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Roman Holiday (1953) is a delightful, captivating fairy-tale romance shot entirely on location
in Rome, and produced and directed by one of Hollywood's most skillful, distinguished,
professional and eminent directors - William Wyler.

The film's bittersweet story is a charming romantic-comedy, a kind of Cinderella tale in reverse
(with an April-October romance). A runaway princess (Hepburn) rebels against her royal
obligations and escapes the insulated confines of her royal prison to find a 'Prince Charming'
commoner - an American reporter (Peck) covering the royal tour in Rome. The story was
reportedly based on the real-life Italian adventures of British Princess Margaret.

Wyler was known for other great films including Dodsworth (1936), Jezebel (1938), Wuthering
Heights (1939), The Letter (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The
Heiress (1949), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Ben-Hur (1959) and Funny Girl (1968). Wyler's well-
crafted, stylish films that cover a wide range of film genres (family dramas, westerns, epics,
romantic comedies, and even one musical) always included down-to-earth characters in real-life
situations.

The film received a phenomenal ten Academy Award nominations for a comedy. It won a Best
Actress Oscar for its under-experienced British (Belgium-born) actress named Audrey Hepburn -
it was her first American film, although she had previously appeared in six European movies and
on Broadway in an adaptation of Colette's Gigi. Another of the film's three Oscar awards, the one
for Best Original Story was given to Ian McLellan Hunter. In 1992, a posthumous Oscar was
properly credited and given to blacklisted Hollywood Ten author Dalton Trumbo, who actually
wrote the screenplay. The third Oscar it received was for Best B/W Costume Design (Edith Head).
The other seven nominations included: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Eddie Albert), Best
Director, Best Screenplay (Ian McClellan Hunter and John Dighton), Best B/W Cinematography,
Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing.

In the opening moments of the film, a Paramount News NEWS FLASH announces, with newsreel
footage, the goodwill tour of a royal princess, Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn), a member of the
royal family of an unnamed European country. During her formal tour, she waves at the crowds
who line the streets for parades, motorcades, and other ceremonial processions:

Paramount News brings you a special coverage of Princess Ann's visit to London, the first stop on
her much-publicized, goodwill tour of European capitals. She gets a royal welcome from the
British, as thousands cheer the gracious young member of one of Europe's oldest ruling families.
After three days of continuous activity and a visit to Buckingham Palace, Ann flew to Amsterdam,
where her Highness dedicated the new International Aid Building and christened an ocean liner.
Then went to Paris, where she attended many official functions designed to cement trade relations
between her country and the Western European nation. And so to Rome, the Eternal City, where
the Princess' visit was marked by a spectacular military parade...The smiling young Princess
showed no sign of the strain of the week's continuous public appearances. And at her country's
Embassy that evening, a formal reception and ball in her honor was given by her country's
Ambassador to Italy.

During her royal state visit to Rome, Italy, she is presented to the guests during the extravagant
ball, escorted into the room wearing a beautiful gown and crown of jewels. Performing her
expected diplomatic duties, she appropriately greets the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Altomonto
(Giacomo Penza), Sir Hugo Macy de Farmington (Eric Oulton), the Maharajah of Khanipur
(Rapindranath Mitter) and Rajkumari (Princess Lilamani), Prince Istvan Barossy Nagyavaros
(Cesare Viori) and many others, but the young foreign Princess reveals her weariness of the
proceedings. Under her long gown, she wiggles and itches her foot and then embarrasses herself
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by losing her high heeled shoe. She retrieves it when she stands to dance with a steady procession
of admirers and guests.

Her girlish naivete and modern-day leanings are expressed when she is tucked primly into her
bed in an old-fashioned nightgown by her lady-in-waiting chaperone, Countess Vereberg
(Margaret Rawlings):

Ann: I hate this nightgown. I hate all my nightgowns, and I hate all my underwear too.
Countess: My dear, you have lovely things.
Ann: But I'm not two hundred years old. Why can't I sleep in pajamas?
Countess: Pajamas!?
Ann: Just the top part. Did you know that there are people who sleep with absolutely nothing on
at all?

Looking out her window, she catches a glimpse of how the other half lives, a scene of Roman
nightlife. When she is brought warm milk and crackers before retiring, she scoffs: "Everything we
do is so wholesome!" The review of her tightly-arranged royal schedule for the next day (including
rules of decorum, how she will act and what she will wear) reveals ceremonial visits to a car
factory, a food and agricultural inspection organization and an orphanage, followed by a press
conference, lunch with the foreign ministry, and even more affairs of state later in the day. The
Princess screams: "STOP!", hysterically exasperated and depressed by the constant control and
regimentation of her life. As she is given a sedative by a doctor, she tells her guardians: "...I'll be
calm and relaxed, I-I'll bow and I'll smile and improve trade relations and I'll..." In reality, she is
determined to see Rome for herself and on her own terms.

To escape the endless tedium of the many ceremonial occasions, to find adventure and to
experience life beyond the claustrophobic confines of her royal position - without royal control -
she slips out of the palatial Embassy that night. Unseen, Ann climbs into the back of an open
supply truck (Domenico Pizzatti - Rinfreschi -) that is allowed to leave the Embassy grounds. For
the first time, unescorted and unchaperoned, she smiles as she watches her liberating passage
through the Embassy's gates. When the truck stops, she jumps out and finds herself in the middle
of Rome, becoming increasingly drowsy from the effects of the sleep-inducing sedative. She falls
asleep on a low park wall.

On his walk home following a late-night card game which has impoverished him with his pals,
street-smart American newspaperman Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), one of the many reporters
who was planning to interview the Princess the next day, walks by the sleeping beauty. She is
singing to herself: "So happy." He finds it ironic that she is "well-read, well-dressed" and
"snoozing away on a public street" like a drunk. Taking pity on her because she has no money
("Never carry money"), the protective journalist signals a taxi and they climb in the back seat.
Perplexed that she sleepily responds that she lives "at the Coliseum," he directs the taxi to his own
apartment and then realizes that she must spend the night there.

In an exquisite scene, he leads her up steps and ushers her into his apartment while muttering to
himself: "I ought to have my head examined." Preparing to sleep at his place, she comments
dizzingly about all the new experiences, while he instructs her on sleeping arrangements:

Ann: Can I sleep here?

Joe: Well, that's the general idea.
Ann: Can I have a silk nightgown with rosebuds on it?
Joe: I'm afraid you'll have to rough it tonight - in these. (He presents her with his own oversized
pajamas.)
Ann: Pajamas!
Joe: Sorry honey, but I haven't worn a nightgown in years.
Ann: (regally) Will you help me get undressed, please?
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Joe: (after hesitating a moment and being taken aback) Uh, OK. (He removes one small article of
clothing - her necktie) There you are, you can handle the rest. (He pours himself a glass of wine
and rapidly downs it.)
Ann: May I have some?
Joe: (firmly) No. Now look.
Ann: This is very unusual. I've never been alone with a man before - even with my dress on. (She
begins unbuttoning and removing her blouse) With my dress off, it's most unusual. I don't seem
to mind. (She gazes directly at him.) Do you?
Joe: (stony-faced) I think I'll go out for a cup of coffee. You'd better get to sleep. (She flops on his
bed.) No, no, no. (He leads her toward the couch.) On this one.
Ann: How terribly nice.
Joe: Hey - these are pajamas. They're to sleep in. You're to climb into them, you
understand?...Then you do your sleeping on the couch, see. Not on the bed, not on the chair, on
the couch. Is that clear?
Ann: Do you know my favorite poem?
Joe: You already recited that for me.
Ann: "Arethusa rose from her couch of snows in the Acroceraunian mountains" - Keats.
Joe: Shelley.
Ann: Keats!
Joe: Now, you just keep your mind off the poetry and on the pajamas, and everything'll be all
right, see.
Ann: It's Keats.
Joe: Now, I'll be - it's Shelley - I'll be back in about ten minutes.
Ann: Keats. (He approaches his front door and hides his wine bottle on the top of the
mantelpiece.) You have my permission to withdraw.
Joe: Thank you very much...

When Joe returns to his small apartment about ten minutes later, he finds the princess in his own
bed - not on the chair or couch as he had instructed. He rolls her off his bed onto the couch.

The princess' disappearance is classified as a "Top Crisis Secret" when it is discovered that the
"direct heir to the throne" is missing at the Embassy. A diplomatic cover-up conceals the real
facts: "A SPECIAL EMBASSY BULLETIN REPORTS THE SUDDEN ILLNESS OF HER ROYAL
HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS ANN."

The next morning when he awakens, he has overslept past the scheduled 11:45 am interview with
the princess. The Rome American newspaper reports:

Princess Ann Taken Ill; Press Interview Cancelled - Embassy Reports Princess Confined to Bed by
Sudden Illness: Day's Schedule Cancelled

Joe frantically dresses and arrives late at the American News Service where he ineptly tells his
boss Mr. Hennessey (Hartley Powers) that he has just left the interview with the princess - a
paradoxically true statement, but a gross lie ("a gold-plated, triple-decked, star-spangled lie") in
his superior's view:

Hennessey: In view of the fact that our Highness was taken violently ill at three o'clock this
morning, put to bed with a high fever, and has ordered all her appointments for the day cancelled
in toto...
Joe: That's certainly pretty hard to swallow.
Hennessey: In view of the fact that you just left her, of course.

Hennessey points out Princess Ann's picture printed in the paper: "It isn't Annie Oakley, Dorothy
Lamour, or Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Take a good look at her. You might be interviewing her
again some day." Joe immediately discovers that he has a major scoop in the works. After
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discovering the identity of the mysterious girl in his apartment, he hopes to get an exclusive story
that will help him with his career advancement that would take him back to the States:

Joe: How much would a real interview with this dame be worth?
Hennessey: Are you referring to Her Highness?
Joe: I'm not referring to Annie Oakley, Dorothy Lamour, or Madame ... How much?
Hennessey: What do you care? You've got about as much chance...
Joe: I know, but if I did? How much would it be worth?
Hennessey: Oh, just a plain talk on world issues, it would probably be worth two hundred and
fifty. Her views on clothes, of course, would be worth a lot more, maybe a thousand...dollars.
Joe: I'm talking about her views on everything!...The private and secret longings of a Princess.
Her innermost thoughts as revealed to your own correspondent in a private, personal, exclusive
interview. (His boss' mouth drops, awe-struck by the thought) Can't use it, huh? I didn't think
you'd like it.
Hennessey: Come here! Love angle too, I suppose.
Joe: Practically all love angle.
Hennessey: With pictures.
Joe: Could be. How much?
Hennessey: That particular story will be worth five grand to any news service....
Joe: ...You said five grand? I want you to shake on that.

Back at his apartment, Ann finally awakens at about 1:30 in the afternoon, but she is thoroughly
disoriented:

Ann: Would you be so kind as to tell me where I am?

Joe: Well, this is what is laughingly known as my apartment.
Ann: Did you bring me here by force?
Joe: No, no. Quite the contrary.
Ann: Have I been here all night, alone?
Joe: If you don't count me, yes.
Ann: So I've spent the night here - with you?
Joe: Well now, I-I don't know that I'd use those words exactly, but uh, from a certain angle, yes.
Ann: (beaming with a smile) How do you do? (She extends her hand for a handshake)
Joe: How do you do?
Ann: And you are - ?
Joe: Bradley, Joe Bradley.
Ann: Delighted.
Joe: You don't know how delighted I am to meet you.
Ann: You may sit down.
Joe: (sitting on the bed) Thank you very much. What's your name?
Ann: You may call me Anya.

The newspaper reporter pretends ignorance of her identity, initially having a strictly mercenary
interest in the Princess. While she takes a bath, he phones his carefree, bearded photographer
friend Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert), hinting: "It's front-page stuff. That's all I can tell ya. It
might be political or it might be a sensational scam. I'm not sure which. But it's a big story, and
it's gotta have pictures."

Everything is exciting for Ann: "It must be fun to live in a place like this." But she feels compelled
to leave and wander around. After lending her a little money, he follows her through the crowded
streets and marketplace filled with small motorcycles, bicycles, vendors, and pedestrians. She
walks the streets of Rome incognito, experiencing things as an ordinary commoner and doing
things exactly the way she wants to. At a salon, she has her hair drastically cut shorter after
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ordering the Italian haircutter (Paolo Carlini): "All off." Afterwards, she tells the flirtatious
barbiere who cropped her hair to make her unrecognizable: "It's just what I wanted."

She begins her day of freedom by ordering a gelati cone at a roadside stand and accepting a single
flower from a flower vendor. Joe accidentally runs into her to keep in contact with her and get the
inside information for his story. She confesses her predicament of playing hookey from school
and her desire to "live dangerously":

Ann: I ran away last night, from school.

Joe: Oh, what was the matter? Trouble with the teacher?
Ann: No, nothing like that.
Joe: Well, you don't just run away from school for nothing.
Ann: It was only meant to be for an hour or two. They gave me something last night to make me
sleep.
Joe: Oh, I see.
Ann: Now, I'd better get a taxi and go back.
Joe: Well look, before you do, why don't you take a little time for yourself?
Ann: Maybe another hour.
Joe: Live dangerously. Take the whole day.
Ann: I could do some of the things I've always wanted to.
Joe: Like what?
Ann: Oh, you can't imagine. I-I'd do just whatever I liked all day long.
Joe: You mean things like having your hair cut, eating gelati...
Ann: Yes, and I'd sit at a sidewalk cafe and look in shop windows. Walk in the rain, have fun and
maybe some excitement. Doesn't seem much to you, does it?

Joe proposes to spend the day with her and experience everything she has always wanted to:

Joe: Tell you what. Why don't we do all those things, together?
Ann: But don't you have to work?
Joe: Work? No. Today's gonna be a holiday.
Ann: But you want to do a lot of silly things?
Joe: (He takes her hand) ...First wish? One sidewalk cafe, comin' right up. I know just the place.
Rocca's.

At the cafe, Ann orders costly champagne for lunch, and then describes, in disguised terms, her
father's fortieth anniversary of the day he got his job:

Ann: Well, mostly you might call it public relations.

Joe: Oh, well, that's hard work.
Ann: Yes. I wouldn't care for it.
Joe: Does he?
Ann: I heard him complain about it.
Joe: Why doesn't he quit?
Ann: Oh, people in that line of work almost never do quit, unless it's actually unhealthy for them
to continue.

To conceal his own identity to her, Joe describes his own line of work:

Ann: What is your work?

Joe: Oh, I'm, ah, in the selling game.
Ann: Really? How interesting. What do you sell?
Joe: Fertilizer. Chemicals. You know, chemicals. Stuff like that.
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When Irving arrives, he repeatedly tries to mention that Ann is a "ringer" for the Princess, but Joe
blocks him by kicking him under the table, dumping a drink in his lap, and finally by knocking his
chair over. When Joe gets Irving away for a few moments, he tells his photographer friend about
Anya Smith's ("Smitty's") real identity and the promise of five grand (including a percentage of
the take if there are pictures): "She doesn't know who I am or what I do. Look Irving, this is my
story. I dug it up. I've got to protect it...Your tintypes are gonna make this little epic twice as
valuable...You're in for twenty-five percent of the take." Then, he asks his friend to loan him thirty
thousand lira ("that's fifty bucks") so that he can entertain the Princess for the rest of the day.

Ann smokes her "very first" cigarette, while Irving surreptitiously takes pictures of her with his
hidden-camera cigarette lighter. Meanwhile, "plain-clothes" men are retained to search the city
for the missing princess, as Joe, Ann, and Irving begin their carefree tour of the city on a "fun
schedule." She rides on the back of Joe's motorcycle to see the famous sights, including the ruins
of the Coliseum. After Ann recklessly drives them through the streets, they are arrested by the
polizia but released after Joe's clever alibi: "Going to church to get married on a scooter." Ann
brags about her own deceitfulness:

Ann: I'm a good liar too, aren't I, Mr. Bradley?

Joe: The best I ever met.

In a memorable scene, Joe shows the Princess a sculpture which he names 'The Mouth of Truth.'
He tests the legend with her:

Joe: The Mouth of Truth. Legend is that if you're given to lying, you put your hand in
there, it'll be bitten off.
Ann: Oh, what a hard idea.
Joe: Let's see you do it.
Ann: (she nervously moves her hand toward the mouth, but then pulls back) Let's see you do it!

Joe scares the Princess into believing he has lost his hand inside the sculpture's mouth. Later
during her guided tour, they visit a wall covered with inscriptions:

Joe: Each one represents a wish fulfilled. It all started during the war. There was an air raid, right
out here. A man with his four children was caught in the street. They ran over against the wall,
right there, for shelter and prayed for safety. Bombs fell very close, but no one was hurt. Later on,
the man came back and put up the first of these tablets. Since then, it's become a sort of a shirine.
People come and whenever their wishes are granted, they put up another one of these little
plaques.
Ann: Lovely story.
Joe: Read some of the inscriptions. (Ann moves closer toward the wall) Make a wish? (Ann nods).
Tell the doctor?
Ann: (declining) Anyway, the chances of it being granted are very slight.

Ann suggests going dancing that evening on a barge down by Sant' Angelo on the Tiber River,
where she was invited to meet the salon barber:

Ann: At midnight, I'll turn into a pumpkin and drive away in my glass slipper.
Joe: And that will be the end of the fairy tale.

When Irving leaves to develop the pictures he has been snapping all day, Joe and Ann wind up
dancing on the barge that night. While on the barge, some of the men dispatched to find the
Princess spot her. Bradley quickly falls in love with the Princess' naivete, radiance and beauty,
and begins to question his original mercenary interest in her:
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Ann We spent the whole day doing things I've always wanted to. Why?
Joe: I don't know. It seemed the thing to do.
Ann: I never heard of anybody so kind.
Joe: It wasn't any trouble.
Ann: Also, completely unselfish.

After dancing with Mario Delani, the barber who cut her hair, one of the royal agents takes hold of
Ann and proceeds to drag her to a waiting car. During the ensuing melee, Joe and Irving struggle
to prevent Ann from being taken away. Ann hits the royal agents over the head with beer bottles
and then with a guitar taken from one of the band members. To avoid capture, both Joe and Ann
jump in the water and swim for the shore. On dry land, they congratulate themselves on their
successful escape and then kiss each other - they both find themselves desperately falling in love.

Back at Joe's apartment, after changing into drier clothes, he confesses that he has no kitchen and
always eats out, pointedly thinking: "Life isn't always what one likes, is it?" After their long day
together, she admits having had a tiring, but "wonderful day." A radio news broadcast informs
them that the Princess' 'illness' is causing "alarm and anxiety among the people in her country."
Although they dream of becoming closer to each other, Ann also knows she will inevitably have to
part from him and return to her other life and duties:

Ann: I'm a good cook. I could earn my living at it. I can sew too and clean a house and iron. I
learned to do all those things. I just haven't had the chance to do it for anyone.
Joe: Well, looks like I'll have to move. I'll get myself a place with a kitchen.
Ann: Yes. (after a long pause) I will have to go now. (They hug each other)
Joe: There's something that I want to tell you.
Ann: No please. Nothing. I must go and get dressed.

Joe drives her back to a street corner within sight of the imposing, imprisoning gates of the
Embassy. In a memorable goodbye scene, she gives him difficult-to-hear directions:

Ann: I have to leave you now. I'm going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car
and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I
leave you.
Joe: All right.
Ann: I don't know how to say goodbye. I can't think of any words.
Joe: Don't try. (They sadly hug and kiss each other for the last time)

The Princess leaves the car and he watches her disappear down a dark, empty little street as she
runs back to the Embassy, returning to her cloistered and protected world.

The returning Princess is questioned about her long, twenty four hour absence, but she offers no
explanation other than: "I was indisposed. I am better." With a strong, self-confident voice, she
tells the Ambassador (Harcourt Williams) that she realizes her royal duties (and rights) more
clearly:

Your Excellency, I trust you will not find it necessary to use that word again. Were I not
completely aware of my duty to my family and my country, I would not have come back tonight,
or indeed ever again.

She dismisses them, and then with a commanding presence, reflecting her capability as a future
ruler, orders: "No milk and crackers. That will be all, thank you, Countess."

Because of his affection for Ann, Joe decides to give up his 'exclusive' story about the Princess and
not violate her privacy or exploit her. Hennessey, who "knows too much" thinks Joe is playing
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"hard to get" to raise the price of his story: "A deal's a deal. Now, come on, come on, come on,
where is that story?" Joe refuses to divulge his story scoop: "I have no story." And then he tells
Irving who has excitedly brought the developed photographs: "In regard to the story that goes
with these (the pictures), there is no story...I mean that as far as I'm concerned."

Nonetheless, Joe is amused by the pictures which show Ann with her first cigarette, her
experience with the Mouth of Truth, the inscription "wall where wishes come true," their seizure
at the police station ("Police inspects Princess"), dancing on the barge, and the climactic shot of
Ann hitting one of the secret service over the head with a guitar ("Crowned Head"). Irving wishes
to convince his friend that his paparazzi photos should be used: "She's fair game Joe. It's always
open season on Princesses. You must be out of your mind."

In the film's bittersweet, moving ending, in the day's press corps interview, she notices Joe and
Irving in the front of the other reporters. In front of the assembled reporters, she answers the first
few political questions with double meanings directed particularly toward Joe, especially one
question about the outlook for friendship among nations:

Ann: I have every faith in it as I have faith in relations between people.

Joe: May I say, speaking for my own press service, we believe that your Highness' faith will not be
unjustified.
Ann: I am so glad to hear you say it.

She is asked by another reporter which city in her tour she enjoyed most. The princess opposes
her advisors who want her to give equal weight to every city on the tour. They coach her by
whispering the acceptable answer to her. She abruptly changes her answer mid-stream and
obliquely tells them all (and Joe) that she will never forget Rome (or him), expressing her own
personal prerogative as a Princess:

Each in its own way was unforgettable. It would be difficult to...Rome, by all means, Rome. I will
cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.

When photographs are allowed to be taken during the session, Irving steps forward and surprises
the Princess by revealing that his cigarette lighter is really a miniature camera. She steps forward
to personally meet and shake hands with members of the press corps. Irving presents the Princess
with some "commemorative photos" of her visit to Rome. She views the one of her smashing a
guitar over an agent's head, smiles discreetly, and then formally thanks Irving: "Thank you so very
much." And then when Joe and Ann meet, she can only be polite and impersonal: "So happy Mr.
Bradley." Princess Ann cannot reveal the secret of her day with both of them.

As she gives a final goodbye, she slowly turns toward the audience, gives a wide smile toward
everyone (and then directly toward Joe), holds the tear-inducing gaze, and then departs. After the
press corps has left, Joe stares at the door through which she left, never to see her again. With
echoing footsteps, he slowly walks out of the room - the camera with a backward-moving tracking
shot follows his retreat from the girl he loves. He turns one last time at the end of the hall to sadly
look back before leaving.
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My Fair Lady (1964) was experienced director George Cukor's film musical adaptation of
George Bernard Shaw's 1912 play Pygmalion that had played successfully on Broadway from
March 15, 1956 to 1962. Shaw's plot was derived from Latin poet Ovid's story (in the
Metamorphoses) about a character named Pygmalion who fell in love with a beautiful ivory statue
of a woman. In later Greek tradition, his prayers to Venus that the beloved statue - Galatea -
would come to life came true so that they could marry.

The non-musical version of the play, from Shaw's own screenplay, was first filmed in Britain in
1938 by co-directors Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard (who also co-starred with Dame Wendy
Hiller). The tale is about a 'guttersnipe' Cockney flower girl heroine (Hepburn), who is trained by
a misogynistic, bachelor linguistics expert (Higgins) to speak properly within six months - the
result of a daring challenge and bet. During her elocution lessons, her unrepentant, calculating
drunk father (Holloway) appears for handouts, and she makes an embarrassing first appearance
at the opening day Ascot Races, but she catches the eye of high-born but poor Freddie Eynsford-
Hill. Although she experiences personal triumph within high society at the Embassy Ball, and
wins her teacher's love, she storms off after being transformed - only to return by film's end.

Warner Bros.' musical romantic comedy was expensive-to-produce (at $17 million) - their most
expensive film to date, partially due to the fact that the studio had to pay $5.5 million for film
rights to the popular Broadway hit. It turned out to be one of the top five most successful films in
1964 - a combination of clever lyrics and singable tunes, with a great lead and supporting cast,
and lavishly-designed theatrical sets and costumes. Alan Jay Lerner, who was responsible for the
screenplay, co-wrote the music and lyrics with Frederick (Fritz) Loewe. Producer Jack Warner's
will prevailed and the Cockney flower vendor character played by little-known Julie Andrews on
Broadway was replaced by well-known, non-singing 'Cinderella' actress Audrey Hepburn (whose
voice was dubbed by Marnie Nixon although Hepburn sang her own tracks) - to guarantee greater
box-office business.

Ironically, Julie Andrews was awarded a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in Disney's
competing film Mary Poppins, and Hepburn failed to receive a nomination for her part. [During
her acceptance speech, Andrews thanked Jack Warner "for making this possible."] Rex Harrison
reprised his legendary stage performance on celluloid as the linguistics professor with a unique
'non-singing' vocal style. Lerner and Loewe's score for the musical includes some of the best
known songs and lyrics ever: "The Rain in Spain," "I Could Have Danced All Night," "On the
Street Where You Live," "I'm Getting Married in the Morning," "With a Little Bit of Luck," and
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."

George Cukor, a veteran 'women's director,' made a sumptuous, glamorous, brilliant Technicolor
film with well-loved tunes - it was honored with twelve Academy Award nominations and eight
wins, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Rex Harrison), Best Director (Cukor's only Best Director
award in his career), Best Color Cinematography (in widescreen 70 mm), Best Color Art
Direction/Set Decoration, Best Sound, Best Score (Andre Previn), and Best Color Costume Design
(Cecil Beaton). The four losing categories were Best Supporting Actor and Actress (Stanley
Holloway and Gladys Cooper), Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and
Best Film Editing. In the decade of the 60s, My Fair Lady joined two other highly praised, big
box-office films when it won the Academy Award for Best Picture (as did West Side Story (1961)
and The Sound of Music (1965)).

The title credits and musical overture from the film are accompanied by colorful, dazzling close-
ups of spring flowers - which happen to line the stairway of the Covent Garden Opera house.
Elegantly-dressed, high-society opera-goers are leaving after a performance and heading for
horse-drawn cabs and motorized vehicles. They begin bustling about to find shelter when rain
begins to fall. Street vendors cover their wares in the marketplace. Young Freddie Eynsford-Hill
 10

(Jeremy Brett) collides with Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), a disheveled Cockney flower
vendor, while looking for a cab for his mother Mrs. Eynsford-Hill (Isobel Elsom). Eliza accuses
both of them of ruining her "full day's wages" of scattered violets that are now trod in the mud:
"Well, if you'd done your duty by him as a mother should, you wouldn't let him spoil a poor girl's
flowers and then run away without payin'."

When Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) gives Eliza some coins, but isn't given flowers in
return, Eliza is cautioned by a bystander that a suspicious character behind a pillar, Professor
Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), is "takin' down ev'ry blessed word you're sayin'." She immediately
assumes that she is in trouble for selling flowers illegally - she defends herself as a "respectable
girl," arguing to bystanders that she did nothing wrong: "Well, I'm makin' an honest livin'."
Higgins appears and calms her down by showing her his notebook with strange shorthand
symbols, and he reads back to her from his notes what she said with the exact same exaggerated
pronounciation: "I say, capt'n; n' baw ya flahr orf a pore gel."

Eliza is even more startled when Higgins identifies her birthplace in "Lisson Grove" - she bursts
into tears:

I'm a good girl, I am!

After thoughtfully predicting that Pickering is from "Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and er -
India," Higgins explains his perennial search for British dialects and his talent for knowing speech
patterns and their corresponding locations - he is a phonetics expert: "Simple phonetics. The
science of speech. That's my profession, also my hobby. Anyone can spot an Irishman or a
Yorkshireman by his brogue, but I can place a man within six miles. I can place him within two
miles in London. Sometimes within two streets." And he brutally criticizes Eliza's ugly "detestable
boo-hooing" and crude pronunciations:

A woman who utters such disgusting and depressing noise has no right to be anywhere, no right
to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech,
that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible. Don't sit there
crooning like a bilious pigeon.

While she indignantly belly-aches at his insults with loud, grating utterances such as "Ah-ah-aw-
aw-oo-oo!", he delivers a well-aimed tirade at the deterioration of the English language. To the
snobby, intolerant Higgins, ignorance, inarticulateness, dialects and unrefined language produce
a "verbal class distinction," much the same way as money ensures advantages and a higher class
of living, in "Why Can't the English Learn to Speak":

Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters

Condemned by every syllable she utters
By right she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue...
This is what the British population
Calls an elementary education...
It's 'ow' and 'garn' that keep her in her place,
Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?

This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique.
[To Pickering] If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do,
Why you might be selling flowers too...
 11

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?

Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks are taught their Greek
In France every Frenchman knows his language from 'A' to 'Zed' -
The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
The Hebrews learn it backwards which is absolutely frightening.
Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak.
Oh, why can't the English -
Why can't the English learn to speak?

So the Professor makes an initial challenge toward Pickering which becomes the cornerstone of
the film's plot. He wagers with the Colonel that within six months, he can teach Eliza Doolittle to
speak articulately so that she will be transformed into a pure-speaking lady, so that no one will
suspect her Cockney origins when she is passed off as a duchess at an Embassy Ball. She will
become a proper, aristocratic lady just by being taught proper English:

You see this creature with her curbstone English. The English that will keep her in the gutter till
the end of her days. Well, sir, in six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy Ball. I
could even get her a job as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English...[To
Eliza] Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf. You disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns!
You incarnate insult to the English language! I could pass you off as, ah, the Queen of Sheba.

The Colonel ("the author of Spoken Sanscrit"), as it turns out, has journeyed from India to meet
"Henry Higgins, author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet." Now acquainted with each other after
their chance meeting, Higgins invites Pickering to his home at 27A Wimpole Street and they
wander off speaking about the 147 "distinct languages" or Indian dialects. Among the other street
vendors, Eliza has had her interest piqued in becoming a lady. With her untutored manner, she
sings and dances with them about her dreams in "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?":

All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air.
With one enormous chair; Oh wouldn't it be loverly?
Lots of choc'late for me to eat; Lots of coal makin' lots of heat.
Warm face, warm 'ands, warm feet, Oh wouldn't it be loverly?
Oh, so loverly sittin' abso-bloomin'-lutely still!
I would never budge 'til Spring crept over my window sill.
Someone's head restin' on my knee; Warm and tender as he can be,
Who takes good care of me; Oh wouldn't it be loverly?
Loverly, loverly, loverly, loverly.

Early the next morning, Eliza's hard-drinking, disreputable, scruffy-looking father Alfred (Stanley
Holloway) is looking for his daughter in the Covent Garden market area - boasting to his friends
Jamie (John Alderson) and Harry (John McLiam) that he deserves a paternal handout:

I give her everythin'; I give her the greatest gift that a human being can give to another: life. I
introduced her to this 'ere planet I did, with all its wonders and marvels. The sun that shines, the
moon that glows, Hyde Park to walk through on a fine spring night. The whole ruddy city o'
London to roam around in, sellin 'er bloomin' flowers. I give 'er all that, then I disappears and
leaves 'er on 'er own to enjoy it. Now, if that ain't worth half-a-crown now and again, I'll take my
belt off and give 'er what for!

Although at first, Eliza resists giving her father any of her hard-earned money: "Y'ain't gonna take
me hard-earned wages and pass 'em on to a bloody pub-keeper," she relents. Because of her "bit o'
luck" the previous night when Higgins generously threw coins into her flower basket, she gives
her father a half-crown. After Eliza hears the church bells peal, she is reminded of Higgins'
 12

appraisal that she is condemned by every syllable she speaks, and his equally promising words
about how he could transform her speech differences under his tutelage.

In Higgins' study at his residence on Wimpole Street, the professor and his houseguest are
studying vowel sounds produced from a vibrating tuning fork taken from a rack full of tuning
forks. They also listen to a phonograph playing recorded phonetic sounds when Eliza appears at
the Higgins front door. The maid Mrs. Pearce (Mona Washbourne) admits her into the study,
thinking she is one of Higgins' subjects of "business" study: "Well, she's quite a common girl, sir.
Very common indeed. I should have sent her away only I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk
into your machine." But when Eliza makes her entrance, Higgins brusquely dismisses her: "Oh,
no, no, no. This is the girl I jotted down last night. She's no use. I've got all the records I want of
the Lisson Grove lingo. I'm not gonna waste another cylinder on that. Now be off with you, I don't
want you."

Eliza begs to be taught to speak well enough to work at a flower shop. She announces that she has
decided to hire Higgins to give her elocution lessons, but Higgins is very uninterested:

Higgins: Pickering? Shall we ask this baggage to sit down or shall we just throw her out of the
window?
Eliza: Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-oo! I won't be called a baggage, not when I've offered to pay like any
lady.
Pickering: What do you want, my girl?
Eliza: I want to be a lady in a flower shop 'stead of sellin' at the corner o' Tottenham Court Road.
But they won't take me unless I can talk more genteel. (gesturing toward Higgins) He said he
could teach me. Well, here I am ready to pay. I'm not asking any favor - and he treats me as if I
was dirt. (Turning toward Higgins) I know what lessons cost as well as you do, and I'm ready to
pay.

Pickering convinces Higgins that it would make an interesting challenge to actually teach Eliza
how to speak - to change her from a drab 'guttersnipe' into a beautiful woman through language
education:

Pickering: What about your boast that you could pass her off as a duchess at the Embassy Ball,
eh? I'll say you're the greatest teacher alive if you make that good. I'll bet you all the expenses of
the experiment that you can't do it. I'll even pay for the lessons.
Eliza: Oh, you're real good. Thank you, capt'n.
Higgins: You know, it's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty.
Eliza: (protesting) I ain't dirty. I washed my face and hands before I come, I did.
Higgins: I'll take it. I'll make a duchess of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe.
Eliza: Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo!
Higgins: We'll start today, now, this moment! Take her away, Mrs. Pearce, and clean her.
Sandpaper, if it won't come off any other way. Is there a good fire in the kitchen?
Mrs. Pearce: Yes, but -
Higgins: Take all her clothes off and burn them and ring up and order some new ones. Just wrap
her in brown paper till they come.
Eliza: You're no gentleman, you're not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I am. And I know
what the likes of you are, I do.
Higgins: We want none of your slum prudery here, young woman. You've got to learn to behave
like a duchess. Now take her away, Mrs. Pearce, and if she gives you any trouble, wallop her.

And Higgins optimistically predicts that she will become an attractive lady to the men in town:
"By george, Eliza, the streets will be strewn with the bodies of men shooting themselves for your
sake before I've done with you." When she resists his cold insults and stomps out, he tempts her
back with chocolates: "Think of it, Eliza. Think of chocolates, and taxis, and gold, and diamonds!"
 13

And then to answer Pickering's questions about the six month "experiment in teaching" while she
is in his hands, Higgins describes what will happen - tongue in cheek:

Eliza, you are to stay here for the next six months learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady in
a florist shop. If you're good and do whatever you're told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom,
have lots to eat, and money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. But if you are naughty and
idle, you shall sleep in the back kitchen amongst the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs.
Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months, you shall be taken to Buckingham Palace in a
carriage, beautifully dressed. If the King finds out that you're not a lady, the police will take you to
the Tower of London, where your head will be cut off as a warning to other presumptuous flower
girls. But if you are not found out, you shall have a present of, uh, seven-and-six to start life with a
lady in a shop. If you refuse this offer, you will be the most ungrateful, wicked girl, and the angels
will weep for you. Now, are you satisfied, Pickering?

As Eliza is dragged upstairs to the bathroom to her uncertain fate by Mrs. Pearce, screaming: "If
I'd known what I would've let myself in for I wouldn't have come here. I've always been a good
girl, I have, and I won't be put upon," Higgins reiterates his confidence in the wager: "In six
months, in three if she has a good ear and a quick tongue, I'll take her anywhere and I'll pass her
off as anything. I'll make a queen of that barbarous wretch."

The unwashed Cockney girl is led into a fancy new bedroom, while a maid runs water into a
bathtub in the adjoining bathroom. Mrs. Pearce admonishes: "You know, you can't be a nice girl
inside if you're dirty outside." Eliza is overwhelmed and in awe of the fancy room: "It's too good
for the likes of me. I shall be afraid to touch anything. I ain't a duchess yet, you know." Two
serving girls and Higgin's housekeeper enter the bathroom, shut the door behind them, and
wrestle Eliza to take her clothes off and plunge her into the steaming bathtub. Her screams of
protest resound throughout the residence: "Get your hands off me! No! I won't! Let go of me!"

While the two maids carry off Eliza's clothes, Higgins is asked by the morally-responsible
Pickering if he will take advantage of Eliza under the circumstances: "I hope it's clearly
understood that no advantage is to be taken of her position...This is no trifling matter. Are you a
man of good character where women are concerned?" The confirmed, aloof, hyper-logical
bachelor/professor expresses his feelings about women in words and song: "I find the moment
that a woman makes friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned
nuisance. And I find the moment that I make friends with a woman, I become selfish and
tyrannical. So here I am, a confirmed old bachelor, and likely to remain so." The snobbish
professor contemptuously sings-talks that he is a "quiet living man" without the need for a woman
in "An Ordinary Man":

I'm an ordinary man, who desires nothing more than just an ordinary chance,
to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants.
An average man am I, of no eccentric whim, Who likes to live his life, free of strife
Doing whatever he thinks is best for him, Well, just an ordinary man

But, let a woman in your life and your serenity is through

She'll redecorate your home, from the cellar to the dome
Then go to the enthralling fun of overhauling you
Let a woman in your life, and you're up against a wall,
Make a plan and you will find, she has something else in mind,
And so rather than do either you do something else that neither likes at all.

You want to talk of Keats or Milton, she only wants to talk of love
You go to see a play or ballet, and spend it searching for her glove
Let a woman in your life and you invite eternal strife,
 14

Let them buy their wedding bands for those anxious little hands
I'd be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling, than to ever let a woman in my life...

In another line, he confirms his incorrigible bachelorhood and his impatience and distaste for
creatures of the female sex: "Let a woman in your life and you're plunging in a knife. Let the
others of my sex tie the knot around their necks, I'd prefer a new edition of the Spanish
Inquisition than to ever let a woman in my life."

In Covent Garden after being thrown out of a pub, a besotted, lazy Doolittle and his friends
ponder how to escape work. Eliza's father, a dustman and scoundrel, answers the question by
singing: "With A Little Bit O' Luck", explaining in part, how he lives a life of unwedded bliss:

The Lord above gave man an arm of iron, so he could do his job and never shirk
The Lord above gave man an arm of iron but, with a little bit o' luck,
With a little bit o' luck, Someone else'll do the blinkin' work!

The Lord above made liquor for temptation, to see if man could turn away from sin.
The Lord above made liquor for temptation but, with a little bit o' luck,
With a little bit o' luck, When temptation comes, you'll give right in!..

Oh you can walk the straight and narrow, but with a little bit o' luck you'll run amuck.
The gentle sex was made for man to marry, to share his nest and see his food is cooked.
The gentle sex was made for man to marry but, with a little bit o' luck,
With a little bit o' luck, You can have it all and not get hooked!

An old Cockney woman calls out to Alfred from a basement-level window where Eliza used to
reside (three days earlier) that he is a lucky man because his daughter is being 'kept' by a wealthy
man:

You can buy your own things now, Alfie Doolittle, fallen into a tub of butter, you have...Your
daughter Eliza...Moved in with a swell, Eliza has...this morning, I gets a message from her. She
wants her things sent over to 27A Wimpole Street, care of Professor Higgins. And what things
does she want?...Her birdcage, and a Chinese fan. But she says, 'Never mind about sending any
clothes.'

Alfred celebrates his luck by finishing up his song: "A man was made to help support his children,
which is the right and proper thing to do. A man was made to help support his children but, with a
little bit o' luck, with a little bit o' luck, they'll go out and start supporting you!"

At the Higgins residence, the professor has started Eliza on a harsh, excruciating regimen of
pronunciation exercises ("making her say the alphabet over and over") for her language education
until "she does it properly, of course." A metal diaphragm has been tightly fitted around her lungs
- as she pronounces vowels in a repetitive drill, a rotating drum charts her pronunciations on
paper.

Thinking that there's an opportunity to extort or blackmail Professor Higgins for keeping his
daughter (possibly for a scandalous sexual liaison), Alfred visits with Higgins "to rescue her from
worse than death." Pickering defends his professor friend: "Mr. Higgins' intentions are entirely
honorable." Both Higgins and Pickering are revolted by Doolittle's mercenary heart:
 15

Higgins: Do you mean to say you'd sell your daughter for 50 pounds?
Pickering: Have you no morals, man?
Doolittle: No, no. Can't afford them, governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.

Alfred persuasively defends his avowed "undeservin'" nature and successfully makes a request for
a five pound note as a pay-off:

I ain't pretendin' to be deservin'. No, I'm undeservin'. And I mean to go on bein' undeservin'. I like
it, and that's the truth. But will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of
his own daughter what he's brought up, fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow, until she's
growed big enough to be interestin' to you two gentlemen? Well, is five pounds unreasonable?

As he leaves with his five pound note, he hardly recognizes his cleaned-up daughter who scowls at
Higgins: "I won't say those ruddy vowels one more time." Alfred advises Higgins to keep his
daughter in line with physical force: "If you have any trouble with her, governor, give her a few
licks of the strap. That's the way to improve her mind." Amused that Doolittle is a "philosophical
genius," Higgins instructs Mrs. Pearce to write to an American philanthropist/millionaire (Mr.
Ezra D. Wallingford), a wealthy man who founds moral reform societies, that Mr. Alfred P.
Doolittle is a prospective lecturer - "one of the most original moralists in England."

The professor intimidates his pupil with behavioral techniques and threatens her with starvation:
"Eliza, I promise you you'll say your vowels correctly before this day is out or there'll be no lunch,
no dinner, and no chocolates." Spiteful and hateful toward her teacher, Eliza sings: "Just You
Wait", a fantasy about her asking the King on Eliza Doolittle Day for Henry Higgins' head (and
execution):

Just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait! You'll be sorry, but your tears'll be too late!
You'll be broke and I'll have money. Will I help you? Don't be funny.
Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait!...

Then they'll march you, Henry Higgins to the wall

And the King will tell me: 'Liza, sound the call.'
As they raise their rifles higher, I'll shout 'Ready! Aim! Fire!'
Oh-ho-ho, Henry Higgins, Down you'll go, Henry Higgins.
Just you wait!

Some time later, in his laboratory with walls adorned with a chart of mouth positions and side-
view pictures of his subject, Higgins delivers elocution training to Eliza and laboriously forces her
to repeat from a book the immortal words:

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

Intimidating her during the grueling training, he tells her that she is offending the Lord's ears
with her thick, shrill accent. With one mechanical apparatus, he is able to demonstrate the force
of her h's. When pronounced correctly, a gas flame wavers - when her h's are dropped, the flame
remains stationary. She has the "peculiar habit of not only dropping a letter like the letter 'h' but
using it where it doesn't belong, like 'hever' instead of 'ever', and she says 'cup o' tea' instead of
'cup of tea.' He even tortures her to read back a line from a poem: "With blackest moss, the flower
pots were thickly crusted one and all" with six marbles inserted in her mouth.

When everyone is thoroughly exhausted late one night, he makes an effort to encourage her to rid
herself of her ghastly accent:
 16

Think what you're trying to accomplish. Just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and
grandeur of the English language. It's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that
ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and
musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer Eliza, and conquer
it you will.

Finally, she makes a linguistic breakthrough with a perfectly pronounced, impeccably enunciated:
"The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain" without the accustomed ugly accent. Elated,
Higgins can hardly believe what he has heard: "I think she's got it. I think she's got it." They sing a
duet together, delighted about her triumph in the musical's biggest show-stopper:

Eliza: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

Higgins: I think she's got it. I think she's got it.
Eliza: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.
Higgins: By George, she's got it. By George, she's got it. Now once again, where does it rain?
Eliza: On the plain! On the plain!
Higgins: And where's that soggy plain?
Eliza: In Spain! In Spain!
Chorus: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!...

Higgins joyfully dances with her around the room. Reveling in her verbal achievement, Higgins
proposes: "I think the time has come to try her out...Let's test her in public and see how she
fares...I know, we'll take her to the races...My mother's box at Ascot." And the next morning, they
will have to go out and buy her a dress that is not "too flowery" but "simple and modest and
elegant." Now completely exhilarated, jubilant and starting to fall in love, Eliza cannot go to bed:
"My head's too light to try to set it down. Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight, not for all the
jewels in the crown." Before finally collapsing on her pillow, she sings "I Could Have Danced All
Night":

I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night,
And still have begged for more. I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things I've never done before.
I'll never know what made it so exciting, Why all at once my heart took flight.
I only know when he began to dance with me I could have danced, danced, danced all night!

In the next stunning and stylized scene at the Ascot Race Track on Opening Day, the elegantly-
dressed ladies and gentlemen of the polite, cultured and leisure high society class are clothed in
black, white, and grey colors. [The striking sets and Edwardian-era costumes were designed by
Oscar-winning Cecil Beaton.] The aristocrats complacently parade about in their extravagant
costumes with their parasol-twirling ladies, as they stiffly wait for the start of the horse races. In
uniform fashion, they raise their field glasses toward the track, and watch in freeze-frame as the
horses gallop by during the first race. Afterwards, they unemotionally lower their field glasses and
intone together, anti-climactically:

What a frenzied moment that was! Didn't they maintain an exhausting pace?
'Twas a thrilling, absolutely chilling running of the Ascot op'ning race.

Higgins appears, awkwardly set apart in a brown tweed suit. His ascerbic mother Mrs. Higgins
(Dame Gladys Cooper) greets him with one of the film's most famous lines. [She upbraids her son
about his own upper-class social lapses, paralleling his own corrections of lower-class pupil
Eliza]:

Henry! What a disagreeable surprise!..You'll offend all my friends. The moment they meet you, I'll
never see them again. Besides, you're not even dressed for Ascot.
 17

He explains that he has invited "a flower girl" to her race box "to try her out first" before debuting
her at the Embassy Ball:

I taught her how to speak properly. She has strict instructions as to her behavior. She's to keep to
two subjects: the weather and everybody's health. 'Fine day' and 'how do you do?' And not just let
herself go on things in general.

As Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and her son Freddie join Mrs. Higgins in her box, Eliza makes her
spectacular entrance with Pickering, dressed in a white gown and hat with an accent or splash of
red. She first speaks quite carefully with impeccable enunciation: "How kind of you to let me
come." Freddie is immediately infatuated with Eliza, repeating back to her: "How do you do?" The
transformed commoner also speaks about the weather using her pronunciation drills: "The rain in
Spain stays mainly in the plain. But in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever
happen." But then with marvelous inconsistency, Eliza begins to divulge less than genteel details
about her aunt's death with her properly-trained accent. Higgins winces and gasps in
astonishment at her street-sounding grammar, vocabulary, and conversational content, when she
describes how her aunt was murdered by relatives for her straw hat:

My aunt died of influenza - so they said, but it's my belief they done the old woman in...Yes, Lord
love you. Why should she die of influenza when she come through diptheria right enough the year
before? Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead, but my father, he kept ladling
gin down her throat...Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl off the spoon...Now what call
would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new
straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them as pinched
it done her in...Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat pin, let alone a hat...Gin was
mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured so much down his own throat, he knew the good of
it...Drank! My word! Something chronic!

Freddie calls her colorful speech patterns "the new small talk" and is captivated by Eliza. During
the second race, Eliza's masquerade as a lady nearly fails when she excitedly shouts out as the
horses pass:

Come on, Dover. Move yer bloomin' arse!

Henry's mother thinks that his protege is "ready for a canal barge" rather than the Embassy Ball,
but Henry is persistent about continuing to refine her:

Mrs. Higgins: If you cannot see how impossible this whole project is then you must be absolutely
potty about her. I advise you to give it up now and not put yourself and this poor girl through any
more.
Henry: Give it up? Why, it's the most fascinating venture I've ever undertaken. Pickering and I are
at it from morning till night. It fills our whole lives, teaching Eliza, talking to Eliza, listening to
Eliza, dressing Eliza.
Mrs. Higgins: What? You're a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll.

Although Eliza has blundered her way through the entire day and embarrassed her mentors,
young Freddie has become devoted to her. He has brought a bouquet of yellow flowers for Eliza,
and stands outside the Higgins household - there, he sings of his love for her in "On the Street
Where You Live":

I have often walked down this street before but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet
before.
All at once, am I, several stories high. Knowing I'm on the street where you live.
Are there lilac trees in the heart of town? Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?
 18

Does enchantment pour out of every door? No, it's just on the street where you live...
People stop and stare, they don't bother me for there's nowhere else on Earth that I would rather
be.
Let the time go by, I won't care if I can be here on the street where you live.

Mrs. Pearce turns Freddie away from seeing Eliza, explaining that she "doesn't want to see anyone
ever again" because of her shaky and "unbelievable" coming-out at the racetrack. Pickering is
ready to give up on their "experiment," training, and bet regarding a very downcast Eliza: "It's
inhuman to continue. Do you realize what you've got to try and teach this poor girl within six
weeks? You've got to teach her to walk, talk, address a Duke, a Lord, a Bishop, an ambassador. It's
absolutely imposs-. Higgins - I'm trying to tell you that I want to call off the bet."

In a quick jump-cut to six weeks later, Pickering is still warning Higgins of potential mishaps and
embarrassments even though Eliza has been rigorously trained. They are nervously speaking to
each other and pacing anxiously in the upstairs hallway, on the evening of the high-society Ball:
"The way you've driven the girl in the last six weeks has exceeded all bounds of common
decency...Are you so sure this girl will retain everything you've hammered into her?" Higgins
argues that he has concerns for his "experiment" even though he has tyrannized her:

Of course she matters. What do you think I've been doing all these months? What could possibly
matter more than to take a human being and change her into a different human being by creating
a new speech for her? It's filling up the deepest gap that separates class from class and soul from
soul. Oh, she matters immensely.

At that moment, Eliza appears at the top of the stairs - a fairy-tale vision in her gorgeous white
evening gown, looking like a princess. Higgins is stunned by the view, and downs a drink of port,
as Pickering helps Eliza into her red cape. Higgins then catches himself striding toward the door
without Eliza, and turns back toward her. He extends his arm to her, and begins to escort her to
the Ball.

Intermission:

At the Embassy Ball hosted by the Ambassador (Alan Napier) and Lady Ambassador, an
announcer presents couples from various countries as they arrive at the top of the stairs. One of
Higgins' best pupils who has become a Hungarian language specialist/professional, Zoltan
Karpathy (Theodore Bikel) introduces himself to Higgins, and boasts that he can spot any
imposters ("an imposterologist"):

I'm your pupil, your first, your greatest, your best pupil...I made your name famous throughout
Europe. You teach me phonetics, you cannot forget me...The Queen of Transylvania is here this
evening. I'm indispensable to her at these official international parties. I speak thirty-two
languages. I know everyone in Europe. No imposter can escape my detection.
The Lady Ambassador (Lillian Kemble-Cooper) is noticeably impressed by Eliza, calling her "an
enchanting young lady," but Pickering and Higgins fear that she will be exposed by Karpathy.
During her fanfare entrance, even the Queen of Transylvania pauses transfixed in front of the
transformed flower girl and remarks as she holds Eliza's chin: "Charming, quite charming."
Prince Gregor (Henry Daniell) of Transylvania is also captivated and escorts Eliza to the
dignitaries' dias, where the Queen's son, the Prince of Transylvania requests a dance. Other dance
partners include Higgins and Karpathy himself, who is so impressed with Eliza's magnificent
performance that he spreads whispers throughout the audience about her identity (asserting that
she is a Hungarian princess).
 19

Later that evening, after successfully passing off Eliza as a princess and gloating over their
"immense achievement," "a total triumph," and "a lot of tomfoolery," Pickering and Higgins
congratulate each other in front of Higgins' servants. But they completely ignore Eliza's role in
their strategy. Together, they ecstatically sing: "You Did It, You Did It."

Tonight old man you did it, you did it, you did it.
You said that you would do it and indeed you did.
I thought that you would rue it, I doubted you'd do it
But now I must admit it that succeed you did...

With clever rhyming, Higgins denounces Zoltan Karpathy as "a blaggard who uses the science of
speech more to blackmail and swindle than teach. He made it the devilish business of his to find
out who this Miss Doolittle is. Every time we looked around there he was that hairy hound from
Budapest. Never leaving us alone, never have I ever known a ruder pest..." After dancing with
Eliza, "he announced to the hostess that she was - a fraud!...Her English is too good, he said, that
clearly indicates that she is foreign, whereas others are instructed in their native language,
English people are-n't. And although she may have studied with an expert dialectitian and
grammarian, I can tell that she was born - Hungarian! Not only Hungarian, but of royal blood.
(He points toward Eliza) She is a princess. Her blood, he said, is bluer than the Danube is or ever
was. Royalty is absolutely written on her face."

Karpathy has deduced that Eliza could not be English because she spoke the native language too
well - she is a royal blood Hungarian princess. After their flurry of self-congratulatory
pronouncements for their "glorious victory," Eliza is left alone, tragically hurt and angered by
their indifference toward her. Feeling like she is expendable, Eliza is weeping when Higgins re-
appears. She quickly turns furious:

Higgins: (asking himself) What the devil have I done with my slippers?
Eliza: Here are your slippers! (She flings them at him) There! and there! Take your slippers and
may you never have a day's luck with them.
Higgins: (astounded) What on earth? What's the matter? Is anything wrong?
Eliza: No, nothing wrong with you. I won your bet for you, haven't I? That's enough for you. I
don't matter, I suppose.
Higgins: You won my bet! You presumptuous insect! I won it. What did you throw those slippers
at me for?
Eliza: Because I wanted to smash your face. I could kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn't you
leave me where you picked me out of in the gutter? You thank God it's all over, now you can throw
me back again there, do you?

