RoR: Forum

Rebirth of Reason

Saturday, February 5, 2005 - 8:29pm

Curses! The URL to the movie speech site didn't copy & paste right. Try this:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches

Saturday, February 5, 2005 - 8:41pm

Try here:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/moviespeeches.htm

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 4:18pm

The most blood-chilling and important exchange in this brilliant movie came at the end, when Ernst Jannings (Burt Lancaster) and Judge Haywood (Spencer Tracy) are saying goodbye for the last time. The German, desperate with guilt, says, in a heartbroken plea, (I'm paraphrasing , I don't have the exact words): "When I agreed to carry out the laws of the Third Reich, I didn't know it would come to this." He is referring to the ultimate horrors of the Holocaust. And the American quietly responds: "The first time you sentenced to death a man you knew to be innocent, it had come to this."

Barbara

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 4:18pm

The most blood-chilling and important exchange in this brilliant movie came at the end, when Ernst Jannings (Burt Lancaster) and Judge Haywood (Spencer Tracy) are saying goodbye for the last time. The German, desperate with guilt, says, in a heartbroken plea, (I'm paraphrasing , I don't have the exact words): "When I agreed to carry out the laws of the Third Reich, I didn't know it would come to this." He is referring to the ultimate horrors of the Holocaust. And the American quietly responds: "The first time you sentenced to death a man you knew to be innocent, it had come to this."

Barbara

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 6:42pm

I'm not sure what was more chilling. The fact that Jannings took a holiday from his principles or the fact that, after all that had occurred, it wasn't until the very end that only understood the evil he had committed in doing so. And to have his failings laid bare in that single observation...

He understood that he had ruined his own life. But I don't think that he realised until that point that Hitler had required his sanction to commit mass murder. He was the last line of defence and he had failed. He didn't fail because he was ignorant, cowardly or even because he had been lied to. He failed because he was lazy and didn't use his intellect to think things through.

What was it Ayn Rand said about thinking not being automatic, about it requiring conscious effort? I can think of no more profound a proof of that concept.