Monday, January 16, 2017

Words from Edward G. Robinson

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.]

comments: 4

Matt Thomas said...

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.

Michael Leddy said...

I 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.

zzi said...

Still waiting to catch a bad film her was in. " Larceny Inc." is on TCM this week.

Michael Leddy said...

I can’t think of one. The strangest one I’ve seen is probably The Red House.

I 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!