In total emotional despair and wishing she were dead, Eliza cries out regarding her fate: "What's
to become of me?" and compares herself to the worth of his slippers. Now that she has been well-
bred for appearing in high society, but not assured of her place in that world, she has also become
distant from her world among the gutter-dwellers:

Eliza: What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do and
what's to become of me?
Higgins: Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? Oh, I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. I'm
sure you won't have any difficulty in settling yourself somewhere or other. I hadn't quite realized
you were going away. You might marry, you know. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old
bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort - poor devils! Anyway, you're
not bad-looking. You're really quite a pleasure to look at sometimes. Well, not now, of course,
when you've been crying, you look like the very devil. But I mean, when you're all right and quite
yourself, you're what I would call attractive...I daresay my mother might find some fellow or other
who'd do very well.
Eliza: We were above that at Covent Garden.
 20

Higgins: What do you mean?

Eliza: I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me, I'm not fit to sell anything
else.

When she divests herself of her "hired" jewelry, resolutely admits to being "a common ignorant
girl" with differences between them so great that "there can't be any feelings between the likes of
you and the likes of me," Higgins loses his temper over her demands: "You have wounded me to
the heart...damn you, and damn my own folly for having ravished my hard-earned knowledge and
the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe."

Still idolizing Eliza, an omni-present, Freddie ardently reprises: "On the Street Where You Live"
in the middle of the night when a frustrated Eliza leaves the Higgins' house on Wimpole Street
with her small piece of luggage. He has been writing "sheets and sheets" of words of his
praiseworthy devotion to her. Her first response is one of frustration: "Words! Words! Words! I'm
so sick of words!" She then sings: "Show Me" with a newfound demand - the need to be shown
demonstrative love instead of sappy words. In this song, she expresses her true independence as a
woman:

...Don't talk of stars, burning above. If you're in love, show me!

Tell me no dreams filled with desire. If you're on fire, show me!
Here we are together in the middle of the night!
Don't talk of spring! Just hold me tight!
Anyone who's ever been in love will tell you that this is no time for a chat!
Haven't your lips longed for my touch? Don't say how much, show me! Show me!
Don't talk of love lasting through time. Make me no undying vow. Show me now!

After taking a taxi ride to return her to Covent Garden (which is closing up after a day of flower-
selling), Eliza finds that no one at the flower cart or along the vegetable stalls recognizes her.
Forlorn and with nowhere to go, she encounters her tuxedo-dressed, yet "miserable" father - who
has also 'ruined' his own opportunistic lot as a result of Higgins' intercession - "that Wimpole
Street devil." He explains scornfully how he has inherited millions when Wallingford died and
provided for him in his will:

Ruined me, that's all. Tied me up and delivered me in the hands of middle-class morality. And
don't you defend him. Was it him or was it not him, who wrote to an old American blighter,
named Wallingford, who was giving five millions to found Moral Reform societies, to tell him the
most original moralist in England was Mr. Alfred P. Doolittle, a common dustman?...You may call
it a joke. It's put the lid on me, proper. The old bloke died and left me four thousand pounds a
year in his blommin' will. Who asked him to make a gentleman out of me? I was happy. I was free.
I touched pretty nigh everyone for money when I wanted it, same as I touched him. Now, I'm tied
neck and heels, and everybody touches me. A year ago, I hadn't a relation in the world except one
or two who wouldn't speak to me. Now, I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages amongst the lot
of 'em. Oh, I have to live for others now, not for myself. Middle-class morality.

Entrapped by the middle class, he must become "respectable" by marrying Eliza's "stepmother."
It's "the deepest cut of all" that he must make an honest woman out of his 'mistress.' And he
cannot give back the money because he doesn't have the "nerve" or courage to do so, admitting:
"We're all intimidated, that's what we are. Intimidated. Bought up." In only a few hours, he will
lose his freedom at the church: "There's drinks and girls all over London and I gotta track 'em
down in just a few more hours." In the waning hours of his last free morning, he drunkenly sings
in the pub: "Get Me To The Church on Time":

I'm getting married in the morning, Ding dong the bells are gonna chime
Kick up a rumpus, but don't lose the compass
 21

And get me to the church - Get him to the church

For Gawd's sake get me to the church on time.

The next morning, Higgins is distressed that Eliza has "bolted" after throwing his slippers at him,
even though he "never gave her the slightest provocation." Baffled by her disappearance, he asks:
"What could've depressed her? What could've possessed her? I cannot understand the wretch at
all...Women are irrational, that's all there is to that! Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!
They're nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and
infuriating hags." Higgins sings-talks: "Why Can't A Woman" - wondering why women can't have
the same "honest, so thoroughly square, eternally noble, historically fair...so pleasant, so easy to
please...so friendly, good-natured and kind...so decent" qualities that a man has:

Why can't a woman be more like a man? Men are so decent, such regular chaps.
Ready to help you through any mishaps. Ready to buck you up whenever you are glum.
Why can't a woman be a chum? Why is thinking something women never do?
I mean, why is logic never even tried? Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside? Why can't a woman behave like a man?
If I was a woman who'd been to a ball, been hailed as a princess by one and by all.
Would I start weeping like a bathtub overflowing? And carry on as if my home were in a tree?
Would I run off and never tell me where I'm going? Why can't a woman be like me?

In the meantime, Eliza has fled to the security of the home of Higgins' mother where she receives
understanding and sympathy: "Do you mean to say that after you'd done this wonderful thing for
them without making a single mistake, they just sat there and never said a word to you, never
petted you, or admired you, or told you how splendid you'd been?" When Henry storms in, his
matriarchal mother berates him for his insensitive behavior toward Eliza:

Mrs. Higgins: And if you don't promise to behave yourself, I must ask you to leave.
Higgins: What, do you mean to say that I'm to put on my Sunday manners for this thing that I
created out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden?
Mrs. Higgins: That's precisely what I mean.
Higgins: Then I'll see her damned first.
Mrs. Higgins: (to Eliza) However did you learn good manners with my son around?

Now a true lady and refusing to be treated as an inferior, Eliza has perceptively seen why she
should expect inconsiderate treatment from her "cold, unfeeling, selfish" teacher: "The difference
between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a
flower girl to Professor Higgins because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will." (By
way of contrast, Pickering treated her with consideration, kindness and concern. The lessons
learned from Pickering's example were more valuable.)

She confronts him with his subservient, hateful attitude toward her: "You want me back only to
pick up your slippers and put up with your tempers and fetch and carry for you." He defends his
imperious attitude: "The question is not whether I treat you rudely but whether you've ever heard
me treat anyone else better." His manner is like a "motorbus - all bounce and go and no
consideration for anybody." Eliza expresses her new-found strength and independence even
though he wants to take her back: "But I can get along without you. Don't you think I can't." And
she had wanted his kindness, friendship, and respect:

I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common ignorant girl, and you're a book-learned gentleman,
but I'm not dirt under your feet. What I done, what I did, was not for the taxis and the dresses, but
because we were pleasant together. And I come to, came to care for you, not to want you to make
love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly-like...Don't be too sure
that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down.
 22

She surprises him with her decision to marry Freddie, having had enough of his bullying and big
talk. In a song "Without You," she claims that Higgins is no longer necessary in her independent
life:

There'll be spring every year without you. England still will be here without you.
There'll be fruit on the tree. And a shore by the sea. There'll be crumpets and tea without you.
Art and music will thrive without you. Somehow Keats will survive without you.
And there still will be rain on that plain down in Spain, even that will remain without you.
I can do without you. You, dear friend, who talk so well,
You can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire. They can still rule with land without you.
Windsor Castle will stand without you. And without much ado we can all muddle through without
you.

Suddenly proud of himself for creating a "magnificent" and intelligent woman, he responds: "Now
you're a tower of strength, a consort battleship. I like you this way," yet is taken aback when she
counters: "Goodbye, Professor Higgins. You shall not be seeing me again." Resolved that he must
be strong enough to let her go, he muses: "Very well, let her go. I can do without her. I can do
without anyone. I have my own soul, my own spark of divine fire!" But walking on his way home,
Henry swears four times: "Damn, damn, damn, damn," and begrudgingly acknowledges his love
for her presence in "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face":

I've grown accustomed to her face (spoken, not sung). She almost makes the day begin.
I've grown accustomed to the tune that she whistles night and noon.
Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs are second nature to me now.
Like breathing out and breathing in. I was serenely independent and content before we met.
Surely I could always be that way again - and yet
I've grown accustomed to her looks, accustomed to her voice, accustomed to her face.

As he leans on the gate outside his home, he muses: "Marry Freddy. What an infantile idea. What
a heartless, little brainless thing to do. But she'll regret it, she'll regret it. It's doomed before they
even take the vow!" He sings about imagining her as Mrs. Freddie Eynsford-Hill in a "wretched
little flat above a store" - poor and with bill collectors hounding her. And if she attempted to teach
elocution, she'd fail and end up selling flowers like she used to, "while her husband has his
breakfast in bed." She'll only become "prematurely gray" after being abandoned - and he is
amused: "Poor Eliza, how simply frightful! How humiliating, how delightful!" He dreams that
she'll return to him, but he vengefully fantasizes (as Eliza did earlier in "Just You Wait") about
throwing her out even though he's a "most forgiving man":

How poignant it'll be on that inevitable night when she hammers on my door in tears and rags
Miserable and lonely, repentant and contrite. Will I take her in or hurl her to the wolves?
Give her kindness or the treatment she deserves? Will I take her back or throw the baggage out?...
But, I shall never take her back, if she were crawling on her knees.
Let her promise to atone, let her shiver, let her moan
I'll slam the door and let the hellcat freeze!

But then he reconsiders his threats, and remembers the things he has grown "accustomed to":

But I'm so used to hear her say, 'Good morning' every day.
Her joys, her woes, her highs, her lows, are second nature to me now.
Like breathing out and breathing in. I'm very grateful she's a woman and so easy to forget.
Rather like a habit one can always break - and yet
I've grown accustomed to the trace, of something in the air, accustomed to her face.

Once in his home, he returns to the laboratory where he gave speech lessons to Eliza. He turns on
the phonograph and in a melancholy pose, he listens to a recording he made when Eliza first came
 23

to his home to request elocution lessons. As Eliza walks up behind him while he reminisces, and
he hears himself accept the challenge to re-make her into a lady: "It's almost irresistible. She's so
deliciously low. So horribly dirty. I'll take it! I'll make a duchess of this draggle-tailed
guttersnipe," she turns the phonograph off and speaks to him to fill in her line of dialogue in her
unwashed Cockney accent. Slowly, he realizes that she has followed him back home and returned.
But without learning the lesson that he may have lost her, he returns to his accustomed,
unreformed, selfish, and chauvinistic ways:

Eliza: I washed my face and hands before I come, I did.

Higgins: Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers?

[Note: This is a tacked-on, compromising, insulting, misogynistic ending, presumably for box-
office considerations, since a harder, more realistic ending might have been more difficult for
audiences to watch. The original Pygmalion had an ambiguous ending - Higgins' last line was
"Nonsense - she's going to marry Freddie. Ha ha ha!...." An additional prose ending added by
George Bernard Shaw left no doubt that Eliza did indeed marry Freddie, her vacuous admirer.
The film's ending is unusual and contradictory, since Eliza's character had been so liberated by
her rags-to-riches education and complete metamorphic make-over.]
 24

Raging Bull (1980) is an unrelenting, searing biopic and dramatic tragedy - based on the real-
life story of an unlovable, stubborn middle-weight boxing champion as he struggles to be
champion. His life passes through successive stages of punishment, compromise, and self-
disintegration, due to numerous inner demons. The tale of Jake La Motta's downfall is a reversal
of the sentimental, much-loved boxer/hero story in Rocky (1976). [Its tone resembled previous
boxing genre films, including Golden Boy (1939), Body and Soul (1947), Champion (1949), and
The Set-Up (1949).]

Paul 'Taxi Driver' Schrader and Mardik 'Mean Streets' Martin contributed the superb (and un-
nominated) screenplay that was loosely based on Jake La Motta's book of the same name - it
chronicled the boxer's own rise and tragic, self-destructive, violent fall. The 1940s boxing
champion/bum blindly, obtusely, and stupidly inflicts wounds upon himself (mostly outside the
ring in his personal and marital life with sibling rivalry, obsessive and irrational jealousy, and
domestic abuse) while he also legally brutalizes opponents in the ring. The protagonist finds that
his own meanness, brutishness, lack of humanity, inarticulate rage, and inner demons can best be
expressed or exorcised inside the boxing ring. By the film's end, he has alienated himself from his
wife and brother, and lost both his boxing title and freedom.

Scorsese's film was positioned in the middle of his Italian-American trilogy of films, between
Mean Streets (1973) and GoodFellas (1990). True to life in the Italian ghetto, the film is
naturalistically filled with elements of the first generation Italian-American subculture, including
colloquial, blasphemous language, the peppering of four letter words, cursing, and non-sequiter
un-formed thoughts.

The skillfully-made film was both praised and vilified at the time of its release, but has since been
rated as one of the best films of its decade. Out of its eight Academy Awards nominations, Best
Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Joe Pesci), Best Supporting Actress (Cathy Moriarty), Best
Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Cinematography (Michael Chapman), and Best Sound, it only
won two Oscars: Best Actor (De Niro), and Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker). The film
lost both the Best Director and Best Picture awards to Robert Redford's Ordinary People (1980).

Director Martin Scorsese was convinced by actor Robert De Niro, with whom he had made Mean
Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and New York, New York (1977), that the film had to be made,
after he was given La Motta's biography by De Niro in 1974. The actor's own performance was the
most overwhelming of his career - he completely immersed himself in the role by altering his
physical appearance in an ultimate Method-acting performance. As a lean boxer, he rigorously
trained with La Motta for the boxing sequences, and then bloated out with over fifty pounds more
weight for the film's ending as a defeated has-been. The actor's award-winning performance
required an incredible transformation of his character over a 23-year period (from 1941 to 1964),
including La Motta's two marriages, boxing ring fights with the likes of Sugar Ray Robinson (to
whom he lost the title), and his decline to a Miami, Florida nightclub owner and a sleazy, two-bit,
lewd comedian in a New York nightclub.

In the film's brutal, no-holds-barred look at the gladiatorial sport of boxing in documentary-style,
B/W newsreel footage, La Motta unsparingly engages other boxers in the ring in some of the most
realistic, visceral, bloody, and brutal yet stylized boxing scenes ever filmed - with sweat and blood
spraying out of the ring, devastating blows, and flashing - actually exploding - camera bulbs. The
sounds of squashing melons and tomatoes were used for landed punches, along with animal
growling and bird shrieks during various violent scenes. Dark Hershey's chocolate was used for
blood. The size and shape of the ring was also modified and changed from small, to long and
narrow, for varying effects.

Michael Chapman's stunning, crisp black-and-white cinematography (throughout the entire film
except for the home video segments) and subjective camera used innovative techniques including
slow-motion (varying camera speeds), 360 degree pans, and titled camera angles for various fight
 25

scenes. The lighting was deliberately made harsh and stark, to provide an expressionistic look and
feel of the brutality inside the ring. Musical excerpts from three of Italian composer Pietro
Mascagni's melancholic operas intensify the surrealistic images.

[Although the eight fight scenes seem to occupy much of the film, their screen time totals only ten
minutes, but they took about six weeks to film. Even more time was necessary to edit the dozens
of shots that make up each match. The domestic fighting and other battles in La Motta's personal
life compose the remainder of the film.]

Except for the bold red lettering for the title of the film, the rest of the film's credits are white,
superimposed on a grainy, black-and white scene. Boxer Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro), with his
face hidden in the monk-like hood of his leopard-skin robe, warms up alone in the ring by
shadow-boxing into the smoky air. He gracefully dances or jogs up and down - in slow-motion - in
the dreamy sequence to the melancholy, haunting soundtrack of the "Intermezzo" from
Cavalleria Rusticana (an opera by Pietro Mascagni). [The film closes with the same piece.] It is a
religious, almost spiritual environment in which he prepares for his ultimate battles - in the
location of his only reality, the confined boundaries of the ring.

White letters on a black background, a title card reads: New York City 1964

The camera pans down a sign outside the Barbizon Plaza Theatre: "An Evening With Jake La
Motta Tonight 8:30." In voice-over, Jake La Motta speaks, as the film cuts to La Motta, alone in
his dressing room where he rehearses for his nightclub appearance reciting bits of Shakespearean
tragedy, wearing a tuxedo and open shirt. His fantasy of disrobing in the ring presents the film's
recurrent theme of sexual anxiety, fear, and confusion:

I remember those cheers

They still ring in my ears
And for years they'll remain in my thoughts
Cuz one night I took off my robe
And what'd I do
I forgot to wear shorts.
I recall every fall, every hook, every jab
The worst way a guy could get rid of his flab
As you know, my life was a jab...
Though I'd rather hear you cheer
When I delve into Shakespeare
"A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdom for a Horse,"
I haven't had a winner in six months (he lights his cigar)...
I know I'm no Olivier
But if he fought Sugar Ray
He would say
That the thing ain't the ring
It's the play.
So gimme a stage
Where this bull here can rage
And though I can fight
I'd much rather recite
That's entertainment!
That's entertainment.

The rest of the film is a flashback - a look back at the middle-aged man's life to try to understand
why he is reciting lines in his dressing room. The final words of the monologue: "That's
 26

entertainment," are sharply juxtaposed with the next scene - a closeup of young boxer La Motta
receiving several rapid punches to the jaw in a different performing art, the sport of boxing.

[There are eight boxing match scenes in the film.]

Superimposed title card: Jake La Motta 1941

(First Fight Scene)
According to the voice-over of the fight announcer, middle-weight boxer La Motta is still
undefeated. A fierce, up-and-coming boxing contender, La Motta fights in 1941 in Cleveland
against black boxer Jimmy Reeves (Floyd Anderson). The blows to the boxers' faces are magnified
by numbing stereophonic sound and shot from their point-of-view - inside the ring. The impact of
the punches, the glaring bright lights, and the pearls of sweat which are flung off by every blow
are intensely real. La Motta, known as the "Bronx Bull," is told in his corner by his trainers and
handlers between the ninth and tenth round that he is "outpointed" and to win the bout: "You're
gonna have to knock him out." In the arena, a woman screams and a fight breaks out between a
fan and a soldier.

When the impressionistically-filmed fight resumes in the ring, La Motta half crouches in a closed-
in position and "continues to bore in." He knocks Reeves down to the mat. Flashbulbs explode
and clink and the crowd erupts. With a couple more "hard lefts," La Motta pummels him hard and
knocks down his unprotected opponent a second time - and then again a third time in a comeback
attempt in the final round. Blood oozes from the boxer's eye as the countdown reaches nine, but
Reeves is "saved by the bell" at the end of the round.

As La Motta proudly strides around the ring with arms raised up, while his brother/manager Joey
(Joe Pesci) bestows the victor's mantle on him - a leopard-skin robe, the ring announcer declares
Reeves "the winner by unanimous decision." (The fight's outcome was fixed by the Mafia.) La
Motta refuses to leave the ring and pandemonium reigns in the arena. An angry fracas breaks out
in the crowd over La Motta's controversial first defeat - chairs are thrown and one female
spectator is trampled. The rioting crowd violence is partially quelled when the organist begins
playing: "The Star Spangled Banner."

Title card: THE BRONX New York City 1941

On the city street's sidewalk, Joey and Salvy (Frank Vincent), a small-time Mafia lieutenant, walk
toward Jake's apartment while discussing the Reeves fight. Salvy claims that hard-headed Jake, a
product of the Bronx slums, must cooperate and let mobster Tommy Como (Nicholas Colasanto -
who also acted as Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso in the Cheers TV-sitcom series (1982-1985)) control his
boxing career:

Salvy: That shit would've never happened if Tommy was over there takin' care of him. You know
he's gotta be with Tommy to fight in New York to get a title shot. I mean, he's gonna wind up
fuckin' punch-drunk, your brother.
Joey: I know.
Salvy: You know. You gotta make him understand that it's the best thing for everybody involved.
Joey: I said, I know.
Salvy: You know, but you gotta make him know. You gotta tell him and make him understand.

In the dining nook of his cramped New York apartment in the famous "steak" scene, a scene that
demonstrates his hellish neighborhood life, a bruised-faced (still fresh from the Reeves fight) Jake
in an undershirt eats and mulls over the disastrous fight with his first wife Irma (Lori Anne Flax):
"They knew. They knew who was the boss. The judges didn't know. Who knows what happened
with them? The people knew." In both his public life and private life, La Motta lives with violence
and conflict. He bullies her about how she should cook his steak, carnivorously wanting it bloody
and raw [the analogy to La Motta's own explosive, visceral, self-defeating life is clear]:
 27

Don't overcook it. You overcook it, it's no good. It defeats its own purpose.

Tired of his bullying, she slaps the steak on his plate in front of him. The volatile-natured husband
up-ends the table.

The camera cuts back to the end of Joey and Salvy's conversation in front of Jake's Bronx
apartment. Joey agrees to talk to his brother about agreeing to an association with Tommy: "If
he's in a good mood, I'll talk to him." As they part, Joey mouths the words and silently tells Salvy:
"Go f--k yourself" - a phrase which incorporates sexual anger, affection, and repressed hostility
into a typical working-class Italian 'goodbye.'

Inside, Joey walks in on the couple's heated argument. An offscreen, urban neighbor Larry
complains about the noise of the domestic quarrel: "What's the matter with you up there, you
animals?" Jake leans out the window and hollers back with another carnivorous threat - that he'll
eat the neighbor's dog for lunch. After the hapless husband Jake calls for a truce with his wife,
things calm down. Consumed with bitter anger, Jake complains to Joey about what's wrong - that
he will never be "the best there is" because he has "girl's hands":

Jake: What's wrong with me? My hands.

Joey: Your hands? What about 'em?
Jake: I got these small hands. I got a little girl's hands.
Joey: I got 'em too. What's the difference?
Jake: You know what that means? No matter how big I get, no matter who I fight, no matter what
I do, I ain't never gonna fight Joe Louis.
Joey: Yeah, that's right. He's a heavy-weight. You're a middle-weight. What of it?
Jake: I ain't ever gonna get a chance to fight the best there is. And you know somethin'. I'm better
than him. I ain't never gonna get a chance. You're askin' what's wrong.
Joey: But you're crazy to even think about somethin' like that...

Lean and muscular, Jake challenges his brother to punch him in the face as hard as he can - to
play out the ritual of the boxing ring in his own kitchen. When Joey resists, Jake taunts him and
calls him a faggot: "Come on, don't be a little faggot. Come on. Hit me." Goaded relentlessly, Joey
wraps a towel around his hand and slams his brother repeatedly in the face, but it isn't enough
and sadistically intimates that Joey is homosexual: "You throw a punch like you take it up the ass.
Come on. Harder." After his brutish brother takes many more "bangs" or hits in the perversely
sexual scene, Joey is ordered to take off the towel. After being slapped back, Joey strikes Jake a
few times with his bare fist, and the boxer's cuts start opening up, spattering his face with blood.
Joey shouts in an exasperated voice after blood has been drawn:

What are you tryin' to prove?! What does it prove?

Non-verbally and slyly, Jake enigmatically grins back and tweaks Joey's cheek, communicating
something about the nature of his relationship with his brother.

In Gleason's Boxing Club, Jake spars with Joey in the ring, making his brother his punching bag.
Salvy and his friends Patsy (Frank Adonis) and Guido (Joseph Bono) watch Jake, who is irritated
about their presence, beat up his brother. Almost inaudibly, one of them comments about the
brothers: "They look like two fags up there." After the spectators rise to leave, Jake denounces go-
between Joey for arranging to have them cooperate, become subservient to the mob, and split his
fortune:

Joey: They only came up here because Tommy told 'em to come up and try to help us.
Jake Whatsa matter with you? Help who? Whatsa matter with you?...Help me by takin' my
 28

money? Is that what you're talkin' about - takin' my money? I'm here breakin' my ass, not them.
Don't ever bring 'em up here again, ya hear me?

At the open-air city swimming pool, Jake buys a coke and then is lustfully attracted to a fifteen-
year old, blonde "neighborhood girl" named Vickie (19 year old Cathy Moriarty) who hangs
around with the neighborhood wiseguys - Salvy and the boys. Poolside in a white-striped, one-
piece bathing suit, she is revealed to Jake's point-of-view when Joey's back, which fills the screen,
moves out of the way. Obsessed with her, he incessantly grills his brother about the young
teenager and the men surrounding her, intensely interested in her desirability: "Where's she
from?","What's her last name?", "She knows them?", "She go with them?", and "I heard there was
a girl that he (Salvy) went with that was a very beautiful young girl, blonde...that's not her?" Jake
almost wishes to hear that Joey bedded down Vickie:

Joey: She ain't the kind of girl you just f--k and forget about, this girl.
Jake: Joey, how many times I gotta tell ya? Why're you always cursin' when I'm talkin' to you?
Don't do it around me. Do it around your friends...
Joey: She's a, the kind of girl you bang and forget about - she's not like that. You gotta spend time
with her, get involved, you know...
Jake: Did you bang her?
Joey: No.
Jake: Tell me the truth.
Joey: I just told you the truth. I tell you the truth the first time. You don't have to ask me again. I
never do that. I always tell you the truth. If I did it, you would know. I took her out a couple of
times.
Jake: You went with her and you didn't try to f--k her?

Learning that Joey only took her out a few times, Jake turns his attention toward Salvy and his
friends. He jealously watches them and mutters that they must be trying to impress her - his
erotic object of desire. His passionate feelings for her quickly turn violent toward her male
admirers. Jake remarks that "tough guys" aren't so tough without their guns:

Friends. They're in a huddle. Big business meeting. By the pool, they sit around and talk. Big
deals. They make sure she can hear. Big Man. Get the f--k outta here. Big shot. Get 'em all in a
back room, smack 'em around, no more big shot, without his gun. They're tough guys. They're all
tough guys.

During his meditative reverie, Vickie sensually gets up and moves to the edge of the pool, sits
down with her feet in the water, and turns her face toward the sun. Joey reminds Jake that he's
married: "What are ya thinkin' about? Ya keep lookin'. Where the f--k you going? You're dead!
You're married! You're a married man, it's all over. Leave the young girls for me." The scene ends
with a slow-motion shot of Vickie's legs - her objectified body parts idly swish up and down in the
pool water, as Jake mutters again: "Big shot."

After primping together before a mirror in Jake's apartment before going out on the town on a
Saturday night (August 6th), Jake and Joey leave - ostensibly for "business." Irma protests,
intimates that they're homosexual, and screams: "I'm not gonna be here when you get back, you
f--kin' bunch of guineas, you're always hangin' out together. Why don't you f--kin' stop? You're
not goin' on business. You're gonna suck each other off, right? Suck 'em, suck 'em baby." When
they reach the street, she yells more invectives out the window, jealously incensed at the sexual
dimensions of their relationship: "You f--kin' queer. Faggot. Go stick it up..."

