details (like the terms “book” and “furniture”) were to be explained.
ReplyDeleteStill waiting to catch a bad film her was in. " Larceny Inc." is on TCM this week.
ReplyDeleteI can’t think of one. The strangest one I’ve seen is probably The Red House.
ReplyDeleteI wish we had TCM. As my mom always tells me, I’d love it. All this stuff from the 1930s nobody ever heard of: I’m there!