At the Annual Summer Dance sponsored by St. Clare's Church, held at Chester Palace, the two La
Mottas (hypocritically without their spouses) enter the main ballroom and sit at a table in the
back with Beansy. Jake is intent on looking for Vickie. A Catholic priest is asked to bless the table.
In successively-closer views, Jake spots Vickie across the room at a table with a group of women.
 29

When the group begins leaving, with Salvy escorting Vickie, Jake follows them downstairs
through the crowd and sees the sultry blonde driven off in a shiny black convertible.

Alongside the city swimming pool the next day, Jake sits in his own shiny convertible as Joey,
talking to Vickie through the pool's chain-link fence, asks whether she'd like to meet his brother
("Jack.") [The scene on either side of the fence reflects the relationships between the characters -
the brother's bond also creates a barrier between Vickie and Jake.]

Joey: Vickie, this is my brother Jake. He's gonna be the next champ.
Vickie: Hi.
Jake: How ya doin'? Nice to meet ya.

He touches her fingers through the metal fence. [The dividing wire between them foreshadows
that she will be his 'kept' woman, or that he will ultimately end up in prison.] She compliments
him on his car: "Nice car."

Jake: Where are ya from?

Vickie: Around here.
Jake: You wanna go for a ride?
Vickie: All right...

In a camera angle shot through the car's windshield of the moving convertible, Vickie moves over
and sits closer to Jake. At a miniature golf course, Jake instructs Vickie on how to play the game
and putt on one of the holes where the object is to hit the golf ball under the course obstacle - a
miniature church. Symbolically, they are both dressed in white. When she putts the ball, it
vanishes and they both crouch and look in vain for the ball under the church:

Vickie: What does that mean?

Jake: It means the game is over.

[Their closing words in the scene foreshadow their marriage, their failed relationship, and their
inability beyond a cursory look to focus more deeply upon their underlying problems.]

In the next scene, Jake takes Vickie to his father's apartment where no-one is home. At his
invitation, Vickie moves from opposite him at the kitchen table to the center chair, closer to him:
"You're so far away, like on the other side of the room." She is even encouraged to sit on his lap.
His success at boxing has brought financial rewards:

Jake: I bought it for my father. I bought the building.

Vickie: Oh yeah? From fightin'?
Jake: Yeah. What else?

In the apartment's dining room, where two religious Madonna paintings hang on the wall, Jake
points out the bird's cage as they pass through:

That's a bird. It was a bird, 's dead now.

Back in the bedroom, they sit on the edge of the bed. After he briefly rests his arm around her
waist, she rises and walks over to the bedroom's chiffonier to look at a cameo photograph that sits
atop the dresser, with rosary beads dangling down over it. Jake and Joey are playfully pictured
with their fists raised against each other, mimicking the traditional boxer's stance:

That's me and my brother, foolin' around.

 30

The oval photograph that dominates the middle of the frame comes between them. [It is symbolic
of how the relationship of the two brothers (who fight and play at boxing) will interrupt their
emotional relationship]:

You know how beautiful you are? Anybody ever tell you how beautiful? Yeah, (they) tell you all the
time.

He kisses her gently on the cheek and lips and tenderly strokes her neck. As he takes her toward
the bed for love-making, the camera remains fixed on the photograph.

The following scenes alternate between boxing matches in the ring and love-making in the
bedroom - between warring and peace-making.

Title card: La Motta vs. Sugar Ray Robinson Detroit 1943

(Second Fight Scene)
The film cuts abruptly, with a 360 degree swish pan, to the animalistic Jake "the brawler" boxing
against the "speedy Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes), who is up on his toes - the dancing master."
In a series of exhilarating, briefly violent scenes, this bout is the second of their great six-match
rivalry. In the 8th round, La Motta, who fights crouched and closed-in with his face and fists
forward, decks Robinson and sends him out of the ring. Bright flashbulbs explode with light as the
fight turns to slow-motion, taking the film's documentary objectivity into the subjective mind of
the fighter. After ten rounds, the fight is awarded to La Motta. He triumphs over the "invincible"
Sugar Ray, the first defeat for the boxer. His fighting recaptures his masculinity - the fight scene is
followed by a sex scene.

In a passionate bedroom scene, Vickie stands in her negligee at the partially-opened doorway of
the bedroom (where hangs another religious painting) as Jake lies on the bed:

Vickie: You sure we should be doin' this?

Jake: Come here.
Vickie: You said never to touch ya before a fight.
Jake: (signaling her) Come here, before I give ya a beatin'.
Vickie: You said I couldn't. You've been good for two weeks.
Jake: Come here.

The scene emphasizes Jake's passionate love for his beautiful wife. As she walks toward him in
her slinky nightgown, the camera records the lower part of her body, emphasizing her body parts
from her breasts to her crotch and rear end. Following the brutal fight with Robinson, he
encourages her to kiss the cuts and bruises on his face: "Touch my boo-boos...Give the boo-boo a
kiss - make it better." After bidden to remove his pants and then his boxer shorts, she slyly
reminds him: "You made me promise not to get you excited." She removes her panties, raises his
undershirt, and continues lovingly kissing the bruises on his stomach. As she moves slowly
downward toward his groin, he stops her: "I gotta fight Robinson. I can't fool around." Resisting
sex with her to keep his boxing strength, he views her as an obstacle in the way of further
victories. He replaces his shorts, kisses her passionately, and walks to the bathroom.

After looking at himself in the mirror, he chooses to make boxing (and its accompanying violence)
a higher priority over sexual love. La Motta extinguishes his lust for Vickie (while in training) by
pouring ice-cold water over his erection. The icy-blonde emerges behind him and keeps kissing
him passionately, driving him crazy. Then, she walks out and lounges on the foot of the bed,
moving her legs up and down as she did at the swimming pool.

Title card: La Motta vs. Robinson Detroit 1943

(Third Fight Scene)
 31

In Olympia Stadium, the "classic rivals" fight another re-match only three weeks after their last
fight, but this time the ring seems smaller. It is the third bout between the two boxers. Robinson,
"well ahead on points" is decked again in the 7th round (only the second time in his career - both
times by La Motta). As flashbulbs click and explode, Robinson is dazed in the slow motion
footage. After the fight is over, the judges unanimously give the match to Robinson.

In the Olympia Stadium dressing room, Joey is violently furious and breaks a chair against the
wall - angry at the unfair decision. Masochistic, Jake sits quietly and watches, musing over his
defeat and hinting at his own feelings of guilt and inadequacy:

Joey: They only gave him that f--kin' decision because he's goin' in the Army next week. That's the
only reason.
Jake: I knocked him down. I don't know what else I gotta do. I don't know what I gotta do...
Joey: You won and they robbed ya. They're miserable because their mothers take it up the f--kin'
ass, that's why.
Jake: I've done a lot of bad things, Joey. Maybe it's comin' back to me. Who knows? I'm a jinx
maybe...

When Vickie knocks at the door, Jake refuses to see her and asks Joey to take her home. Left
alone in the room, Jake looks at himself in the mirror. The camera remains on a close-up of his
left hand, soaking in a bucket of water filled with ice cubes to keep the swelling down.

A series of black and white stills, step-motion and freeze frames of Jake's next six victorious
boxing matches (from 1944 to 1947) are accompanied by Mascagni's lyrical musical. The fight
images alternate with candid, color "home movies" of Jake's domestic life during the same period
- the color footage is faded, scratched, spliced, jumpy, and out of focus. [The dichotomy between
unstaged color film and fictional black-and-white film is pronounced. The home movies were
based on La Motta's real home movies.] In a similar way, Jake's and Joey's lives are bonded and
mirrored to each other - their parallel paths intermingle as they both marry and have children.

Title card: La Motta vs. Zivic Detroit January 14, 1944

A montage of three fight stills from the Zivic fight show La Motta's opponent going down from
brutal blows. The home movies are views of Joey, Vickie, and Jake.

Title card: La Motta vs Basora New York August 10, 1945

A montage of two fight stills from the Basora fight record La Motta's victory. Color footage of
Jake's and Vickie's marriage before a female Justice of the Peace.

Title card: La Motta vs. Kochan New York September 17, 1945
Alternating step-motion and freeze frames of the Kochan fight - another La Motta victory. Color
footage of Jake and Vickie dancing, sparring, pushing and tossing each other into the pool. After
hugging and kissing in the pool, Vickie opens up a gift box containing a white turban. She appears
in a white sunsuit with the new turban and sunglasses.

Title card: La Motta vs. Edgar Detroit June 12, 1946

Two more stills of a La Motta victory over Edgar. Color footage of Joey and Lenore's (Theresa
Saldana) rooftop post-wedding reception (because they couldn't afford a hall).

Title card: La Motta vs. Satterfield Chicago September 12, 1946

A short action still from the Satterfield fight. Color footage of Jake carrying Vickie into their
house, and views of Vickie, Lenore, and Joey playing with their children. Jake barbecues, as
Vickie ties a "Momma's little helper" apron around him.
 32

Title card: La Motta vs. Bell New York March 14, 1947
A montage of five stills, with Jake victorious.

Title card: PELHAM PARKWAY Bronx, New York 1947

Looking a little overweight in his boxer shorts and tee-shirt in the kitchen of his home, Jake
criticizes Joey for arranging a deal to fight Tony Janiro (Kevin Mahon), because he is concerned
about losing 13 pounds off his 168 pounds of weight.

Joey: Do you want a title shot?

Jake: What am I - what am I, a circus over here?...What are ya doin'?
Joey: You're killin' yourself for three years now, right? There's nobody left for you to fight.
Everybody's afraid to fight you. OK. Along comes this kid Janiro. He don't know any better. He's a
young kid, up and coming, he'll fight anybody. Good! You fight him...Let's say you lose because of
your weight. Are they gonna think you're not as tough as you are - you're not the same fighter?
Good! They'll match you with all those guys that were afraid of matchin' with you before. What
happens? You'll kill 'em. And they gotta give you a title shot.

Jake authoritatively orders Vickie to get him coffee, proving his masculine superiority: "How long
I gotta wait?" The strategy session with brother/manager Joey continues with an appeal to Jake's
independence from the mob:

Joey: Now let's say you win, you beat Janiro. Which is, definitely, you should beat him.
Right?...Right?...They still gotta give you a shot at the title. You know why?
Jake: Why?
Joey: Because the same thing as before - there's nobody left. There ain't nobody around. They
gotta give you the shot. You understand? If you win, you win. If you lose, you still win. There's no
way you can lose. And you do it on your own, just the way you wanted to do, without any help
from anybody. Do ya understand? Just get down to 155 pounds - you fat bastard. You stop eatin'!

Vickie's chance remark about Janiro's physical characteristics - that "he's an up and comin'
fighter, he's good-lookin', he's popular," arouses Jake's pathological jealousy and anxiety, and he
browbeats and nags her. This is the start of his continual suspicion that his wife is cheating on
him, and a sign that he is losing control:

Excuse me, excuse me, what do ya mean, 'good-lookin'?...Yeah, but what, who are you to say you
are good-lookin' or popular?...What, what are you an authority or what? Get out of here.

After ordering her out with the baby, he asks Joey how Vickie knew Janiro was "good-lookin'":
"Where'd she find out he was good-lookin', first of all?" Joey capitalizes on the opportunity and
suggests that Jake go to a training camp: "No distractions, no wives, no phone calls, nobody to
bother you around." Jake's obsessive curiosity about his wife's attractive qualities makes him
suspicious: "When I'm away, you ever notice anything funny going on with her?...I wantcha to
keep an eye on her."

Now a marital consultant, Joey warns him not "to start trouble for nothin'. I'm tellin' ya, you're
crackin' up." Jake is concerned that "anything's possible," and that she might be playing around
with another male because she is: "talkin' about a pretty kid - she says he's good lookin'." Joey has
a easy solution: "You make him ugly, what's the difference?" Before going to training, Joey advises
Jake to entertain Vickie and take her out. In the living room amidst babies, Jake smothers Vickie
with kisses.

In the Copacabana Night Club, an overweight Comedian [La Motta's nightclub career is somewhat
patterned after this unfunny comic] introduces Jake La Motta as a "special guest" - "the world's
leading middle-weight contender, the Bronx bull, the raging bull." On her way to the bathroom,
 33

Vickie's old friend Salvy greets and kisses her and invites her to have a drink with Tommy Como
and "some of the old gang." Perceived in slow-motion after watching his wife in the company of
other men (male rivals), Jake's attention is focused on Salvy - who walks over and shakes hands
(limply) with the stone-faced Jake. After Vickie says hello to Charlie (Tommy's cousin) and
Tommy, Salvy describes Jake: "She's with that f--kin' gorilla."

Vickie is challenged and cruelly grilled by Jake's self-destructive jealousy when she gets back to
the table. He is enraged in his smoldering, personal fantasies that other men desire her:

Jake: Are you interested in him?

Vickie: No, why would I be interested in him?
Jake: You're sure you're not interested in him?
Vickie: Yeah.
Jake: In other words, you're not interested in him, but you could be interested in somebody?
Vickie: Jake, don't start, huh?
Jake: Hey, shut up, or I'm gonna smack your face.

Finally, Jake is persuaded to speak to Tommy at his table, and the conversation centers on the
Janiro fight and Jake's next boxing opponent. Salvy's description of Janiro makes Jake anxious:

Very attractive guy. All the girls like him. No marks. Clean.

When Tommy asks about betting on La Motta in the impending Janiro fight, Jake assures him
that he should bet everything. Then, he trades sado-masochistic, sexual barbs with Salvy, giving
identical, intermingled, but sexually-confused meanings to the concepts of "fightin'" and "f--kin'."
Jake's confusion between his professional and personal worlds is the basic dilemma of his life -
his love becomes hate (particularly with his wife Vickie) and his boxing career destroys his home
life:

Jake: ...everything, because I'm gonna open his hole like this. Please excuse my French. I'm gonna
make him suffer. I'm gonna make his mother wish she never had him - make him into dog
meat...He's a nice, a nice kid. He's a pretty kid, too. I mean I don't know, I gotta problem if I
should f--k him or fight him. (Laughter erupts)
Tommy: (chuckling) F--k him or fight him.
Salvy: If you're really in love with that f--ker, just watch out.
Jake: By who?
Salvy: Janiro.
Jake: You mean, you want me to get him to f--k you?
Salvy: Me?
Jake: Yeah.
Salvy: No, I don't want him to f--k me.
Jake: I could do that easily.
Salvy: How ya gonna do that?
Jake: Because I'll get yuz both in a ring, I'll give yuz both a f--kin' beatin', ya both can f--k each
other.
Salvy: Ah, I'll get all full of blood.
Jake: You're used to that.

That evening, Jake enters the darkened bedroom where Vickie is sleeping. Still confused and
harboring unresolved sexual obsessions as he becomes increasingly more psychotic, he wakes her
and asks whether she ever thinks of anyone else (other 'pretty-face' males) when they make love -
imagining in his own sexual fantasies her sexual interest in other males. He is obsessed with
losing her:

You ever think of anyone else when we're in bed?...You know, like when we made love?
 34

Title card: La Motta vs. Janiro New York 1947

(Fourth Fight Scene)
In an abrupt cut to the fight, Jake pummels Janiro with dozens of consecutive blows to the head
and face - it is an excruciatingly, exceptionally bloody hailstorm of punches. In a close-up,
Janiro's face is pulverized - his nose is re-situated on his face, and blood spurts from his swollen
bruises. After the knockout, Jake struts around the ring. In the audience, a telling view of Vickie
reveals that she is aware of the reasons for his vengeance. With low masculine self-esteem, Jake
has projected his jealous rage onto his opponent. Tommy tells a nearby friend: "He ain't pretty no
more."

In a second scene at the Copacabana Night Club, Joey discusses La Motta's possible title shot, and
then sees Vickie enter with Salvy and the gang. He takes her away from the table and in the hat
check area where she is surrounded by triple mirrors, Vickie tells Joey that she is chafing at the
virtual prison Jake has created around her. She's tired of being watched and Jake's paranoia
about her is becoming self-fulfilling - he has lost his sexual desire for her and won't have sexual
intercourse.

Vickie: I feel like I'm a prisoner. I can't walk, I look at somebody the wrong way I get
smacked...I'm tired of havin' to turn around and havin' both of yuz up my ass all the time...I'm
twenty years old, I gotta go home and sleep by myself every night?
Joey: What the f--k did you marry him for?
Vickie: 'Cause I love him.
Joey: You do?
Vickie: Yeah, I love him. Well, what am I supposed to do? This guy - he don't even wanna f--k me.
Joey: He's just been a contender too long. He'll be all right as soon as he gets his shot and then
everything will be OK...
Vickie: Jake's never gonna be champ. Too many people hate him.

Joey wants to defend Jake's honor and watch over Vickie as he promised while he's away at
training camp, but he dares not tell Jake that Salvy took her out. He pulls her away from the table,
telling her: "You're makin' an asshole out of my brother." He threatens Salvy: "Mind your f--kin'
business and shut up," while the small-time hood keeps insisting: "There's nothin' goin' on over
here." In a vicious, prolonged, brawling fight, Joey (who is almost as violent as Jake) smashes a
glass in Salvy's face. Outside the club, Joey knocks him over the head with a heavy metal object
and slams a cab door into Salvy's body.

During the next day's reconciliation at the Debonair Social Club between Salvy and Joey that is
organized by peacemaker Tommy Como, Salvy's boss, the two shake hands with "no grudges."
Joey is persuaded to open the door, inadvertently, to a relationship with the mobster to influence
Jake's boxing career:

Tommy: Listen to me. Now, Jake - the guy's become an embarrassment. He's embarrassin' me
with certain people. And I'm lookin' very bad. I can't deliver a kid from my own god-damned
neighborhood. What is it with him? Why does he have to make it so hard on himself, for Christ's
sake? He comes to me - I'll make it easier for him. The man's got a head of rock.
Joey: You know, it's hard to explain, Tommy. Jack respects you. I mean, he don't even say hello to
anybody. You know, you he talks to, he likes you. It's just that, uh, when he gets somethin' on his
mind, you know, he's got a hard head, he likes to do things his own way. I mean, Jesus Christ he'd
come off the cross sometimes and he don't give a f--k. He's gonna do what he wants to do. He
wants to make it on his own, you know. Thinks he can make it on his own.
Tommy: Make it on his own. He thinks he's gonna walk in there and become champion on his
own. Huh?...he's got no respect for nobody. He doesn't listen to nobody...He doesn't respect
anybody. Now you do this for me, you understand? You tell him, I don't care how colorful he is or
great he is. He could beat all the Sugar Ray Robinsons and the Tony Janiros in the world, but he
 35

ain't gonna get a shot at that title - not without us he ain't. Now you're a smart kid, you go to
him...

At their meeting at the swimming pool, Jake feels powerless and helpless and suspicious about
her infidelity - he is preoccupied with proving that Vickie has been unfaithful. Joey gives his
brother options:

Jake: I know she's doin' somethin'. I just wanna catch her once. Just once.
Joey: Hey Jack, you wanna do yourself a favor? Bust her f--kin' hole, throw her out, either that or
live with her and let her ruin your life, 'cause that's what's happenin'.

Joey also tells Jake the news that he will have to "throw" the fight with Billy Fox if he wants to get
a chance at the title:

He gave you the old good news/bad news routine. The good news is - you're gonna get the shot at
the title. And the bad news is - they want ya to do the old flip-flop for 'em.

Just before the fight, Jackie Curtie (Peter Savage), the fight promoter for the Fox/La Motta fight is
suspicious why Jake, once the favorite, is now a "twelve-to-five underdog and people are talking,"
announcing that the "bets are off on this one." But Jake, who has a clean reputation up to this
point, asserts: "...I'm gonna win. There's no way I'm goin' down. I don't go down for nobody."

Title card: La Motta vs. Fox New York 1947

(Fifth Fight Scene)
At Madison Square Garden, the match is a sham and Jake is obviously emasculated in the ring.
While Jake is still standing and too proud to take a dive, his undefeated opponent Billy Fox (Ed
Gregory) wins by TKO. His personal life deteriorating from paranoid sexual jealousy, his defeat in
the ring also brings professional disgrace. In the locker room, La Motta sobs and weeps in his
handler's arms and is told: "Don't fight anymore. It's a free country. Don't fight anymore." The
headlines of the New York Daily News (November 22, 1947) announce: "BOARD SUSPENDS
LAMOTTA." Jake says he feels like a "bum": "I take the dive. What more do they want?...They
want me to go down too? Well, I ain't goin' down, no, not for nobody!" The purse for the bout has
been suspended pending a district attorney's investigation, because Jake obviously took a dive.
Joey reminds Jake that Tommy Como won't forget him and that Jake will get his title shot.

Title card: Two Years Later Detroit June 15, 1949

The two boxers, the French middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan and challenger Jake La Motta
are staying at the Book-Cadillac Hotel. The fight in Briggs Stadium, an outdoor arena, has been
delayed for twenty-four hours due to rain. In the hotel room, Jake paces nervously - he is edgy
and irritable. When Joey suggests that Vickie order a cheeseburger from room service, Jake's
jealousy surfaces toward his brother's influence over her. After Tommy visits to wish Jake luck,
Vickie kisses him goodbye. Jake watches a closeup of a second, slow-motion kiss, in which
Tommy holds Vickie's face in his palms, and compliments her on her beauty: "Look at that
beauty. Just as beautiful as ever!" Jake is now enraged at Vickie for being "so friendly" with
Tommy, and he slaps her:

Jake: You hear what I said. You don't ever have any disrespect for me. You hear what I said?
Vickie: Yeah, I hear.
Jake: All right. Go in there. Come here!
Joey: What don't you stop that, huh?
Jake: (screaming) Shut up!
Joey: Stop it!
Jake: (warning Joey) Shut up! Shut up! I'll f--kin' take care of you later. Shut up! I'm disgusted
with the two of yuz.
 36

Perceiving them as a conspiring couple, he takes his jealous, violent anger out against Joey. In the
next abruptly-cut scene, he pounds his fists against a padded rubber mat that Joey holds around
himself for a sparring warm-up in the locker room. The tension builds as the camera follows Joey
and Jake in the long walk through the stadium tunnel to the ring.

Freeze-Frame Title Over an Image of their Touching Boxing Gloves:

La Motta vs. Middleweight Champion Marcel Cerdan Detroit 1949
(Sixth Fight Scene)
Beautifully choreographed, the film delivers only a few seconds of some of the rounds, graphically
presenting in some intense, punishing images the determined and bruising fighter La Motta. The
fight is declared a TKO at the start of round 10, and La Motta wins back the title belt. Flashbulbs
clink as he acknowledges the accolades of the crowd, although a counterpoint of sad music plays
on the soundtrack.

Title card: Pelham Parkway New York 1950

While on the top of the boxing world, Jake obsessively self-destructs in a scene in his living room,
where he appears overweight (his beer-gut stomach hangs over his shorts and partially blocks the
TV screen) and he stuffs his face with a hero sandwich and a beer. His food binges have replaced
sex with his wife. Insanely jealous, he believes that Vickie has been sleeping with Salvy. He even
turns on his own brother, convinced that he has been betrayed.

He admonishes Joey for kissing Vickie on the lips when she comes into the house from shopping:
"Ain't her cheek good enough for you?...All of a sudden you're like a romance." And then, insanely
jealous, he cross-examines Joey for an incident now two years old - the night at the Copacabana
when Joey beat up Salvy. Ominous-looking, Jake is intent on having Joey admit that he 'violated'
his wife. He misunderstands his brother's loyalty and interprets it as deception [in the process of
questioning, Jake violates his own brother-brother relationship]. Joey's refusal to answer the
repulsive, perverse questions intensify Jake's suspicions, and make him look guilty:

Jake: I heard some things...Did Salvy f--k Vickie?

Joey: What?
Jake: Did Salvy f--k Vickie?
Joey: Now Jack, don't start your s--t...
Jake: Joey I asked ya, didn't I ask ya to keep an eye on her?
Joey: And I did keep an eye on her, yes I did.
Jake: How come you give him a beatin'?
Joey: I told you that. I told you what that was all about. That it had nothin' to do with you. He, he
thinks he's a wise guy now.
Jake: Joey, don't lie to me.
Joey: I'm not lying.
Jake: What do I look like to you, huh?
Joey: Hey, I'm your brother. You're supposed to believe me. Don't you trust me?
Jake: No I don't.
Joey: Oh you don't? That's nice.
Jake: I don't trust you when it comes to her. I don't trust nobody. Now tell me what happened.
Joey: I told you exactly what happened. He got out of line, I slapped him around. Tommy
straightened it all out, and it's all over.
Jake: Don't you give me that look, Joey. I gotta accept your answer, you know. But I'm tellin' you
now, if I hear anything, I swear on mother, I'm gonna kill somebody. I'm gonna kill somebody
Joey.
Joey: (rising to his feet) Well, go ahead and kill everybody. You're the tough guy. Go kill people.
Kill Vickie. Kill Salvy. Kill Tommy Como. Kill me while you're at it, what do I care? You're killin'
yourself the way you eat. You're a fat f--k. Look at ya.
Jake: What d'ya mean? I don't understand. What d'ya mean, kill you? You?
Joey: Me. Kill me. Start here. Kill me first. Do me a f--kin' favor, 'cause you're drivin' me crazy...
Jake: Excuse me, what d'ya mean by 'you,' though?
 37

Joey: So? What does that mean? It don't mean nothin'.

Jake: You don't even know what you meant by 'you.'
Joey: Don't mean nothin'.
Jake: Joey, that meant somethin'. You mentioned Tommy, you mentioned Salvy, you mentioned
you. You included 'you' with them. You could have said anybody but you said 'you' and them.
Joey: You really let this girl ruin your life. Look at ya. She really did some job on ya. You know
how f--kin' nuts you are? Look what she did to you.
Jake: You f--ked my wife?
Joey: What?!
Jake: You f--ked my wife?
Joey: (insulted) How could you ask me a question like that? How could you ask me? I'm your
brother. You ask me that? Where do you get your balls big enough to ask me that?
Jake: (cooly) Just tell me.
Joey: I'm not answerin' ya. I'm not gonna answer that. It's stupid.
Jake: You're very smart Joey. You give me all these answers, but you ain't givin' me the right
answer. I'm askin' ya again. Did you or did you not?
Joey: (frightened but controlled) I'm not gonna answer. That's a sick question, you're a sick f--k,
and I'm not that sick that I'm gonna answer it. I'm not tellin' ya anything...I'm not stayin' in this
nuthouse with ya. You're a sick bastard. I feel sorry for you, I really do. You know what you should
do - try a little more f--kin' and a little less eatin'. You won't have troubles upstairs in your
bedroom and you won't take it out on me and everybody else. Do you understand, you f--kin'
wacko? You're crackin' up! F--kin' screwball, ya.

Left alone with Vickie, with all his rage bursting and seething to come out, Jake goes upstairs to
their bedroom where she is making the bed. As he gently strokes her hair and poses paranoid
questions about where she went (she answers that she went to her sister's and to the movies to see
Father of the Bride), his questions turn toward the night at the Copa. He pulls on her hair, slaps
her, and then asks: "Did you f--k my brother?" She breaks free and locks herself in the bathroom.
He keeps asking: "Why did you f--k Joey?" He knocks down the door and physically assaults her
again, slapping her as he demands: "Why'd you do it?"

To break the tension and offer him the psycho-sexual relief from the pressure that he desires,
Vickie mock-'confesses.' Ironically, she gives him what he wants, but drives him mad by
exploiting his male chauvinism:

I fucked all of them! What do you want me to say?...I fucked all of them - Tommy, Salvy, your
brother! All of them! I sucked your brother's cock, what do you want me to say?...I sucked his cock
and everybody else on the fucking street, too. What do you want? You're nothin' but a fat pig,
selfish fool! (He viciously slaps her again) His fucking cock is bigger than yours, too!

Emotionally-charged and poisoned by his inner rages, Jake takes off down the residential
sidewalk toward his brother's house. There, in front of his family, Jake goes beserk and accuses
his loyal and helpful brother of sleeping with his wife. He pulls Joey from the table and
cathartically brutalizes him [a sublimation of the sexual act] as an expression of his unresolved
feelings for him. The two wives try to pull him off. He slugs Vickie (the first time!) and knocks her
out, and then charges out, finding himself later in his living room in front of his television set
without a picture. Vickie returns home, goes upstairs, and begins packing to leave. He comes to
her and humbly begs for forgiveness: "I'm a bum without you and the kids. Don't go." At her
dresser, she embraces him.

Title card: La Motta vs. Dauthuille Detroit 1950

(Seventh Fight Scene)
An abrupt jump cut explodes the silence as a punch hits La Motta in the jaw. In the arena, La
Motta wins a close, jaw-breaking contest in the final thirteen seconds of the fifteenth round.
 38

In the corridor of the arena after the fight, Vickie tries to patch things up between the two
brothers - but the effort fails. She urges Jake to phone Joey to apologize and "tell him you're
sorry. You miss him. He's your brother. You have to talk to him sooner or later." With a big black
eye under his hat, Jake takes the receiver in the darkened phone booth, but he cannot speak [and
is unable to resolve his emotions for Joey]. Without knowing who is on the other end of the line,
Joey lets loose invectives toward the unidentified caller:

Salvy, this ain't funny anymore. Is it you? I know somebody's there. I can hear you breathin'. You
listenin'? Your mother sucks f--kin' big f--kin' elephant dicks. You got that?

(Eighth Fight Scene)

In another championship title defense fight, the televised (Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer telecast) fifth
bout between La Motta and Sugar Ray Robinson, La Motta looks defeated between rounds. His
broken body is sponged off with bloody water from his trainer's pail. Mouthpieces are offered to
the fighters like communion wafers. [The images are religiously ritualistic - a metaphorical
portrayal of Jake's final defeat and crucifixion.] Far away, Joey and his wife watch the fight on
television.

As he loses the climactic battle, he stoically stands against the ropes with his arms helplessly at his
side. Determined not to be knocked down, to remain on his feet, to be unconquerable, and to
prove his self-worth, he is senselessly battered and attacked with a volley of endless punches, but
he endures it all. Blood covers his face, and blood is spattered all over his legs. Flashbulbs explode
and hiss like mortar fire. After an eerie pause and silence in the fighting, a final punch sprays La
Motta's blood onto the ringsiders in their seats. The referee stops the fight in the 13th round ("the
hard-luck round") and Sugar Ray Robinson becomes the new world middle-weight boxing
champion.

Defeated by his life-long nemesis, a mangled, beaten-to-a-pulp Jake cries out and taunts his
victorious black rival Sugar Ray in his corner:

Hey, Ray, I never went down, man! You never got me down, Ray! You hear me, you never got me
down.

As the ring announcer enters and announces the winner by TKO, a massive close-up shows Jake's
blood dripping off the ropes.

Title card: Miami 1956

Poolside at the La Motta house in Florida with Vickie and his kids, Jake is now older and fatter,
bloated by about fifty additional pounds. He tells a reporter that he has retired from boxing:

It's over for me. Boxing's over for me. I'm through. I'm tired of worryin' about weight all the time.
That's all I used to think about was weight, weight, weight. After a while, you know, you realize
other things in life. I mean, I'm very grateful. Boxing's been good to me: I've got a nice house, I've
got three great kids, I've got a wonderful, beautiful wife - what more could I ask for?

Spent and used up, Jake owns a seedy nightclub on Collins Avenue that he has dubbed "Jake La
Motta's": "It's a bar, a package store, everything." After a drumroll and the playing of the "Gillette
Blue Blades" theme song, Jake takes the spotlight and the microphone in the lounge, fancying
himself as a stand-up comedian with rambling, unfunny one-liners and numerous obscenities.
With self-deprecating, pitiable, and partially hostile humor peppered with sexist rude jokes, he
welcomes the crowd in his disjointed, clumsy nightclub act: "I haven't seen so many losers since
my last fight at Madison Square Garden." When a cocktail waitress brings him a drink on stage,
he describes her as:
 39

...that's the kind of girl that you want to bring home to your father - especially if he's a degenerate.

He quickly changes the subject after the foul joke:

Ah, seriously folks, it's a thrill to be standing here before you wonderful people tonight. Well, in
fact, it's a thrill to be standing.

Then, he announces that he will be celebrating his 11th wedding anniversary with his wife Vickie,
and then is reminded of a joke that reflects his continuing psycho-sexual anxieties - of two male
friends who share one woman:

That reminds me of two friends of mines. One was married, one was single. The married guy tells
the single guy: 'Oh, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Look at me. And look
at you. And look at me. And look at you. (Laughter) Let me get on with it. When I come home at
night, my wife's at the door with a tall drink in her hand. And she gives me a nice hot bath. Then
she gives me a nice rub-down. Then she makes passionate love to me. Then she makes me a nice
dinner. What more could you ask for? You oughta try that.' The other friend says: 'Hey, that
sounds great. When does your wife get home?'

Then, the nightclub comic repeats the verse that was being rehearsed in the film's opening
sequence.

At a table where he is introduced to State's Attorney Bronson and his wife (spilling a drink down
her lap when he takes liberties with her), he rudely jokes about sharing Vickie, revealing his whole
life's distrust about men with his wife:

What do ya think, I'm gonna bring her around here and let you bums get involved with her?

At the bar after his vulgar but mesmerizing on-stage performance, he permits two under-age
women to give him sophisticated kisses to 'prove' that they're twenty-one so that they can order
alcohol: "I know what a twenty-one-year old kisses like." He pours champagne into five stacked
glasses, even after hearing that Vickie is outside waiting for him. Outside in the light of the early
morning as she sits in a waiting Cadillac with the car running and the window only slightly
cracked open, she tells him that she will be leaving him, and will take custody of the children:
"Look, Jake, I got a lawyer, we're gettin' a divorce. I'm gettin' custody of the kids...I already made
up my mind. I'm leavin'. That's it. The kids are gonna be with me. And if you show your face
around, I'm gonna call the cops on you, all right?"

Now separated from his wife, La Motta is awakened in the next scene by deputies from the DA's
office, and arrested on a morals charge for soliciting clients with prostitutes in his nightclub - he
allegedly allowed an underage fourteen-year-old (one of the girls professing to be twenty-one
years old) into the club to pimp - he "introduced her to some men." La Motta claims that he is an
innocent middleman:

I introduce a lot of people to a lot of people. Why'd you tell me I introduced her to men? (He
points at one of the deputies) I introduced him to men - but I don't say nothin'.

After being taken "downtown" and then let out on bail, he goes to Vickie in their home and asks
for permission to "pick up one thing" - his championship belt from the mantle (propped up in
front of the picture of the two brothers 'playing' at boxing). With $10,000 in bribes, he has been
told by his lawyer that he can get the case dropped. He noisily hammers the jewels from the belt,
knocking dishes from the cupboard. At the jewelers, Jake refuses an offer of $1,500 for the jewels
(without the belt). When he can't raise the money, he is detained in the Florida stockade.
 40

Title card: Dade County Stockade Florida 1957

Jake is wrestled into a jail cell like the animalistic 'Bronx bull' he has always been compared to.
He slams his head, fists, and then his arms into the cinder-block cell wall - his shadow-boxing
with his own self brings pain and suffering and a new self-awareness. [Reduced to nothing,
ultimately beaten ("down" in boxing terms) and losing everything, and sacrificed for his own sins,
Jake's soul has a redemptive religious/spiritual awakening.] He cries out over and over again
about his pathetically damaged, alienated life. He wails pathetically:

Why? Why? Why?...Why'd you do it? Why? You're so stupid...I'm not an animal. Why do you treat
me like this? I'm not so bad.

Title card: New York City 1958

Voice-over from the previous scene is a joke that Jake tells as a stand-up comedian in a nightclub
"comeback" at the Carnevale Lounge of the Hotel Markwell in New York City:

Guy comes home, finds his wife in bed with another guy. The wife says, 'Look who's here. Big
mouth. Now the whole neighborhood'll know.'

Now out of jail, he introduces strippers, such as "Emma 48s" in the seedy New York Bar. In a
chance meeting outside the Hotel, he spots Joey across the street and catches up with him in a
parking garage. Now mellowed with age, Jake hopes for a reconciliation but Joey ignores him:

C'mon, be friends. C'mon. You're my brother. Be friends.

La Motta begins to find redemption from his primeval brutality. While hugging, embracing,
petting, and kissing his brother, Jake buries his head in Joey's neck, and implores Joey to return
his love. He affectionately gives him an Italian-American greeting:

Kiss me. Give me a kiss...Just kiss me. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon.

In the film's final scene, a return to the scene at the film's opening, a sandwich-board sign (at the
Barbizon Plaza Theatre) announces La Motta's nightclub act - a series of dramatic readings - in
1964:

An Evening with Jake La Motta

featuring the works
of
Paddy Chayefsky
Rod Serling
Shakespeare
Budd Schulberg
Tennessee Williams
Tonight 8:30

Close-up images fill the screen, as beer-bellied, swollen-bodied Jake rehearses his verbal
recitations from great authors in his seedy, backstage dressing room. The room has a bare
lightbulb with chain-link pullswitch, a wall plate light switch, a payphone with a graffiti-covered
wall with phone numbers, and dangling wooden and wire hangers on a coat rack. Jake is seated at
a mirror, reflecting his own image. He is dressed in his tuxedo and shirt (unbuttoned at the top)
and brandishes a cigar.

He speaks about the famous "I coulda been a contender" scene in On the Waterfront (1954), a
scene that has indirect parallels to his own boxing career. Jake speaks of the Marlon Brando /
Terry Malloy role of "an up-and-comer who's now a down-and-outer" who confronts his brother
 41

Charley, "a small-time racket guy," with intellectual and emotional honesty in a lament delivered
in the back seat of a taxicab. In a similar way, Jake realizes how his brother Joey played a crucial
role in his own life.

In a wooden, flat, stiff manner without emotion or passion, he recites the lines - by rote - while
staring at himself in the mirror [the scene recalls the mirror scene from Scorsese's Taxi Driver
(1976), with a loner talking to himself in a mirror]. The words of regret are far from expressing his
own torturous struggles, actions, experiences, defeats and degradations toward self-realization
and redemption that were presented in the observed images and patterns of the film:

It wasn't him, Charley. It was you. You remember that night at the Garden you came down in my
dressing room and you said, 'Kid, this ain't your night; we're going for the price on Wilson?'
'remember that? 'This ain't your night?' My night. I could've taken Wilson apart that night. So
what happens? He gets a title shot outdoors in the ballpark, and what do I get? A one-way ticket
to Palookaville. I was never no good after that night, Charley. It was like a peak you reach, and
then it's downhill. It was you, Charley. You was my brother. You should've looked out for me a
little bit. You should've looked out for me just a little bit. You should've taken care of me just a
little bit instead o' making me take them dives for the short-end money. You don't understand. I
coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody instead of a bum, which is
what I am. Let's face it. It was you, Charley. It was you, Charley.

A stagehand announces that Jake has five minutes. He fastens his tie, and sends himself off with
shadow-boxing into the entertainment arena: "Go get 'em, champ." As he grunts off-screen while
punching make-believe opponents, the film's final shot closes on the empty mirror as he leaves,
mumbling:

I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss...(I'm the) boss, boss, boss,
boss, boss, boss.

The final title commemorates Jake's "once I was blind and now I can see" salvation and new
understanding:

Final Title:
So, for the second time, [the Pharisees]
summoned the man who had been blind and said:
"Speak the truth before God.
We know this fellow is a sinner."
"Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know,"
the man replied.
"All I know is this:
once I was blind and now I can see."
John IX. 24-26
the New English Bible

Remembering Haig P. Manoogian, teacher.

May 23, 1916 - May 26, 1980.
With Love and resolution, Marty.

[Director Martin Scorsese's dedication to his NYU film teacher.]

 42

Taxi Driver (1976) is director Martin Scorsese's and screenwriter Paul Schrader's gritty,
disturbing, nightmarish modern film classic, that examines alienation in urban society. Scorsese's
fourth film, combining elements of film noir, the western, horror and urban melodrama film
genres. Historically, the film appeared after a decade of war in Vietnam, and after the disgraceful
Watergate crisis and President Nixon's resignation.

It explores the psychological madness within an obsessed, twisted, inarticulate, lonely, anti-hero
cab driver and war vet (De Niro), who misdirectedly lashes out with frustrated anger and power
like an exploding time bomb at the world that has alienated him. His assaultive unhinging is first
paired with a longing to connect with a blonde goddess office worker (Shepherd), and then with
an attempt to rescue/liberate a young 12-year old prostitute named Iris (Foster) from her
predatory pimp "Sport" (Keitel) and her tawdry, streetwalking life. [The young Foster, who had
previously acted for Scorsese in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), was required to undergo
psychological tests to see if she would bear up during filming.]

Taxi Driver has been acknowledged as consciously influenced by John Ford's The Searchers
(1956) - the story of another angry war veteran and social outcast who becomes obsessed during a
search and rescue of his young niece from a long-haired Comanche chief named Scar. Ford's film
was about his fanatical quest to liberate the young girl, restore her virtue, and return her to
society, in order to purify his own soul, although he remains an outsider.

Taxi Driver re-established the tremendous acting ability of Robert De Niro to totally immerse
himself into his characters. (This was his second film for Scorsese following Mean Streets (1973),
in which both De Niro and Harvey Keitel gained fame as young New York hoods. It led to their
further collaboration in Raging Bull (1980)). De Niro's performance is utterly compelling and
fascinating to watch - as the unlikely knight redemptively prepares to "wash all this scum off the
streets" after a failed and misguided date with a blonde political worker and his stalking of
political candidate Charles Palantine. His target-practice 'You talkin' to me?' monologue before a
mirror remains one of the best known sequences in film history. The film also propelled its
director, screenwriter, and others of its stars into future careers - Jodie Foster (as actress and
director) and Cybill Shepherd (as popular TV star).

Although the film was nominated for four Academy Awards nominations (without recognition for
director Scorsese, screenwriter Paul Schrader, or cinematographer Michael Chapman): Best
Picture, Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster), and Best Original
Score (Bernard Herrmann) - all were unrewarded. A memorable lamenting saxophone score by
Bernard Herrmann (his last) accompanies the film. [He provided some of cinema's best-known
musical accompaniments, for such films as Alfred Hitchcock's well-known Vertigo (1958), North
by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960), and for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) and The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942).]

In many ways, the film has become prophetic and mirrors the violence of contemporary news
headlines. Notoriously, the film is linked to and may have triggered the political assassination
(copy-cat) attempt by inconspicuous John Hinckley on President Ronald Reagan in 1981,
illuminating his dangerous fixation on actress Jodie Foster, and resulting in the assassin's
infamous media-hero status. Other misfits have emerged as lonely and disturbed individuals who
act out their killer impulses on high school campuses or in terrorist acts. This film has also
influenced other future filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs (1992)), and
David Fincher (Se7en (1995)).

The film opens impressionistically with the credits on top of a night view of the streets of
Manhattan - a scene of urban jungle warfare. (The entire film was shot on location in New York
City.) There are open sewers and manhole covers with steam vapors rising in cloudy gusts - from
 43

Hell itself, and glaring red neon lights are flashed and reflected on the face of a New York cab
driver. He is existentially lost. Through a rainy taxicab windshield, we see the rainy, slick streets,
an allegorical underworld vision composed of hustlers and derelicts, and a foreshadowing of the
future tone of the film.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), an enigmatic, 20th century loner enters into the personnel office
of a cab company. He applies as a hack in a taxi company to drive the taxi night shift, because he
is an insomniac: "I can't sleep nights" and he finds nothing meaningful to do during the days. As a
therapeutic solution to his life, Bickle even offers to work Jewish holidays and ride into the city's
sleaziest areas - he explains that he might as well get paid for wandering haphazardly:

Bickle: I can't sleep nights.

Personnel Officer: There's porno theatres for that.
Bickle: I know. I tried that.
Personnel Officer: So whaddaya do now?
Bickle: I ride around nights mostly. Subways, buses. Figure you know, I'm gonna do that, I might
as well get paid for it.
Personnel Officer: Wanna work uptown nights - South Bronx, Harlem?
Bickle: I'll work any time, anywhere.
Personnel Officer: Will ya work Jewish holidays?
Bickle: Any time, anywhere.

He offers only a few biographical facts about his background - he is a twenty-six year old ex-
Marine [Travis is possibly a battle-scarred Vietnam Vet, but not specifically identified as such. His
Marine battle jacket has "King Kong Brigade" patches on it, and his psychological profile
approximates those of war-zone combatants. But the film doesn't clearly make that distinction]:

Personnel Officer: All right. Let me see your chauffeur's license. How's your driving record?
Bickle (grinning to himself): It's clean, it's real clean like my conscience...
Personnel Officer: Physical?
Bickle: Clean.
Personnel Officer: Age?
Bickle: Twenty-six.
Personnel Officer: Education?
Bickle (replying vaguely and sheepishly): Some, here and there you know.
Personnel Officer: Military record?
Bickle: Honorable discharge, May 1973.
Personnel Officer: Were you in the Army?
Bickle: Marines.
Personnel Officer: I was in the Marines, too. So what is it? You need an extra job? Are you
moonlighting?
Bickle: Well I, I just want to work long hours. What's 'moonlighting'?
Personnel Officer: Look. Just fill out these forms and check back tomorrow when the shift breaks.

As Travis leaves, the camera pans past the interior of a Manhattan cab garage. Following a daily
(and nightly) monotonous routine, Travis writes in his diary as the camera pans across the
interior of his squalid, welfare-style, studio apartment. He has just finished a meal of a Coke and a
McDonald's Quarter Pounder. (There are old newspapers and magazines scattered over his
cot/bed, and protective bars on one of the few windows.) His one-dimensional life, one totally
alienated from others, is pathetically built on fear and self-loathing. In a droning voice-over, he
narrates cynically from the tattered journal he keeps in a school composition book purchased at a
dimestore. [At the film's ending, the viewer wonders if his diary's composed thoughts are a dream
state - after his almost certain death.]
 44

Always off-kilter, he hallucinates about his vision of an allegorical rain that will cleanse the dirty,
mean streets:

May 10th. Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the
sidewalks. I'm workin' long hours now, six in the afternoon to six in the morning. Sometimes even
eight in the morning, six days a week. Sometimes seven days a week. It's a long hustle but it keeps
me real busy. I can take in three, three fifty a week. Sometimes even more when I do it off the
meter.

The camera cuts to a front fender view of his Checker cab cruising the seedy, slick, wet, night
streets past a movie theatre marquee advertising The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and Return of
the Dragon - also a view of Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction). Delis, arcades, and streets filled
with drifters, pimps, drug dealers and prostitutes hypnotically pass by as he transports lost souls
from place to place. [The bright lights marquees and the plentiful sidewalk sex symbolically show
the delicate balance between violence and promiscuous sex that he must drive through.]

He is disgusted by the world of urban decay and sleaziness that needs to be raged against and
washed away:

All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers,
junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the
streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take 'em to Harlem. I don't care.
Don't make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won't even take spooks. Don't make no
difference to me.

One of his late-night passengers/fares he ferries to 48th and 6th Street is an executive-type
businessman [who looks remarkably identical to presidential candidate Palantine (Leonard
Harris) in the first of two rides in Travis' cab] accompanied by a black hooker (Copper
Cunningham) in a long blond wig. The john "can't afford to get stopped anywhere." He promises
his lady of the evening: "There'll be a big tip in it for ya if you do the right things." The passengers
make out during the ride, ignoring him as if he were part of the inanimate machine. Travis checks
them out in the rear-view mirror. After the ride, he drives his cab through a geyser stream from a
broken, erupting fire hydrant, washing the filth off his windshield.

Back inside the cab company's garage in his stall at the end of his stretch shift (six to six), he pops
pills to keep calm. He narrates with self-loathing how he must clean the interior of his cab after
each shift, building up more ammunition in his own arsenal of repressed sexuality:

Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the cum off the back seat. Some
nights, I clean off the blood.
Alone during the early morning hours, he walks through the porno district and spends his free
time in a triple-X rated porno film house - a clue that his personality is schizoid and hypocritical.
Although disgusted by his sleazy environment, Bickle is attracted to the low life during the day,
and - by choice - rides through the same scenes of degradation at night in his self-loathing
occupation.

After transporting late-night passengers who subscribe to the pleasure principle, Travis models
his own behavior after theirs. In the Show and Tell XXX-rated movie theatre, he is coldly rebuffed
in an attempted pickup of the sleazy porn theatre's female concession counter clerk (Diahnne
Abbott). After failing to engage the woman in conversation (and when she threatens to summon
the manager), he purchases a Chuckles, two candy bars, two Goobers boxes, popcorn, and a Royal
Crown cola. (Everything he purchases is placed on a magazine page that the clerk is reading - an
expose about "How Your Money Affects Your Sexual Life!") In the small theatre auditorium, he
slumps low in his chair and stares with glazed eyes fixed on the screen (of pornographic sex):
 45

Twelve hours of work and I still can't sleep. Damn. Days go on and on. They don't end.

He is tormented and pent-up, lying awake on his bed watching daytime soap operas on television
in his littered hovel, and full of agony trying to find his own identity:

All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to
morbid self-attention. I believe that someone should become a person like other people.

A faceless person in a crowded city, Travis is unconnected and de-socialized from conventional
patterns of reality. Born of his desire to be "like other people" and make emotional contact with
someone, Travis is attracted and drawn first to a tall, blonde woman dressed in white. Suddenly,
she appears (suspended in slow-motion) from a mass of Manhattanites on the street, walking all
alone into the posh campaign headquarters of presidential candidate Charles Palantine where she
works as a political volunteer. He observes her from afar, worships her and develops a crush on
her, viewing her as an untouchable dream-girl ideal (she is a WASP-ish, angelic beauty in his
fantasies):

I first saw her at Palantine Campaign headquarters at 63rd and Broadway. She was wearing a
white dress. She appeared like an angel. Out of this filthy mess, she is alone. (Narrated from his
diary in a cadence - the words are written in large capitals in a close-up)
They...cannot...touch...her.

The outside of the campaign headquarters building is decorated with large red, white, and blue
posters/signs: "Vote for Palantine," "We are the People," and "New Yorkers for Palantine for
President." Inside the building where activity is bustling and phones ring, young campaign worker
Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) is an aide working for Palantine's election with a modishly long-haired
co-worker named Tom (future director Albert Brooks in his feature film debut). They talk about
strategies and issues in the campaign:

Tom: Now look, you have to emphasize the mandatory welfare program. That's the issue that
should be pushed.
Betsy: First push the man, then the issue. Senator Palantine is a dynamic man, an intelligent,
interesting, fresh, fascinating...
Tom: Forgot sexy.
Betsy: ...man. I did not forget sexy.
Tom: Listen to what you're saying. You sound like you're selling mouthwash.
Betsy: We are selling mouthwash.
Tom: Are we authorized to do that?

As Tom routinely flirts with Betsy, she notices that a taxicab driver in his car at the curb outside
stares at them - with cold, piercing eyes. Asked how long he has been there, Betsy responds: "I
don't know but it feels like a long time." Bickle squeals off when Tom goes out to tell him to stop
blocking the curb in front of the offices.

A Bernard Herrmann jazzy and seductive saxophone riff accompanies an impressionistic montage
of images on one of Bickle's typical night drives - red and green stoplights, garish neon lights and
porno houses, pedestrians walking the streets, the clicking of the numbers on the taxi farebox,
and other taxi traffic cruising the streets.

During a night-time coffee break at an all-night restaurant (the Belmore Cafeteria), Travis
appears through the glass window behind other cabbies who are seated at a table. One of the
cabbies has seen it all - the philosophic Wizard (Peter Boyle) relates a exaggerated anecdote about
one of his odd fare-paying passengers, a seductive lady who changed her pantyhose in the middle
of a ride:
 46

...eye-shadow, mascara, lipstick, rouge...and then perfume, the spray kind. And then get this. In
the middle of the Triboro Bridge - and this woman is beautiful - she changes her pantyhose!...I
jump in the back seat and I whip it out and I said, you know what this is?...If she says, 'It's love,'
you know, I'm gonna f--- her brains out. She goes wild, you know. And she said, 'It's the greatest
single experience of my life.' And she gave me a two hundred dollar tip and her phone number in
Acapulco.

While the other cabbies are talking, Travis becomes lost in his own world, and then describes
their dangerous work environment with "pretty rough customers" and the latest threat - a knife-
wielding crazy madman who cut up another cabbie at 122nd Street:

Travis: I turned on the radio, some fleet driver from Bell just got all cut up...He got cut up by
some crazy f--ker. Cut half his ear off. It was at 122nd Street.
Wizard: F---in' Mau-Mau land.

The two stories bring together the related connection between sex and violence in the routine
world of the cabbie.

As Travis' name is called, it takes two or three times before he responds. One of his colleagues
named Dough-Boy (Harry Northrup) suggests that Travis carry a "piece" to protect himself. And if
Travis wishes to purchase a weapon, he has a source. Off-handedly, Wizard mentions that he has
a gun but never uses it: "I never use mine. I'm conservative, you know. It's a good thing to have
just as a threat." An anxiety-ridden Travis dumps an Alka-Seltzer tablet in a glass of water - the
camera zooms in and lingers on the exploding, fizzing action [a symbolic, precipitous descent into
the effervescent disturbances in Travis' inner world].

Gathering up his courage and wearing a dark maroon jacket, an attractively-groomed Travis walks
confidently into the campaign headquarters, attempting to meet the woman he has long admired
and fastened onto from a distance. In front of her co-worker, he volunteers to work for her,
flattering her ego:

Betsy: And why do you feel that you have to volunteer to me?
Travis: (smiling slightly) Because I think that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
Betsy: (after a momentary pause, she responds with a pleasing look) Thanks. But what do you
think of Palantine? (Travis is distracted and cannot answer)...Charles Palantine, the man you're
volunteering to help elect President.
Travis: Well, I'm sure he'd make a good President. I don't know exactly what his policies are, but
I'm sure he'd make a good one.
Betsy: Do you want to canvass?
Travis: Yeah, I'll canvass.

Explaining that he drives a taxi at night, Travis clarifies that he really wants to invite her to have
coffee and pie with him. Although amused, intrigued, flattered, and curiously attracted to him,
she wants to know why, not knowing what to make of him. Charming her, he uses one of the
oldest pick-up lines he knows. During the scene, Tom - pretending to be standoff-ish (but actually
jealous) - lurks around in the background. Appearing cool, beautiful and pure, she is taken aback
by his feverish interest in her, but nonetheless accepts to meet him later in the afternoon:

Travis: I'll tell you why. I think you're a lonely person. I drive by this place a lot and I see you here.
I see a lot of people around you. And I see all these phones and all this stuff on your desk. It
means nothing. Then when I came inside and I met you, I saw in your eyes and I saw the way you
carried yourself that you're not a happy person. And I think you need something. And if you want
to call it a friend, you can call it a friend.
Betsy: Are you gonna be my friend?
Travis: Yeah. What do ya say? It's a little hard standing here and asking...Five minutes, that's all,
 47

just outside. Right around here. I'm there to protect ya. (He quickly flexes both arms, causing her
to laugh.) Come on, just take a little break.
Betsy: I have a break at four o'clock and if you're here...
Travis: Four o'clock today?
Betsy: Yes.
Travis: I'll be here.
Betsy: I'm sure you will.
Travis: All right, four p.m.
Betsy: Right.
Travis: Outside in front?
Betsy: Yeah.
Travis: OK. Oh my name is Travis. (He extends his hand to her.) Betsy?
Betsy: Travis.
Travis: Appreciate this, Betsy.

Around four pm, Travis is nervously pacing, smoking a cigarette, and checking his watch outside
the headquarters. He narrates in voice-over his adoration for her as they meet and go for a coffee-
shop rendezvous:

May 26th. Four o'clock p.m. I took Betsy to Charles Coffee Shop on Columbus Circle. I had black
coffee and apple pie with a slice of melted yellow cheese. I think that was a good selection. Betsy
had coffee and a fruit salad dish. She could have had anything she wanted.

During their conversation, Betsy tells him about the organizational problems of 15,000 Palantine
volunteers in New York. Tangentially, Travis discusses his own personal problems in an awkward,
forced way to try to make a light-hearted joke:

Travis: I know what you mean. I've got the same problems. I gotta get organized. Oh little things,
like my apartment, my possessions. I should get one of those signs that says, 'One of These Days
I'm Gonna Get Organizized.'
Betsy: You mean 'organized'?
Travis: Organeziezd. Organeziezd! It's a joke. (He spells it - incorrectly.) O - R - G - A - N - E - Z - I
- E - Z - D.
Betsy: Oh, you mean 'Organizized' like those little signs they have in offices that say 'THIMK.'

During a rambling monologue, he compares himself favorably with her co-worker Tom:

Travis: I would say he has quite a few problems. His energy seems to go in the wrong places.
When I walked in and I saw you two sitting there, I could just tell by the way you were both
relating that there was no connection whatsoever. And I felt when I walked in that there was
something between us. There was an impulse that we were both following. So that gave me the
right to come in and talk to you. Otherwise I never would have felt that I had the right to talk to
you or say anything to you. I never would have had the courage to talk to you. And with him I felt
there was nothing and I could sense it. When I walked in, I knew I was right. Did you feel that
way?
Betsy: I wouldn't be here if I didn't.
Travis: ...That fellow you work with. I don't like him. Not that I don't like him, I just think he's
silly. I don't think he respects you.
Betsy: I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you.

Persistent in his pursuit of her, he invites her to go to the movies at some later date. After
agreeing, she realizes how eccentric and unusual he is, ambiguous and misunderstood by
everyone - "a walking contradiction":
 48

Betsy: You know what you remind me of?

Travis: What?
Betsy: That song by Kris Kristofferson. [She's referring to the song Pilgrim Chapter 33.]
Travis: Who's that?
Betsy: A songwriter. 'He's a prophet...he's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A
walking contradiction.'
Travis: (uneasily) You sayin' that about me?
Betsy: Who else would I be talkin' about?
Travis: I'm no pusher. I never have pushed.
Betsy: No, no. Just the part about the contradictions. You are that.

In the next scene in a record shop, Travis is helped to select the Kris Kristofferson record album
(The Silver Tongued Devil and I) with the song that Betsy quoted from. He purchases it for her
and then the voice-over narration sets up their next date as he drives his cab through the streets:

I called Betsy again at her office and she said maybe we'd go to a movie together after she gets off
work tomorrow. That's my day off. At first she hesitated but I called her again and then she
agreed. Betsy, Betsy. Oh no, Betsy what? I forgot to ask her last name again. Damn. I got to
remember stuff like that.

Suddenly, Charles Palantine (this time with his campaign aides) accidentally crosses Travis' path
[again?] as one of his taxi passengers. Travis notices him as the middle passenger in his rear-view
mirror. He immediately flatters the candidate, sucking up to him in small-talk about his support
for his candidacy. The ultimate politician, Palantine quickly learns Travis' name and is willing to
say anything to get elected. In an ironic remark, he tells Travis how he has learned more about
America "from riding in taxi cabs than in all the limos in the country." When asked to describe a
problem with the country, a tongue-tied Travis expresses his intense disgust for the city's filth in
an interior monologue:

Travis: I'm one of your biggest supporters, you know. I tell everybody that comes in this taxi that
they have to vote for you.
Palantine: Why thank you - (Pleased, he glances to check Travis' picture, identification and
license posted in the rear seat) - Travis.
Travis: I'm sure you're gonna win sir. Everybody I know is gonna vote for ya. You know in fact, I
was gonna put one of your stickers in my taxi but you know, the company said it was against their
policy. But they don't know anything, you know. They're a bunch of jerks.
Palantine: Let me tell you something. I have learned more about America from riding in taxi cabs
than in all the limos in the country...Can I ask you something Travis?
Travis: Sure.
Palantine: What is the one thing about this country that bugs you the most?
Travis: Well I don't know, you know. I don't follow political issues that closely sir. I don't know.
Palantine: Oh but there must be something.
Travis: Well. (He thinks) Whatever it is, you should clean up this city here, because this city here
is like an open sewer you know. It's full of filth and scum. And sometimes I can hardly take it.
Whatever-whoever becomes the President should just (Travis honks the horn) really clean it up.
You know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it, I get headaches it's so bad, you
know...They just never go away you know...It's like...I think that the President should just clean
up this whole mess here. You should just flush it right down the f---in' toilet.
Palantine: (after pausing and thinking for a meaningful answer) Well, uh, I think I know what you
mean Travis. But it's not gonna be easy. We're gonna have to make some radical changes.
Travis: Damn straight.
Palantine: (after getting out of the cab, he leans down to look into the front window of the cab for
a moment) Nice talkin' to you, Travis. (They shake hands)
Travis: Nice talking to you sir. You're a good man. I know you're gonna win.
 49

Travis' incoherent answer stuns and alarms Palantine with his frankness and politically-suicidal
suggestion.

His next passenger, a young, blonde, street-smart (hippie prostitute) girl (a young Jodie Foster)
leaps into his cab, shouting: "Come on, man. Just get me out of here, all right?" As Travis
hesitates and looks back over his shoulder at her, the rear door opens. She is attempting to flee
from an older man (seen only from the waist down through the taxi window) who drags her from
the cab. Travis is bought off with a $20 dollar bill: "Cabbie, just forget about this, it's nothin'." A
little later, a gang of young black kids throw eggs and beer cans at his cab. When he returns his
cab to the company early the next morning, he pulls into his stall and then sits, silently staring at
the crumpled $20 dollar bill next to him untouched on the seat. He reluctantly picks it up and
stuffs it into his shirt.

As a dressed-up Travis walks toward his appointed date with Betsy, the camera captures him in
slow motion. The date with Betsy begins on a positive note - he proudly gives her his gift-wrapped
present - the Kris Kristofferson record. But then she learns that he is a bit disconnected and out of
touch from the world - he has a broken stereo player and he is unknowledgeable about music: "I
don't follow music too much, but I would really like to. I really would."

Incredibly and pathetically, the socially-inept Travis sabotages his budding relationship with her.
He takes her to a cheap, 42nd Street porno theatre with a garish marquee. Two adult-oriented
shows are advertised: "2 Exciting Adult Hits! Bold XXX Entertainment - 'Sometime Sweet Susan'
and 'Swedish Marriage Manual.'" (A loud snare drum beat is heard on the soundtrack as he
purchases tickets for them.) He steps up to the box office and buys two tickets. Now realizing that
he is unbalanced, she is offended and shocked by his odd choice of films:

Betsy: You've got to be kidding.

Travis: What?
Betsy: This is a dirty movie.
Travis: (somewhat confused) No, no, this is, this is a movie that, uh, a lot of couples come to, all
kinds of couples go here.
Betsy: Are you sure about that?
Travis: Sure. I've seen 'em all the time.

Travis awkwardly gestures and touches Betsy to escort her into the theatre. Travis sits very low in
his seat in a typical porno theatre slouch. After a few minutes of "Swedish Marriage Manual" (an
actual Swedish film titled Kärlekens språk (1969), a subtitled pornographic film, presenting hard-
core sexual scenes under the guise of teaching sex), she is offended when the film's discussion
about sex in marriage quickly cuts to a couple copulating on a bed and a scene of a sexual orgy.
Now embarrassed and angry, she climbs over him in the aisle and storms out of the movie theater.
Travis is frustrated and confused and hustles out after her. He wonders why she walked out, again
expressing his ignorance about movies as an excuse:

Travis: Where are you going?

Betsy: Have to leave now.
Travis: Why?
Betsy: I don't know why I came in here. I don't like these movies.
Travis: Well, I mean, I, you know, I didn't know that you, you would feel that way about this
movie. I don't know much about movies, but if I...
Betsy: Are these the only kind of movies you go to?
Travis: Well, yeah, I mean I come - this is not so bad.
Betsy: Taking me to a place like this is about as exciting to me as saying: 'Let's f--k.' (Behind Betsy
is a blonde prostitute, facing toward Travis in the same position)
Travis: (flabbergasted by her blunt use of language, and attempting to apologize) Uh. There are
 50

other places I can take you. There are plenty of other movies I can take you to. I don't know much
about them but I could take you to other places...

Travis' attempts to apologize are ineffective - Betsy hails a taxi and dumps him, revealing that she
has only been playing with him from the start. She tells him that she already has the Kristofferson
record: "I've already got it." He pleads for her to take it: "Please, I bought it for you, Betsy." As the
car speeds off, he feebly asks: "Can I call you?"

The next scene is painful to watch. Travis is standing in a bare hallway (from the lobby of The Ed
Sullivan Theater (at 1697 Broadway)), talking on a wall pay-phone to Betsy, apologizing for
bringing her to a pornographic film:

Hello Betsy. Hi, it's Travis. How ya doin'? Listen, uh, I'm, I'm sorry about the, the other night. I
didn't know that was the way you felt about it. Well, I-I didn't know that was the way you felt. I-I-I
would have taken ya somewhere else. Uh, are you feeling better or oh you maybe had a virus or
somethin', a 24-hour virus you know. It happens. Yeah, umm, you uh, you're workin' hard. Yeah.
Uh, would you like to have, uh, some dinner, uh with me in the next, you know, few days or
somethin'? Well, how about just a cup of coffee? I'll come by the, uh, headquarters or somethin',
we could, uh...Oh, OK, OK. Did you get my flowers in the...? You didn't get them? I sent some
flowers, uh...Yeah, well, OK, OK. Can I call you again? Uh, tomorrow or the next day? OK. No, I'm
gonna...OK. Yeah, sure, OK. So long.

When he asks if she received the flowers he sent, the camera begins a tracking shot away from
him to the right, moving to a fixed shot of the long, desolate empty hallway next to Travis. His
voice-over explains his frustration over his awkward date and the aftermath of her rejection of
him - a failed attempt at a normal relationship with an attractive woman. Travis is rebuffed
repeatedly (she refuses to date him or answer his phone calls). The camera tracks across the floor
of Travis' apartment, where there is a row of wilted and dying floral arrangements returned by
Betsy. The flower bouquets are progressively more wilted from left to right:

I tried several times to call her, but after the first call, she wouldn't come to the phone any longer.
I also sent flowers but with no luck. The smell of the flowers only made me sicker. The headaches
got worse. I think I got stomach cancer. I shouldn't complain though. You're only as healthy,
you're only as healthy as you feel. You're only as...healthy...as...you...feel.
Feeling troubled inside, Travis (now wearing his usual cab outfit) storms into the political
headquarters during one of their busy workdays and ends up terrorizing the volunteers. While
restrained by Tom's large frame, Travis confronts Betsy for not returning his phone calls:
Travis: Why won't you talk to me? Why don't you answer my calls when I call? You think I don't
know you're here.
Tom: Let's not have any trouble.
Travis: You think I don't know. You think I don't know.
Tom: Would you please leave?
Travis: Get your hands off.

Escorted to the door (to be made an outsider), he sharply makes quick karate gestures at Tom.
Rather than examine inside himself for the cause of the rejection, he strikes outward. He tells
Betsy (whom he once thought was an angel) that she is demonically going to hell. She is like all
the other women he's known - cold and distant:

You're in a hell, and you're gonna die in hell like the rest of 'em. You're like the rest of 'em.

Soured by the whole experience of his awkward date and aborted relationship with an upper-
middle-class woman beyond his reach, he condemns her and begins his descent into isolation,
psychosis (and armed violence):
 51

I realize now how much she's just like the others - cold and distant, and many people are like that.
Women for sure. They're like a union.

In one of the more memorable scenes of the film, his next fare-paying passenger is a scary-acting,
mustached, middle-aged individual (director Scorsese himself in a cameo role) who insists that
Travis pull over to the curb, keep the meter running, and just sit. The man is the agonized
husband of a cheating wife who watches her scantily-clad silhouette in the lit second-story
window of another man's apartment. As Travis sits expressionless, his lunatic passenger (who
speaks repetitively in circles) describes his homicidal plan. The demented passenger aggressively
prods Travis to answer his questions during his fantasy of murdering his adulterous wife and her
black partner with a .44 Magnum:

Passenger (smiling and laughing nervously and inappropriately throughout the dialogue): You see
the woman in the window? Do you see the woman in the window?...I want you to see that woman,
because that's my wife. That's not my apartment. That's not my apartment. You know who lives
there? Huh? I mean, you wouldn't know who lives there - I'm just saying, but you know who lives
there? Huh? A nigger lives there. How do ya like that? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill him...What
do you think of that? Hmm? I said 'What do you think of that?' Don't answer. You don't have to
answer everything. I'm gonna kill her. I'm gonna kill her with a .44 Magnum pistol. A .44
Magnum pistol. I'm gonna kill her with that gun. Did you ever see what a .44 Magnum pistol can
do to a woman's face? I mean it will f---in' destroy it. Just blow her right apart. That's what it will
do to her face. Now, did you ever see what it can do to a woman's pussy? That you should see.
That you should see what a .44 Magnum's gonna do to a woman's pussy you should see. I know, I
know you must think that I'm, you know, you must think I'm pretty sick or somethin', you know,
you must think I'm pretty sick. Right? You must think I'm pretty sick? Hmm? Right? I'll betcha,
I'll betcha you really think I'm sick right? You think I'm sick? You think I'm sick? You don't have
to answer that. I'm payin' for the ride. You don't have to answer that.

[Travis and the passenger have identical problems - they have both been spurned by women.
Travis, however, eventually responds by taking his violence beyond fantasy.]

At the Belmore Cafeteria, a group of cabbies (Wizard, Dough Boy, Charlie T, and a fourth cabbie)
at a formica-topped table swap more stories and small talk about their fares - midgets, fags, and
other unusual characters. Wizard explains how he told one group of violent gay passengers to
behave:

Wizard: Then I picked up these two fags, you know. They're goin' downtown. [A loud buzzer is
activated as Travis steps through the turnstile into the wall-length counter area of the cafeteria.
When he pulls his ticket from the dispenser, the buzzer is silenced.] They're wearing these
rhinestone t-shirts. And they start arguin'. They start yellin'. The other says: 'You bitch.'...I say:
'Look, I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home behind closed doors - this is an
American free country, we got a pursuit of happiness thing, you're consenting, you're adult. BUT,
you know, uh, you know, in my f---ing cab, don't go bustin' heads, you know what I mean? God
love you, do what you want.'
Dough Boy: Tell 'em to go to California, 'cause out in California when two fags split up, one's got
to pay the other one alimony.
Wizard: Not bad. Ah, they're way ahead out there, you know in California. So I had to tell 'em to
get out of the f---in' cab.

Travis joins the group and repays a debt of five dollars to one of the cabbies. When he pulls out a
large wad of small denomination bills, the crumpled $20 bill reminds him of the young hippie
prostitute incident. He stares at it for a moment and then puts it back in his jacket pocket. He
leaves briefly to speak privately outside to the philosophic Wizard. As he moves away, Charlie T
(Norman Matlock) forms his hand into a pistol, cocks and fires - making the sound "Pgghew." He
bids Travis good-bye using his newly-acquired nickname: "Goodbye Killer."
 52

In the blood-red light of the outside neon sign, Travis looks for some kind of support and sports a
nervous smile on his face. Wizard leans back against his cab and becomes an elder
statesman/adviser for Travis. Hesitantly, Travis inarticulately explains his deteriorating mental
condition and sinister tendencies - he's starting to get "bad ideas" in his head.

Wizard semi-articulately raps, in philosophical-tabloid slang, about becoming one's job and
finding wisdom by getting drunk or laid. In Wizard's point of view, everyone is "more or less" f--
ked and stuck in an absurd world:

Travis: Well, I know you and I ain't talked too much, you know, but I figured you've been around
alot so you could...
Wizard: Shoot. That's why they call me the Wizard.
Travis: I got, it's just that I got a, I got a...
Wizard: Things uh, things got ya down?
Travis: Yeah.
Wizard: Yeah, it happens to the best of us.
Travis: Yeah, I got me a real down, real...I just wanna go out and, and you know like really, really,
really do somethin'.
Wizard: The taxi life you mean?
Travis: Yeah, well. Naw, I don't know. I just wanna go out. I really, you know, I really wanna, I got
some bad ideas in my head, I just...
Wizard: Look, look at it this way, you know uh, a man, a man takes a job, you know, and that job,
I mean like that, and that it becomes what he is. You know like uh, you do a thing and that's what
you are. Like I've been a, I've been a cabbie for seventeen years, ten years at night and I still don't
own my own cab. You know why? 'Cause I don't want to. I must be what I, what I want. You know,
to be on the night shift drivin' somebody else's cab. Understand? You, you, you become, you get a
job, you you become the job. One guy lives in Brooklyn, one guy lives in Sutton Place, you get a
lawyer, another guy's a doctor, another guy dies, another guy gets well, and you know, people are
born. I envy you your youth. Go out and get laid. Get drunk, you know, do anything. 'Cause you
got no choice anyway. I mean we're all f---ed, more or less you know.
Travis: Yeah, I don't know. That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Wizard: I'm not Bertrand Russell. Well what do ya want. I'm a cabbie you know. What do I know?
I mean, I don't even know what the f--- you're talkin' about.
Travis: Yeah I don't know. Maybe I don't know either.
Wizard: Don't worry so much. Relax Killer, you're gonna be all right. I know I seen a lot of people
and uh, I know.

Travis, literally stuck in a world he doesn't understand, is unable to assimilate Wizard's existential
sermon, calling it "the dumbest thing" he ever heard.

Travis' next meal consists of crumbled up pieces of white bread in a cereal bowl, covered with
peach brandy, milk and sugar. In front of his rabbit-eared TV in his dreary tenement apartment,
an angst-ridden Travis eats and watches a TV interview with candidate Palantine:

When we came up with our slogan, 'We are the People,' when I said let the people rule, I felt that I
was being somewhat overly optimistic. I must tell you that I am more optimistic now than ever
before. The people are rising to the demands that I have made on them. The people are beginning
to rule. I feel it is a groundswell. I know it will continue through the primary. I know it will
continue in Miami. And I know it will rise to an unprecedented swell in November.

he drives his cab past the Palantine headquarters, the tracking point-of-view camera peers
through the windows of the building. The headquarters is half-empty - and Betsy's desk is vacant.
A sign in the window reads: "Only 4 More Days Until the Arrival of Charles Palantine - Our Next
President." From another view atop his cab, Travis' "Off-Duty" light goes off as he speeds toward a
prospective fare.
 53

Later while driving through a dark street, Travis suddenly hits his brakes to avoid running down
the same young girl he had earlier seen pulled from the back seat of his cab. This time, the girl has
recklessly crossed the street in front of his cab -she stares in shock at him through the windshield,
dressed in a flowery outfit with a floppy hat. He slowly trails the young girl and her blonde female
companion down the street - they both gesture to a figure on a porch stoop, calling him Sport.
Travis realizes that they are both hippie child-prostitutes when they pick up two johns at a street
corner.

He speeds off and trails other pedestrians of the night as his voice-over explains his destiny -
existential loneliness. In contrast to his paltry verbal communications, his thoughts are an
obsessive, tortured, skewered record of his thoughts and views on mankind, yet insightful about
the ugly corruption of life in the city:

Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores,
everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man. (Travis is seen writing in his journal.) June
8th. My life has taken another turn again. The days can go on with regularity over and over, one
day indistinguishable from the next. A long continuous chain. Then suddenly, there is a change.
(Behind him on the wall is his "One of These Days, I'm Gonna Get Organiz-ized" sign.)

[His thoughts about his loneliness provide a cultural allusion to Thomas Wolfe's 'God's Lonely
Man.']

The first way Travis gets organized to combat his existential loneliness is through weapons
armament. At a street corner, Travis pops three or four aspirin from a brown bag directly from the
bottle into his mouth. One of his cabbie friends pulls up and introduces him to "Easy" Andy
(Steven Prince), a traveling salesman who offers to sell him guns. The well-dressed young man
carries two large display suitcases and places them on a bed in an economy hotel room. A full-
screen close-up slowly pans up the long, eight-inch barrel of an inhuman, oversized .44 Magnum.
[Travis' choice of weapon may have been inspired by his recollection of his cab passenger's
speech: "I'm gonna kill her with a .44 Magnum pistol. A .44 Magnum pistol. I'm gonna kill her
with that gun."] Travis first picks up the Magnum and then three other different guns to examine
them as Easy Andy admiringly describes their features:

There you go - a supreme high re-sale weapon. Look at that. Look at that. That's a beauty. I could
sell those guns to some jungle bunny in Harlem for five hundred bucks. But I just deal high-
quality goods to the right people. How about that? This might be a little too big for practical
purposes in which case for you, I'd recommend .38 snub nose. Look at this. Look at it. That's a
beautiful little gun. It's nickel-plated, snub nose, otherwise the same as the service revolver.
That'll stop anything that moves. The Magnum - they use that in Africa for killin' elephants. That
.38 - it's a fine gun. Some of these guns are like toys. That .38 - you go out and hammer nails with
it all day, come back and it will cut dead center on target every time. It's got a really nice action to
it and a heck of a whallop. You interested in a automatic? It's a Colt .25 Automatic. It's a nice little
gun. It's a beautiful little gun. It holds six shots in the clip, one shot in the chamber so if you're
done, you don't have to put a round in the chamber. Here, look at this. 380 Walther, holds eight
shots in the clip. That's a nice gun. Now that's a beautiful little gun. Look at that. During World
War II, they used this gun to replace the P38. Just given out to officers. Ain't that a little honey?

Travis places the gun under his belt and pulls his shirt over it, testing to see whether it can be
concealed. Then he inquires about purchasing all four guns: "How much for everything?" Andy
first dissuades him from carrying the Magnum, but quickly provides a solution: "Only a jack-ass
would carry that cannon in the streets like that. Here. Here's a beautiful hand-made holster I had
made in Mexico. $400 dollars." After Travis purchases an assortment of four semi-automatic
guns for $875 from the underground dealer (making sure to include a .44 Magnum in his arsenal
- taking his cue from the homicidal fare he ferried), Andy asks if Travis is interested in buying
drugs or hot automobiles:
 54

Andy: How about dope? Grass. Hash. Coke. Mescaline. Downers. Nebutol. Tuonal. Chloral
Hydrates? How about any Uppers? Amphetamines.
Travis: No I'm not interested in that stuff.
Andy: Crystal meth. I can get ya crystal meth. Nitrous oxide. How about that? How about a
Cadillac? I get ya a brand new Cadillac. With the pink slip for two grand.

A second means to find a new identity is to begin an intense, action-oriented regimen of rigid,
physical training. Travis exercises fanatically even though his mental condition deteriorates,
vigorously doing excessive numbers of push-ups, pull-ups and weight exercises in his apartment
as if preparing for a war-like mission. Bareback and only wearing jeans, his back is marked with
shrapnel scars as he does push-ups above the oddly-matching linoleum floor of his kitchen.
During his 're-organization,' his body becomes taut and wirey when he denounces junk food and
other poisons. The pace of the film quickens:

June 29th. I gotta get in shape now. Too much sittin' is ruinin' my body. Too much abuse has
gone on for too long. From now on, it will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. (He
passes his stiff arm through the flame of a gas burner without flinching.) There'll be no more pills,
there'll be no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on, it will be total
organization. Every muscle must be tight.

The soundtrack explodes with practice shots he fires at a target in an indoor firing range with his
arsenal of illegal guns. Without knowing why he has embarked on such rigorous training, Travis'
pent-up anger and frustration he had told Wizard about is being released. In a porno theater
while watching a sex scene, he points his finger like a gun at the screen, linking sex (foreplay) and
violence (gunplay). As the action becomes more graphic on screen, he places his stiffened trigger
hand above his eyes, partially shutting off and shielding his field of vision.

The idea had been growing in my brain for some time. True force. All the king's men cannot put it
back together again.

[Travis' literary/cultural allusion is to Robert Penn Warren's novel, All the King's Men, an
account of the dangers of populist politics.]

Back in his apartment, a bare-chested Travis has attached guns to himself (first one - and then
two shoulder holsters and a third gun from behind). He practices drawing them in front of a
mirror. His wall is decorated with tacked-up maps and political paraphernalia related to
demagogue/politician Charles Palantine [By repressed projection, Betsy is also targeted as
Palantine's disciple.] Turning more alienated and violent and harnessing his puritanical energy,
he manufactures a custom-made fast-draw, gliding mechanism that he attaches to his forearm,
and another concealed knife-holder for a horrible-looking combat knife on his ankle. The
weapons and other spring-loaded, metal gadgets attached to him are extensions of his body - his
gunmanship is astonishing. At his table, he dum-dums the .44 bullets, cutting 'x's' across the
bullet heads.

A rally platform decorated with red, white and blue bunting is being assembled for an outdoor
Palantine rally, where both Betsy and Tom are busily working. Stalking everyone at the rally in a
green Army jacket, Travis sidles up to a tall, serious, sun-glass wearing Secret Service agent
(Richard Higgs), first imitating his crossed-arm stance, and then leading him into an overly
friendly chat about the Secret Service and guns:

Travis: Hey, you're a Secret Service man aren't ya? Huh?

Agent: (indifferently) Just waiting for the Senator.
Travis: You're waiting for the Senator? Oh! That's a very good answer. S--t! I'm waitin' for the sun
to shine. Yeah. No, the reason I, I asked if you were a Secret Service man, I won't say anything,
because I (Travis pauses, noticing two more agents walking by)...I saw some suspicious looking
 55

people over there. (Travis points away) Yeah, they were over there, right over there. They were
just here, uh. They were very, very, uh...
Agent: ...suspicious...
Travis: Yeah. Is it hard to get to be in the Secret Service?
Agent: Why?
Travis: Well, I was just curious, because I think I'd be good at it. Very observant. I was in the
Marine Corps you know, I'm good with crowds. I'm noticin' the little pin there. (Looking at the
agent's lapel.) That's like a signal isn't it?
Agent: Sort of.
Travis: A signal. A secret signal for the Secret Service. Hey, what kind of guns do you guys carry?
38s, 45s, 357 Magnums, somethin' bigger maybe?
Agent: Look, uh, if you're really interested, if you give me your name and address, we'll send you
all the information on how to apply. How's that?
Travis: You will?
Agent: Sure. (The agent takes out a notepad.)
Travis: OK. Why not? My name is Henry Krinkle. K-R-I-N-K-L-E. 154 Hopper Avenue.
Agent: Hopper?
Travis: Yeah. You know like a rabbit, hip, hop. Ha, ha. Fair Lawn, New Jersey.
Agent: Is there a zip code to that Henry?
Travis: Yeah, 610452. OK?
Agent: That's, uh, six digits.
Travis: Oh, well 61045.
Agent: OK.
Travis: I was thinking of my telephone number.
Agent: Well, I've got it all. Henry, we'll get all the stuff right out to you.
Travis: Thanks alot. Hey, great. Thanks alot. Hell, Jesus. Be careful today.
Agent: Right. Will do.
Travis: You have to be careful in and around a place like this. Bye.

Travis is quickly marked and fulfills the stereotypical profile for a lone, crazy gunman. As Travis
walks away, the agent signals that a Secret Service photographer (Vic Magnotta) take his picture,
but Travis becomes lost in the crowd when Palantine's car drives up.

Turning more alienated and violent, in the most terrifying, but classic sequence in the film, he
glares at himself in the mirror and recites conversations in which he threatens and insistently
challenges imaginary enemies, rehearsing his quick-draw with his spring-loaded holster:

Yeah. Huh? Huh? Huh? (I'm) faster than you, you f--kin' son of a...I saw you comin', you f--k, s--t-
heel. I'm standin' here. You make the move. You make the move. It's your move. (He draws his
gun from his concealed forearm holster.) Don't try it, you f--ker. You talkin' to me? You
talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? (He turns around to look behind him.) Well, who the hell
else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the f--k do you think
you're talkin' to? Oh yeah? Huh? OK. (He whips out his gun again.) Huh?

The conversation then becomes internal and disjointed - the film literally replays itself in a jerky
rewind, reflecting the disassociated, obsessive nature of his mind, while he lies on his bed or again
taunts make-believe adversaries in front of a mirror:

Listen you f--kers, you screwheads. Here's a man who would not take it anymore. Who would not
let...Listen you f--kers, you screwheads. Here's a man who would not take it anymore. A man who
stood up against the scum, the c--ts, the dogs, the filth, the s--t, here is someone who stood up. (A
close-up of his diary entry, "Here is," is followed by three erratic dots.) HERE IS --- (He draws his
gun.) You're dead.
 56

In a convenience, all-night supermarket one night where he stops while driving his cab, he
witnesses a holdup of the store manager Melio while picking up a carton of milk and a midnight
snack from behind one of the shelves in the store aisle. He confronts the nervous, hopped-up,
young, black stick-up man and shoots him in the head with his concealed .32. The robber reels
and collapses to the floor. Worried because he used an unlicensed weapon, Travis leaves the gun
with the manager and drives off, while the enraged store manager (wearing a green-shouldered,
super-patriotic Tulane T-shirt) beats the unconscious thief on the floor with a pipe.

Unmoving, expressionless, and mesmerized in front of his TV while watching American

Bandstand, one of the cultural icons of the 1960s. To illustrate his own violent self-hatred, Travis
has his gun barrel propped against his head while he listens to the words of a Jackson Browne
song "Late For the Sky," as young teenyboppers suggestively slow-dance on the screen:

...And close to the end

Of the feeling we've known
How long have I been sleepin'?
How long have I been driftin' all through the night?
How long have I been runnin' for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changin' light
Of the band where we both lie
Late for the Sky.

Estranged by his own sense of inadequacy in his world,Travis feels threatened by the blatant
exposure of teenage sexuality.

At another Palantine rally in a crowded city sidestreet dwarfed by skyscrapers, Travis stalks the
candidate again. He sits coldly staring in his "Off-Duty" cab in the driver's seat and listens to the
candidate's speech on a booming, distant loudspeaker system:

Walt Whitman, that great American poet, spoke for all of us when he said: 'I am the man. I
suffered. I was there.' Today, I say to you, We Are The People, we suffered, we were there. We the
People suffered in Vietnam. We the People suffered, we still suffer from unemployment, inflation,
crime and corruption.

Palantine's populist message is inspiring, but like Travis, separates himself from the populace. As
the camera pans over the Palantine rally audience (which includes Tom and Betsy on the raised
platform and the Secret Service agent), Travis' voice-over recites a greeting card message which
he prepares to send to his parents (The cheap, kitschy card reads: "Happy Anniversary To A
Couple of Good Scouts." It pictures a couple dressed like Boy Scouts on the front.):

Dear Father and Mother:

July is the month I remember which brings not only your wedding anniversary but also Father's
Day and Mother's birthday. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact dates, but I hope this card will
take care of them all. I'm sorry again I cannot send you my address like I promised to last year.
But the sensitive nature of my work for the government demands utmost secrecy. I know you will
understand. I am healthy and well and making lots of money. I have been going with a girl for
several months and I know you would be proud if you could see her. Her name is Betsy but I can
tell you no more than that...

A policeman at the rally (Gino Ardito) interrupts the reading of his letter/card and forces Travis
to move his cab from an unauthorized parking space. Travis resumes reading the letter in his
monotonous voice-over while he examines the card at his desk:
 57

...I hope this card finds you all well as it does me. I hope no one has died. Don't worry about me.
One day, they'll be a knock on the door and it'll be me. Love Travis.

Travis watches a daytime soap opera, a scene of the break-up of a young couple's marriage due to
the woman's desire to divorce her husband and marry another man. The scene painfully reminds
Travis of his own romantic failures. He tilts the table holding the cheap black-and-white TV back
with his foot - it balances precariously there until falling over and crashing, exploding in sparks
on the floor. As the television shatters, so does Travis' life go out of balance. Travis holds his hand
between his hands, swearing at himself.

As a counterpoint to Betsy's untouchable 'angelic' womanhood, Travis finally meets Iris (Jodie
Foster) on the tenement streets, a 12 1/2 year old prostitute (homeless runaway) managed by a
small-time pimp "boyfriend" named Matthew or "Sport" (Harvey Keitel):

Iris: You lookin' for some action?

Travis: Yeah.
Iris: You see that guy over there?
Travis: Yeah.
Iris: You go talk to him. His name is Matthew. I'll be over there waitin' for ya.

The head-banded, T-shirted, long-haired, greaser pimp first mistakes Travis for an undercover
cop, extending his crossed wrists as if to be handcuffed. After suspiciously checking each other
out and verbally sparring, they both find each other 'clean' and then negotiate a price:

Sport: Officer, I swear I'm clean. I'm just waitin' here for a friend. You gonna bust me for nothin'
man?
Travis: I'm not a cop.
Sport: So why are you askin' me for action?
Travis: (gesturing at Iris) Because she sent me over.
Sport: I suppose that ain't a .38 you got in your sock.
Travis: A .38? No. I'm clean man.
Sport: (noticing Travis' Western boots) S--t. You're a real cowboy? That's nice, man. That's all
right. Fifteen dollars, fifteen minutes, twenty-five dollars, half an hour.
Travis: S--t.
Sport: A cowboy, huh? I once had a horse, on Coney Island. She got hit by a car. Well, take it or
leave it. If you want to save yourself some money, don't f--k her. Cause you'll be back here every
night for some more. Man, she's twelve and a half years old. You never had no p---y like that. You
can do anything you want with her. You can cum on her, f--k her in the mouth, f--k her in the ass,
cum on her face, man. She get your c--k so hard she'll make it explode. But no rough stuff, all
right?

As Travis turns to walk away, Sport tells him: "Catch you later, Copper." Travis turns back and
freezes, insisting: "I'm no cop, man." Travis plays along: "I'm hip," but Sport laughingly disagrees:
"Funny, you don't look hip. Go ahead, have yourself a good time. Go ahead. (As Travis stares him
down, Sport shoots two imaginary guns at him to get him going to his sexual escapade.) Ha, ha,
ha, ha. You're a funny guy."

As a police siren loudly cries in the streets, fresh-faced and innocent, but world-weary Iris escorts
Travis to a walk-up apartment. At the far end of the corridor, they pass by the manager of the
hotel rooms (Murray Mosten) who rents out rooms to prostitutes and serves as Iris' timekeeper.
The two enter a room through hanging cords of clear, colored beads to have fifteen minutes of sex.
 58

room aglow with incongruous sacramental candles and decorated with wall posters of rock stars,
Travis wants to strike up a friendship with Iris instead of having sex. She calls herself "Easy" (the
first person with that nickname crossing his path was gun-seller "Easy" Andy). While she
prepares to undress, she claims that she doesn't remember the incident in the back of his cab
when he first saw her. Travis insists that she keep her blouse on. Unlike Betsy's untouchable
sexuality, the young lover Iris helps Travis unbuckle his pants and pull down his zipper.
Bewildered by two different polarities of womanhood and alternative sexualities, she is as unreal
an abstraction to him as Betsy was.

Travis: Are you really twelve and a half?

Iris: Listen mister, it's your time. Fifteen minutes ain't long. When that cigarette burns out, your
time is up. (Iris sits on the edge of the sofa and begins undressing.)
Travis: How old are you? You won't tell me? What's your name?
Iris: Easy.
Travis: That's not any kind of name.
Iris: That's easy to remember.
Travis: Yeah, but what's your real name?
Iris: I don't like my real name.
Travis: (insistent) Now what's your real name?
Iris: Iris.
Travis: Well, what's wrong with that? That's a nice name.
Iris: Huh! That's what you think. (Iris begins to remove her top.)
Travis: No don't do that. Don't do that. Don't you remember me? Remember when you got into a
taxi, it was a checkered taxi. You got in and that that guy Matthew came by and he said he wanted
to take you away. He pulled you away.
Iris: I don't remember that.
Travis: You don't remember any of that?
Iris: No.
Travis: Well that's all right. I'm gonna get you out of here.
Iris: So we'd better make it or Sport will get mad. So how do you want to make it?
Travis: I don't want to make it. Who's Sport?
Iris: Oh that's Matthew. I call him Sport. (She stands up and begins unbuckling the belt on his
pants.) You want to make it like this?
Travis: Listen, uh, listen, hey, can I tell you somethin'. But you're the one that came into my cab.
You're the one that wanted to get out of here.
Iris: Well, I must have been stoned.
Travis: Why, what do you mean? Do they drug you?
Iris: (reproving) Oh come off it, man.
Travis: (Iris continues to try to unzip his fly.) What are you doin'?
Iris: Don't you want to make it?
Travis: No, I don't want to make it. I want to help you.
Iris: Well, I could help you. (Iris reaches for his pants again, but he pushes her back onto the
sofa.)
Travis: Damn, man. Goddamn it. S--t, man. What the hell's the matter with you?
Iris: Mister, you don't have to make it mister.
Travis: Goddamn it. Don't you want to get out of here? Can't you understand why I came here?
Iris: I think I understand, uh. I tried to get into your cab one night and you want to come and take
me away. Is that it?
Travis: Yeah, but don't you want to go?
Iris (confidently): I can leave anytime I want to.
Travis: Well then, what about that one night?
Iris: Look, I was stoned. That's why they stopped me. 'Cause when I'm not stoned, I got no place
else to go. So they just, uh, protect me from myself.
Travis: Well, I don't know. I don't know. OK, I tried.
Iris: (compassionate) I understand, and it means somethin', really.
Travis: Oh look, can I see you again?
 59

Iris: Ha, ha, that's not hard to do.

Travis: No, I don't mean like that. I mean, you know, regularly. This is nothing for a person to do.
Iris: All right. How about breakfast tomorrow?
Travis: Tomorrow when?
Iris: I get up at about one o'clock.

Treating her like his own child, he attempts to rescue her and persuade her to give up her life of
pimping. When she realizes that he is not interested in sex with her, she is touched by his caring
and agrees to have breakfast with him the next day. Travis hesitates about the time to see her,
because it seems to interfere with his planned assassination schedule, but then agrees. As he
leaves, he remembers to introduce himself, and then sweetly bids her goodbye until the next day:
"So long, Iris. See you tomorrow. Sweet Iris."

The hotel manager appears from a darkened doorway at the end of the hall. Travis gives the man a
$20 bill [the same crumpled $20 bill given him earlier by Sport to keep him quiet?]: "This is
yours. Spend it right." He is taunted by the old man and again identified by his boots as a Western
cowboy: "Come back any time cowboy." Travis is revolted and disgusted by Iris' life as a runaway
prostitute with "no place else to go" and content to work for a macho pimp.

In the next brilliant, memorable scene over breakfast, Travis takes Iris to a coffee shop where she
has toast with jelly and sugar on top. [This conversational scene parallels his coffee shop "date"
with Betsy, but this time it follows an 'aborted' sexual encounter.] He becomes obsessed with
saving the fresh-faced girl from her circumstances and restoring her to her family and school:

Iris: Why do you want me to go back to my parents? I mean they hate me. Why do you think I
split in the first place? There ain't nothin' there.
Travis: Yeah, but you can't live like this. It's hell. Girls should live at home.
Iris: (playfully) Didn't you ever hear of women's lib?
Travis: What do you mean 'women's lib'? You sure are a young girl. You should be at home now.
You should be dressed up. You should be goin' out with boys. You should be goin' to school. You
know, that kind of stuff.
Iris: Oh god, are you square.
Travis: Hey I'm not square. You're the one that's square. You're full of s--t, man. What are you
talkin' about? You walk out with those f--kin' creeps and lowlifes and degenerates out on the
street and you sell your, sell your little p---y for nothin' man. For some lowlife pimp - stands in a
hall. I'm, I'm square? You're the one that's square, man. I don't go screw and f--k with a bunch of
killers and junkies the way you do. You call that bein' hip? What world are you from?
Iris: Who's a 'killer'?
Travis: That guy Sport's a killer. That's who's a killer.
Iris: Sport never killed nobody.
Travis: He killed someone.
Iris: He's a Libra.
Travis: He's a what?
Iris: I'm a Libra too. That's why we get along so well.
Travis: Looks like a killer to me.
Iris: I think that, that Cancers make the best lovers, but god, my whole family are air signs.
Travis: He's also a dope shooter.

Befriending her, he again vainly tries to urge her to leave her pimp Sport, revolted by how she is
content to corrupt herself and sell her body at such a young age. She tells him that she likes being
with Sport and doesn't want salvation. When he tells her that her pimp has no respect for her,
calling him "the lowest kind of person in the world...the scum of the earth," she begins to be
persuaded to leave her low-life. Then, Travis offers to give her money to go live in a commune in
Vermont (to finance her escape from Sport) but he declines to join her:
 60

Iris: So what makes you so high and mighty. Will you tell me that? Didn't you ever try lookin' in
your own eyeballs in the mirror? (She removes her green plastic sunglasses.)
Travis: So what are you gonna do about Sport, that ol' bastard?
Iris: When?
Travis: When you leave.
Iris: I don't know. I just leave him, I guess.
Travis: You just gonna leave?
Iris: Yeah, they got plenty of other girls.
Travis: Yeah, but you just can't do that. What are you gonna do?
Iris: What do you want me to do? Call the cops?
Travis: What? The cops don't do nothin'. You know that.
Iris: Hey look. Sport never treated me bad. I mean he didn't beat me up or anything like that once.
Travis: But you can't allow him to do the same to other girls. You can't allow him to do that. He is
the lowest kind of person in the world. Somebody's got to do something to him. He's the scum of
the earth. He's the worst s-s-sucking scum I have ever, ever seen. You know what he told me
about you? He called you names. He called you a little piece of chicken.
Iris: He doesn't, he doesn't mean that. I'll move up to one of them communes in Vermont.
Travis: I never seen a commune before, but I don't know, you know, I saw some pictures once in a
magazine - didn't look very clean.
Iris: Well why don't you come to the commune with me?
Travis: (tongue-tied) Why not cum, come in a commune with you? Oh no.
Iris: Why not?
Travis: I don't, I don't go to places like that.
Iris: Oh come on, why not?
Travis: No, I don't get along with people like that.
Iris: Are you a Scorpion? [mistakenly]
Travis: What?
Iris: That's it. You're a Scorpion. I can tell every time.
Travis: Besides, I gotta stay here.
Iris: Come on, why?
Travis: I got somethin' very important to do.
Iris: Oh, so what's so important?
Travis: Doin' somethin' for the government. Cab thing is just part-time.
Iris: Are you a narc?
Travis: Do I look like a narc?
Iris: Yeah. (laughing)
Travis: I am a narc.
Iris: God, I don't know who's weirder, you or me? Sure you don't want to come with me?
Travis: Well I tell ya what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give ya the money to go.
Iris: Oh no, look, you don't have to do that.
Travis: No, no. I want you to take it. I don't want ya to take anything from them. And I wanna do
it. I don't have anything better to do with my money. I might be goin' away for a while.

Feeling compelled to talk to Sport in the reddish glare of the light, Iris describes her unhappiness
to her streetwise pimp. With a velvety smooth manner, Sport casts a spell over her and coaxes her
into resuming her life as a young street hooker. He dances with her cradled in his arms while
soothing her. He strokes her hair gently, revealing one obscene, red-enameled sharp fingernail as
she melts to his attentiveness:

Iris: I don't like what I'm doin,' Sport.

Sport: Oh baby, I never wanted you to like what you're doin'. If you ever liked what you're doing,
you wouldn't be my woman.
Iris: You never spend any time with me anymore.
Sport: Why I got to attend to business baby. You miss your man, don't ya? I don't like to be away
from you either. You know how I feel about you. I depend on you. I'd be lost without you. Don't
you ever forget that - how much I need you. (He puts some slow, jazzy soul music on the stereo)
 61

Come to me baby. Let me hold you. When I hold you close to me like this, I feel so good. I only
wish every man could know what it's like to be loved by you... God, it's good so close. You know at
times like this, I know I'm one lucky man. Touchin' a woman who wants me and needs me. That's
the way you and I keeps it together.

At the firing range, rapid-fire shots blast from Travis' .44 Magnum as he practices more to
become a crack shot at the target. In another part of his crusading plan to cleanse, save and
redeem society, (and to demonstrate his love for Iris), Travis makes more preparations to bring
'rain' upon the city by doing "somethin' very important." In his apartment where he wears a white
western-style shirt [foreshadowing the bloody, Western shoot-out], he polishes his boots and
burns some of the dried, wilted flowers intended for Betsy. After sharpening his knife, he tapes it
to the side of his boot. He counts out $500 (in $100 bills) for Iris, accompanied by a poorly-
scrawled, hand-written letter (put in an envelope addressed to Iris Steensman):

Dear Iris:
This money should be used for your trip. By the time you read this, I will be dead.
Travis

His apartment is neater and more orderly - the floor is less cluttered. Travis has determined to act
out his neurotic world view and fight evil with violence. He explains his mission ("to do
somethin") in voice-over - to pursue Presidential candidate Palantine and commit a grandiose act
- an assassination. Instead of holding evil in check, he unleashes incredible brutality from his
troubled psyche:

Now I see it clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been
any choice for me.

To exorcise his empty, tormented life, and to do something for which he will finally be recognized,
he turns to a violent, insanely-destructive solution for his cathartic salvation. Emerging from his
Checker cab at torso-level while Palantine speaks to an assembled crowd at Columbus Circle,
Travis blends into the audience wearing a "We Are the People" button. (Palantine's gestures with
arms outstretched model the statue behind him.) As the camera slowly pans up from his waist-
level, it reveals Travis' inappropriately-severe Mohawk Indian haircut (a single strip of hair down
the middle of his scalp) - a clear signal that he has finally snapped and adopted a military-style
haircut. [The haircut was first used by the 101st Airborne before D-Day activities in WWII.]
Travis' clapping sounds solitary when he joins the crowd in applause.

When the rally ends, Travis pushes and works his way through the crowd toward the detested
politician Palantine, photographed from an eye-level perspective. Before he can get close enough
to kill Palantine, the Secret Service bodyguard he had spoken to earlier spots him. Travis flees,
barely eluding the agents' pursuit.

Frustrated because his blood lust hasn't been satisfied, a stripped-to-the-waist Travis downs more
pain pills with beer in his apartment. His mattress is rolled up on his bed. His guns are laid out on
his table. He goes looking for Iris, driving to the apartment which Sport uses for his prostitution
ring. That afternoon before Travis arrives, Sport is approached by a middle-aged white Mafioso
(Robert Maroff) who receives a cash payment. Resembling an Indian with his severe haircut [and
not a cowboy], Travis greets Sport in a friendly manner and then baits him with continued
questions about Iris:

Travis: How's everything in the pimp business? Huh?

Sport: Don't I know you?
Travis: No, do I know you?
Sport: Get out of here. Come on, get lost.
Travis: Do I know you? How's Iris? You know Iris.
 62

Sport: No, I don't know nobody named Iris. Iris. Come on. Get out of here man.
Travis: You don't know anybody by the name of Iris?
Sport: I don't know nobody named Iris.
Travis: No?
Sport: Hey - go back to your f--kin' tribe before you get hurt, huh man. Do me a favor, I don't
want no trouble huh? OK?
Travis: You got a gun?
Sport: (He throws his lit cigarette at Travis' chest, causing sparks to fly, and then kicks him.) Get
the f--k out of here man! Get out of here.
Travis: Suck on this.

In a shocking, cold-blooded act, Travis wreaks vengeance on Iris' abductor - he sticks a gun point-
blank into Sport's gut and shoots, wounding him in the stomach. A few moments later, he enters
the darkened stairway leading to Iris' apartment where he approaches the manager of the hotel
rooms. In another gory scene of incredible orgiastic violence and cold-blooded slaughter, partially
filmed in slow-motion, he shoots and blows off part of the manager's right hand. The blast
splatters blood and causes echoes throughout the corridors. [Travis' violent act is symbolic of the
Vietnam War itself - an outburst of insanity.]

Another gunshot sounds behind Travis - he is wounded on the left side of his neck - and begins to
bleed profusely. Travis turns to look behind him and sees Sport, mortally wounded. He quickly
guns him down at the end of the corridor. As Travis is trying to finish off the manager on the
stairs, he is again shot from behind in the right shoulder by the private cop (one of Sport's
Mafioso gangster associates and Iris' customer). Wounded and staggering, Travis kills him by
filling his face and body full of bullets, causing him to fall backwards into Iris' room. Still alive, the
wounded manager crashes atop Travis and wrestles him to the ground - they thrash around into
Iris' apartment where Iris is shrieking and frozen in fear. Travis pulls his combat knife from his
boot and impales the manager's left hand. He reaches over and picks up the revolver from the
now-dead Mafioso and shoots him point-blank in the cheek - the manager's brains are splattered
onto the wall. Iris is distraught by the gory slaughter.

With two different guns, Travis attempts to shoot himself in the neck, but the guns click empty.
Exhausted and struggling, he simply collapses onto the red velvet sofa next to a fear-stricken Iris.
His head slowly drops back amidst the bloodbath. When the police arrive with guns drawn, Travis
is unable to speak. In a gruesome closeup, he helplessly raises a blood-soaked, dripping finger to
his head and makes explosive sounds with his mouth as he mimics pulling the trigger three times
in a mock-suicide: "Pgghew! Pgghew! Pgghew!" At the end, Travis wishes to sacrifice himself as
the ultimate act of fulfillment, cleansing, and purification, but his suicide attempt fails. He slowly
loses consciousness from massive blood loss, and his head falls backward. [He certainly seems to
die, but is he dead?]

In an overhead tracking shot, the camera slowly pans over the bloody trail of carnage in the room
and down the stairs (Iris is crouched and shaking, Travis lies back on the sofa next to two blood-
soaked bodies on the floor, three police officers stand at the door with their guns drawn, puddles
and splatters of blood cover the hallway corridor, discarded weapons, Sport's body is at the end of
the hallway, and police are holding back crowds that have gathered at the doorway). There are
flashing lights and curious onlookers assembled on the street outdoors.

To his surprise, society and the newspapers absolve him of his sins and praise him for his bloody
sacrifice and vigilante bravery.

[Whether the newspaper accounts and the film's epilogue are either Bickle's dying thoughts, a
dying fantasy, or the product of his imagination, are deliberately left obscure. In any event, the
final shoot-out 'shocks' Travis back into reality, similar to the effect electro-shock therapy might
have on an insane patient.]
 63

The society, almost as sick as Travis himself, idolizes the psycho-pathic assassin with guns drawn
for cleaning up the filth and dirtiness of the city in the monumental slaughter. A tracking shot
moves from a new portable TV across to the apartment wall where headlines of newspaper
clippings are attached. They proclaim his brave, redemptive deeds:

Taxi Driver Battles Gangsters

Reputed New York Mafioso Killed in Bizarre Shooting
Parents Express Shock, Gratitude
Taxi Driver Hero to Recover
Cabbie Released From Hospital

During the slow pan across the wall, an emotional letter of thanks is read, in voice-over (the voice
of an uneducated man), by Iris' grateful father. Travis emerges as society's hero for his ultimately
cleansing and redemptive act. And in his martyrdom to cleanse the world, he sends a young girl
home to her parents - freeing her from her pimp's grasp:

Dear Mr. Bickle:

I can't say how happy Mrs. Steensma and I were to hear that you are well and recuperating. We
tried to visit you at the hospital when we were in New York to pick up Iris. But you were still in a
coma. There is no way we can repay you for returning our Iris to us. We thought we had lost her,
and now our lives are full again. Needless to say, you are something of a hero around this
household. I'm sure you want to know about Iris. She's back in school and working hard. The
transition has been very hard for her as you can well imagine. But we have taken steps to see she
has never cause to run away again. In conclusion, Mrs. Steensma and I would like to again thank
you from the bottom of our hearts. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to come to New York again, to
thank you in person or we surely would. But if you should ever come to Pittsburgh, you would find
yourself a most welcome guest in our home.
Our Deepest Thanks
Burt and Ivy Steensma

At the end of the clippings, the hand-written letter is attached to the wall.

In the ironic, closing sequence, Travis is recovered and unpunished. He has been released from
his obsessive torment, and is back in his mundane job as a cabbie. He peacefully talks to his
cabbie friends (Wizard, Dough Boy, and Charlie T) while waiting for a fare in front of the St. Regis
Hotel - a more civilized part of the city. Travis is wearing his standard cabbie clothes - a light-
brown jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots. A passenger has entered Travis' cab, the front cab in the
waiting line in front of the hotel. It is Betsy.

She is the first to speak after a long silence - she is uneasy, wary, cool, and distant, but knows of
his noble deed and is a bit awed by his celebrity and notoriety for cleansing the city of its scum.
Travis reveals a quiet smile on his face and watches her in the rear-view mirror. When she arrives
at her destination after a basically inconsequential ride, she gets out and Travis declines her fare.

Betsy: Hello, Travis.

Travis: Hello. (Long pause as they exchange looks in the rear-view mirror) I hear Palantine got
the nomination.
Betsy: Yeah. It won't be long now. Seventeen days.
Travis: I hope he wins.
Betsy: I read about you in the papers. How are you?
Travis: Oh, it was nothin' really. I got over that. Papers always blow these things up. Just a little
stiffness. That's all. (The cab arrives at her destination and she steps out, speaking to him through
the open, driver side window.)
Betsy: Travis? How much was it?
Travis: So long...
 64

He drives off into the dark night. The camera tracks backward from Betsy on the sidewalk as the
cab pulls away. Travis adjusts the rear-view mirror to look back. [How cleansed and saved is
Travis really? How long will it be before the pathological killer turns back to more ritualistic
violence and bloody retaliation, confusing murder with sacrifice?]

The credits play over further surrealistic images of New York City at night, from a cabbie's
perspective.

The last frame of the picture dedicates the film to Bernard Herrmann, the composer of the
musical score - he passed away only a few hours after he finished the film's score, on Christmas
Eve 1975.

Midnight Cowboy (1969) is an ultra-realistic, adult film (shot on location) with sordid,
downbeat and serious content, from British director John Schlesinger, who had previously
directed the widely-acclaimed Darling (1965) - with a Best Actress win for Julie Christie.

This film portrays the unlikely companionship and poignant tragic drama of two homeless, down-
and-out, anti-hero drifters who are powerfully bonded together in a tale resembling Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men. With a misleading title for the morality tale about the venomous American
class system, some viewers thought it was a western; in fact, the film's title expresses the code
name for a "male hustler" - the self-professed occupation of one of the characters, a slow-witted,
fringe-jacketed Texan dishwasher transplanted to the big, apathetic city of New York to hopefully
 65

become a high-paid street gigolo. The flip-side of this dark and serious buddy picture was its
major competitor of the year, the M-rated, humorous revisionistic western/comedy Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with its heroes Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the
Sundance Kid (Robert Redford).

It was notable for being the first and only X-rated film (its nude scenes and bold content were
shocking for its time, but its X-rating for its initial release was later downgraded to R) to receive
the Best Picture Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It garnered seven
nominations, including Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight), Best Supporting Actress
(Sylvia Miles in an extremely brief on-screen role), and Best Film Editing (Hugh A. Robertson),
and ended up with three Oscars - Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay (by
Waldo Salt from James Leo Herlihy's 1965 novel).

Dustin Hoffman's characterization as the unglamorous 'Ratso' Rizzo (Enrico Salvatore Rizzo), a
sickly individual who befriends the drifter, was only his second film role. It was a risky reversal
and breakout role from his 'clean-cut' Benjamin Braddock role in The Graduate (1967), yet he
earned a second Academy Award nomination. Hoffman's unknown co-star Jon Voight also
received his first Best Actor nomination for his role as a disillusioned and dispirited Texas stud.
Both actors memorably portrayed forgotten dregs and decadent losers of society's underbelly.

The film opens during the daytime, with a pan back from a completely white background. As the
camera pulls back, the movie screen at the Big Tex Drive In appears - imaginary sounds from a
typical western film - horses galloping and gunshots - are briefly heard on the soundtrack. In the
Western, scrub-brush setting of the modern world, on the outskirts of a small town, only little
boys are riding on the toy horses in the drive-in's playground.

One of the two protagonists in the film is from this place - a young, naive, uneducated, pretty-boy
blonde Texan named Joe Buck (John Voight). He is a small-town, lowly Texas dishwasher at
Miller's Restaurant. Rather than go to work, he showers, dresses, and preens himself in what he
imagines to be the flashy, Hollywood-defined outfit of a stud - fringed leather, a stetson hat and
shiny cowboy boots. He speaks directly into the camera - practicing his quitting speech to his
employer:

You know what you can do with them dishes. And if you ain't man enough to do it for yourself, I'd
be happy to oblige. I really would.

Restless, he leaves his home - a room in the run-down Big Spring Motel, carrying an ugly cow-
hide covered suitcase. He passes the Rio movie theatre where the letters on the marquee for John
Wayne's The Alamo are askew. The film's familiar, signature theme song begins to play under the
credits: "Everybody's Talkin'" (sung by Harry Nilsson):

Everybody's talkin' at me
I don't hear a word they're sayin'
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stop and starin'
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes
I'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin'
Through the pourin' rain.
Goin' where the weather suits my clothes
Bankin' off of the northeast winds
Sailin' on summer breeze
And skippin' over the ocean like a stone...
 66

Before he leaves to seek make-believe, mythical adventures back East, he tells Ralph (George
Eppersen), a co-worker at the restaurant: "Lotta rich women back there, Ralph, begging for it,
paying for it, too...and the men - they're mostly tutti fruttis." Completely misinformed, he has the
illusion that he can score big by hustling sex-starved, rich women for his sexual prowess and the
services of a real man: "So I'm gonna cash in on some of that, right?...Hell, what do I got to stay
around here for? I got places to go, right?"

Joe's lonely, unfulfilled youth is reflected in a series of fragmented flashbacks about his past
boyhood during his cross-country trip across the American heartland, after he boards a bus
toward the big city of New York. The voice of his grandmother Sally Buck (Ruth White) emerges,
revealing that she often cared for him as a young boy when his mother was not around and
dumped him off. And how his grandmother often left him alone to be with her many boyfriends:
"You look real nice, lover boy. Real nice. Make your old grandmother proud. You're going to be
the best looking cowboy in the whole parade. You'll be the best looking one there. Bye honey. I'll
leave a TV dinner in the fridge. Your old grandma got herself a new beau." [The brief flashbacks
provide some insight into Joe Buck's background - he was raised by two women (his mother and
grandmother) in a home without men, contributing to his homosexual leanings in the film. The
film hints at the possibility that both of them were prostitutes.]

As they pass a small town's water tower, graffiti reminds him of a past sexual relationship with
oversexed girlfriend Annie (Jennifer Salt, the screenwriter's daughter): "Crazy Annie Loves Joe
Buck." As images of her appear (including one of them making love) during his dozings, he hears
her insecurely asking and affirming: "Do you love me Joe? Do you love me? Love me? You're the
only one Joe. You're the only one. You're better Joe. You're better than the rest of 'em. You're
better than any of them Joe. You love me Joe. You're better than all of 'em. You're the best Joe."

His religious, Bible-belt influences are sketched briefly as he notices the words "Jesus Saves"
painted on the wooden roof of an abandoned building as he simultaneously listens to a faith
healer with a portable radio to his ear. His flamboyant grandmother often let him share her bed or
become acquainted with her lovers. Joe's eyes light up when he dials in a radio interview
broadcast on WABC from New York, realizing that he is close to his destination. He believes the
hype of an interview which tellingly asks women to describe their "ideal of a man":

A man who takes pride in his appearance.

I think consideration first.
Tall, definitely tall.
Someone I can talk to in bed.
A good sense of humor, not afraid of sex.
A Texas oil man. Aggressiveness.
Outdoor type. A rebel.
Young. Youth.

Joe gives a Texan yell, believing he fits the bill perfectly.

Finally arriving in New York, he checks into the Claridge Hotel, where he decorates his fifth-floor,
second-rate hotel room with a torn poster of Paul Newman from Hud (1963) and a picture of a
topless woman from a men's magazine. Shirtless in front of his mirror, he flexes his bronzed
muscles. His tall Texan figure, taken with a telephoto lens, bobs through the densely-crowded,
anonymous sea of people on Fifth Avenue. Flaunting and flashing his relaxed, boyish charm and
grin, he frequents places where he thinks rich, classy women might congregate, but he is totally
ignored - it is not what he dreamed of.

Outside Tiffany & Co., he is startled to see a man unconscious and passed out on the sidewalk. He
imitates other passers-by who continue on their way, unwilling to play the Good Samaritan. When
he identifies himself - in a Texan drawl - as "new here in town, just in from Texas, you know" and
 67

asks a woman for directions to the Statue of Liberty (as an opening line), she quickly recognizes
his duplicitous angle. Unimpressed, she cuts him short: "You're not looking for the Statue of
Liberty at all!...Why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

The next woman he encounters while cruising the streets is a blowsy, bleached blonde named
Cass (Sylvia Miles) - looking like a professional hooker. She is outside her expensive Park Avenue
apartment (equipped with a doorman) on a walk with Baby, her miniature white poodle. He
follows her upstairs to her penthouse where he sexually tantalizes her while she calls (on her pink
telephone) and makes plans for a "date" with another customer named Maury, a married man
whose wife is away. Her poodle yaps loudly as they begin to disrobe.

While making love with what he believes is his first paying customer, they roll around on her bed
and humorously activate channels with the TV remote control beneath their bodies. (A game
show, a black and white Bogart film, an exercise show, and a monster film with a fire-breathing
dragon follow in quick succession. A TV priest dressed in a Dracula-like red cape on one of the
channels makes another religious reference, rhetorically asking: "Do you think God is dead?"
More images flash by: clips from Bette Davis and Al Jolson films, a bleach detergent testimonial
and "Jolly Green Giant" ad for creamed corn, an image of violence, and cigar and toothpaste ads.)
As they climax, a slot machine shows a triple-image of a cowgirl for the rewarding payoff of coins.

When "Tex" (Cass' nickname for him) dares to bring up "business" and describes himself as "kind
of a hustler," she responds: "A person's got to make a living." Turning the tables on him, she talks
him out of his money as she quickly gets dressed to leave. She argues that she needs money for
her taxi fare, to take her to her next "date" with sugar-daddy Maury:

Cass: I hate to ask you, but you're such a doll.

Joe: You know, Cass, that's a funny thing you mentioning money. 'Cause I was just about to ask
you for some.
Cass: (shocked) You were gonna ask me for money? Huh?
Joe: Hell, why do you think I come all the way up here from Texas for?
Cass: (now indignant and throwing a fit) You were gonna ask me for money? Who the hell do you
think you're dealing with? Some old slut on 42nd Street? In case you didn't happen to notice it, ya
big Texas longhorn bull, I'm one helluva gorgeous chick.
Joe: Now, Cass, take it easy.
Cass: You heard it. At twenty-eight years old. You think you can come up here, and pull this kind
of crap up here! Well, you're out of your mind!

Ignorant of the ways of street hustling and compassionate to her, he displays all the bills in his
wallet. Taking advantage of him, she reaches for a twenty for her cab fare - she is the one who gets
paid for her sexual favors.

Quickly, he becomes disillusioned, down on his luck, and low on money after being conned. Back
on the street and at a tacky bar, he meets another impoverished, vagrant street hustler from the
Bronx, a sickly, repulsive-looking, unshaven and scruffy bum named Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin
Hoffman). When Ratso looks over at the lost Texan next to him at the bar, Ratso's first nasal-
voiced words compliment the drugstore cowboy:

Terrific shirt.

Joe is alerted to how Ratso is street smart: "You really know the ropes! Damn, I wish I'd bumped
into you before." Ratso learns that Joe is a "hustler" and immediately suggests taking over as his
street manager:
 68

You're pickin' trade up on the street like that. That's nowhere. I mean, you gotta get yourself some
kind of management.

Greasy-haired Ratso suggests a pimp - a connection to help set him up and introduce him to
"social register types" - rich lady clients:

You need my friend O'Daniel. He operates the biggest stable in town, in fact, in the whole god-
damned Metropolitan area. It's stupid a stud like you paying. You don't want to be stupid.

As they walk down a congested New York street, the decrepit street hustler is crippled with a bum
leg and walks with a gimp as he drags along the lame leg. He delivers his most famous line
(reportedly improvised) when he confronts a disrespectful cab driver whose car almost runs him
down as he walks across a pedestrian crossing:

I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!

He vehemently bangs his hand on the car hood that almost clobbered him. And then he hints at
his real profession - he's a down-and-out con artist: "Actually, that ain't a bad way to pick up
insurance, you know."

Ratso opportunistically takes charge and hoodwinks a gullible Joe that he will be wealthy if he is
set up with Mr. O'Daniel (John McGiver): "You know, with proper management, you could be
takin' home fifty, maybe a hundred dollars a day, easy." After taking $10 for the referral, and
another $10 to cover expenses - and fleecing Joe of his money, Ratso sends Joe to the room of Mr.
O'Daniel in a shabby, flea-bitten hotel room. Joe boasts to O'Daniel:

Well, sir, I ain't a for-real cowboy. But I am one helluva stud.

O'Daniel senses Joe Buck's loneliness, and then challenges him: "I'm gonna use ya. I'm gonna run
you ragged...You and me can have fun together. It doesn't have to be joyless." A religious fanatic
(and homosexual Jesus-freak Christian), guilt-ridden O'Daniel tries to force Joe to join him and
together pray on their knees in front of a garish, blinking plastic sign of Christ hanging on the
back of his bathroom door:

I've prayed on the streets. I've prayed in the saloons. I've prayed in the toilets. It don't matter
where, so long as He gets that prayer.

The scene is intercut with flashbacks of Joe remembering his boyhood experience of being
baptized in a river. He flees the scene and runs through scenes of New York, with vengeful images
of his pursuit and attack of Ratso - wish-fulfillment for his anger at being taken advantage of once
again. There are other nightmarish flashbacks of Joe and his girlfriend Annie. In a brutal image,
they are pulled from making out in their car by enviously-jealous Texas males. An angry young
Joe breaks a bathroom mirror.

He finds himself back in his own flop-house hotel room, sitting in the bathtub and watching a TV
show, where the host emphasizes the existential predicament that he faces: "Isn't this really a case
of conning a lot of lonely people?" Joe walks into the netherworld of New York's Times Square, a
place of desperation, futility, dashed hopes and false dreams. Shortly after, Joe runs out of money
and is locked out and evicted from his room (with his possessions) until he picks up the tab. He
dismisses the idea of taking a dishwasher job. Low on money, tries to subsist on coffee and
crackers covered with ketchup.

Talking into a mirror in an underground subway tunnel, he resolves to degrade himself: "You
know what you gotta do cowboy?" Outside a movie theatre on 42nd Street showing a black-and-
 69

white science fiction film, he hires himself out to a gay student, and during their sexual encounter
in the darkened theatre, he experiences bizarre images of having sex with Annie and then
witnessing her rape. Unable to collect from the frightened, sickened student, he sleeps in the all-
night theatre.

The next morning, he spots Ratso again through the window of a streetside cafe - his overjoyed
look of recognition quickly becomes one of vengeful hate, and he demands justice. Feeling guilty,
and also fearing a beating, Ratso defends himself from being physically hit: "Come on now, I'm a
cripple." Impoverished, he has spent all of Joe's money and is basically broke himself. Joe offers
him some "free medical advice" for his hacking tubercular cough while referring to his night with
O'Daniel: "You just keep your damn mouth shut about that night."

Revealing warmth under his sleazy facade, Ratso invites Joe to share the filthy condemned, East
Village tenement building where he lives: "The X on the windows means the landlord can't collect
rent, which is a convenience, on account of it's condemned." As they are filmed through
imprisoning chain-link fence, he leads them around to the back entrance:

Got my own private entrance here. You're the only one who knows about it. Watch the plank.
Watch the plank. Break your god-damn skull. No way to collect insurance.

His upstairs room is decorated with a Florida tourist poster and an advertisement for Florida
Orange Juice. Joe carries a heavy icebox up the many flights to help keep cockroaches away from
perishables. Ratso comments on the demolition-bound squalor of the building: "It's not, not bad,
huh? There's no heat here, but you know, by the time winter comes, I'll be in Florida." Joe takes a
nap on Ratso's bed, where a small picture of Christ hangs on the wall. A more frightening,
complete flashback of he and his girlfriend's seizure and rape is visualized in his dreams. The
vivid nightmare awakens him in the dark, abandoned building - in a room Ratso has lit with small
church candles (the electricity and heat were turned off long ago).

Joe is distrustful of Ratso, not knowing his motivation: "You want me to stay here. You're after
somethin'. What are you after? You don't look like a fag." Ratso - who despises his nickname,
desperately asserts some pride and dignity with what is left to him - Rico, his true name:

You know, in my own place my name ain't Ratso. I mean, it just so happens that in my own place,
my name is Enrico Salvatore Rizzo...At least call me Rico in my own god-damn place.

But Joe refuses to do so. A bond begins to grow between them as Ratso teaches Joe the rules of
the game. Together, they commit petty crimes, including hustling a street vendor selling fruits
and vegetables (and coconuts) so that they can occasionally "shop" to get food to eat. Back inside
the tenement building, Ratso has his own dreams for the future - he fantasizes about idyllic
Florida, while cooking dinner in a frying pan over a canned heat stove:

The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk. Did you know that?
That's a fact. In Florida, they got a terrific amount of coconut trees there. In fact, I think they even
got 'em in the, uh, gas stations over there. And ladies? You know that in Miami, you got, uh, you
listenin' to me? You got more ladies in Miami than in any resort area in the country there. I think
per capita on a given day, there's probably, uh, three hundred of 'em on the beach. In fact, you
can't even, uh, scratch yourself without gettin' a belly-button, uh, up the old kazoo there. (He
takes a bite of the hot food)

Angered that his new and only friend criticizes the food ("Smells worse hot than it did cold"),
Ratso threatens: "All right, startin' tomorrow, you cook your own god-damn dinner. Or you get
one of your rich Park Avenue ladies to cook for you in her penthouse."
 70

As he attempts to open the fibrous husk of a tropical coconut, Ratso dreams of relocating and
scoring in Miami. The friendship of the two unlikely companions is tested as they fling insults at
each other, even though both of them fulfill each other's emotional needs. Ratso insists that Joe's
cowboy apparel is more attractive to homosexuals than to women, while Joe suggests that his
crippled partner hasn't ever scored with women. Once hustled by Ratso, Joe won't ever let him
forget how he was swindled. Although Joe has confidence in his beauty, he is unable to succeed in
the big city without the assistance of a real hustler - they pair up again in a pathetic
client/managerial partnership:

Ratso: I gotta get outta here, gotta get outta here. Miami Beach, that's where you could score.
Anybody can score there, even you. In New York, no rich lady with any class at all buys that
cowboy crap anymore. They're laughin' at you on the street.
Joe: Ain't nobody laughin' at me on the street.
Ratso: Behind your back, I've seen 'em laughin' at you, fella.
Joe: Aw, what the hell you know about women anyway? When's the last time you scored, boy?
Ratso: That's a matter I only talk about at confession. We're not talkin' about me now.
Joe: And when's the last time you've been to confession?
Ratso: It's between me and my confessor. And I'll tell ya another thing. Frankly, you're beginning
to smell. And for a stud in New York, that's a handicap.
Joe: Well, don't talk to me about clean. I ain't never seen you change your underwear once the
whole time I've been here in New York. And that's pretty peculiar behavior.
Ratso: I don't have to do that kind of thing in public. I ain't got no need to expose myself.
Joe (cruelly): No, I bet you don't. I bet you ain't never even been laid! How about that? And you're
gonna tell me what appeals to women!
Ratso: I know enough to know that that great big, dumb cowboy crap of yours don't appeal to
nobody except every jockey on 42nd Street. That's faggot stuff! You wanna call it by its name?
That's strictly for fags!
Joe: John Wayne! You wanna tell me he's a fag? (after a long pause) I like the way I look. It makes
me feel good. It does. And women like me, god-dammit. Hell, only one thing I've ever been good
for is lovin'. Women go crazy for me. That's a really true fact. Ratso, hell: Crazy Annie, they had to
send her away.
Ratso: Then how come you ain't scored once, the whole time you've been in New York?
Joe: 'Cause, 'cause I need management, god-dammit. 'Cause you stole twenty dollars offa me.
That's why you're gonna stop crappin' around about Florida. And, and get your skinny butt
movin.' And earn twenty dollars worth of management which you owe me.

[To disprove the claim that cowboys are fags, Joe cites John Wayne in a paradoxically ironic
comment - this was the same year when the celebrated western actor finally won a long-overdue
Oscar as Best Actor after 30 years of superb performances, winning over the Best Actor
nominations of both Hoffman and Voight for Midnight Cowboy]

Ratso craftily becomes Joe's pimp or stud manager, sprucing and grooming him up so that he can
begin to successfully ply his trade. He takes him to a laundromat to clean his clothes, outfits him
with a cowboy hat, shines his boots (and attracts other customers to the shoeshine stand), and
gives him a haircut.

With a cigarette butt dangling from his lips, Ratso shares memories of his father and his dream of
not ending up like his hunch-backed father in abject poverty and respiratory illness as a degraded
shoe-shiner. His father's whole life was bent over shining other people's shoes:

End up a hunchback like my old man? If you think I'm crippled, you should have caught him at
the end of the day. My old man spent fourteen hours a day down in that subway. He come home
at night, two to three hours worth of change stained with shoe polish. Stupid bastard coughed his
lungs out from breathin' in that wax all day. Even a faggot undertaker couldn't get his nails clean.
They had to bury him with gloves on.
 71

When the transformation of the 'midnight cowboy' is complete, Ratso stands back and admires a
spruced and primed-up Joe as a "handsome devil" - ready to work Times Square as a stud:

Not bad, not bad for a cowboy. You're OK. You're OK.

A well-dressed gentleman departing The Perfect Gentleman Escort Service has just arranged a
date with Miss Beecham ("one high class chick" according to Ratso). Ratso cleverly pickpockets
the address of the woman from the man and substitutes Joe as the evening's stud - set for the
Berkley Hotel for Women on Fifth Avenue. As he vicariously watches Joe enter the lobby of the
hotel from across the street (although he is dressed like a bum), Ratso daydreams of the good life
and his important station in life in Florida - sunning, sprinting with Joe on the beach without a
limp, having his shoes shined on a terrace above a luxury hotel's swimming pool, being pampered,
gambling with rich dowager women, being admired by women from balconies, and sampling a
gourmet spread. But when Joe improperly propositions a woman in the lobby, Ratso's dream
deteriorates - their money-making scheme fails. He tumbles backwards into the fantasy
swimming pool and Joe is thrown out of the hotel.

Winter approaches, the weather turns cold, and Ratso's hacking cough worsens. Desperate for
funds, they hock Joe's portable radio for five dollars. Joe donates his blood for money, bragging to
Ratso: "There you go boy, there's money for ya, that's nine dollars right there plus assorted
change, minus 26 cents for milk, plus 5 cents for Dentyne - gum." Ratso assumes he solicited
someone, probably a homosexual: "Where you been, 42nd Street? That's where you've been." Joe
wants his friend to buy medicine for himself instead of smoking cigarette butts: "Buy yourself
some medicine before you die in my damn hands." From across the street, they watch their
condemned building being razed, and they walk through the cold climate under grey skies,
passing a billboard advertising: "Steak for everybody every lunch and dinner. Northeast
Yellowbirds to Florida."

Together, they visit the cemetery and grave of Ratso's father, his tombstone inscribed with: "Our
Beloved Father, Dominic Salvatore Rizzo, 1886 - 1959." Shamed, Ratso describes that his father
was illiterate: "He was even dumber than you (Joe). He couldn't even write his own name. X -
that's what it ought to say on that god-damn headstone. One big lousy X. Just like our dump.
Condemned by order of City Hall." Joe shares his own misfortune about his grandmother Sally
Buck: "She died without lettin' me know."

In a short-order diner, they both speculate about "spiritual matters" ("priest-talk" according to
Joe) and whether one can come back in another body after death. Joe has had some foundation of
religious belief bred into him, but Ratso has lost all semblance of faith: "Maybe you gotta think
about those things for a while. Well, I don't believe in any of that crap. I mean, you're entitled to
think what you want."

A "couple of fruity wackos" (Gastone Rossilli and Viva) who are underground film-makers take
Joe's picture and, as a "come-on," invite him to a 'happening'. The event is a party in Greenwich
Village at "Broadway and Harmony Lane, Hansel and Gretel McAlbertson, one flight up." The
freaky invitation pictures a devil, and the words: "Join Us At The Gates of Hell, If You Dare, Flesh,
Blood & Smoke Will Be Served After Midnight." Joe assures Ratso that they will stick together,
begrudgingly remaining faithful to his sick pal: "I'll just tell 'em, you want me, I don't go nowhere
without my buddy here." As they climb the stairs to the event, Joe wipes the sweat from the head
of his ailing friend, to make him more presentable. At the ultra-hip, Warholesque psychedelic
party, an out-of-place Ratso sizes up the "wacko" hosts: "You want the word on that brother and
sister act. Hansel's a fag, and Gretel's got the hots for herself so who cares, right?"

After smoking his first joint with the self-conscious, marijuana smoking crowd and tripping out,
Joe attracts the attention of a rich, also-stoned socialite named Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro), who is
quite willing to pay $20 for his services and take him home - she is his first successful score:
 72

Ratso: She's hooked.

Shirley: Like why, cowboy?
Ratso: I'd say she was good for ten bucks, but I'll ask for twenty.
Shirley: Why cowboy whore? Did you know we were gonna make it?
Ratso: So, uh, do you really want to do business?
Shirley: Who is he? (referring to Ratso) Don't tell me you two are a couple!
Gretel: Why are you laughing, Joe? Are you really a cowboy?
Joe: Well, I'll tell you the truth now. I ain't a real cowboy, but I am one helluva stud.
Ratso: A very expensive stud. And I happen to be his manager.
Shirley: Incidentally, how much is this gonna cost me?
Ratso: Twenty bucks.
Shirley: OK.
Ratso: And taxi fare for me.
Shirley: Oh, get lost, will ya?
Ratso: I agree, but for that service, I charge one buck taxi fare.

Ratso cannot admit, even after falling down the entire flight of stairs as he leaves the party, that
he is hurt.

Joe performs unsuccessfully as a gigolo at the woman's apartment. She suggests playing scribbage
(a combination of scrabble and a dice game) to take his mind off his sexual inadequacy:

Shirley: Maybe if you didn't call me ma'am, things might work out better.
Joe: That's the first god-damned time this thing ever quit on me. (He lights his cigarette.) It's a
fact. You think I'm lyin' to ya?
Shirley: No, no, I don't think you're lyin'. I just had this funny image. I had this image of a, um,
policeman without his stick, and a, uh, bugler without his horn, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
(pause) Well, I think I'm making it worse. Maybe we ought to take a little nap and see what
happens.
Joe: I ain't sleepy.
Shirley: Oh! I know, scribbage.

During the spelling game, Joe's letters spell a crossword composed of the words MAN, MONY
(the initials of the Mutual of New York Building across from his hotel, not Money), and Shirley
laughs and suggests words that end in Y: "Like, uh, say, hay, lay, hay, hey, lay, hmmm...gay ends
in y. Hmmm? Do you like that?...Gay, fey. Is that your problem, baby?" Angry with her that she
has suggested that he is gay, he proves his masculinity to her. His love-making is spurred on by
anger, not passion or loving desire. The next morning, Shirley phones Marjorie, one of her
unhappily married friends, recommends his services, and sets him up for his next appointment.

Encouraged and delighted by his luck and the way things are going, Joe purchases (on his way
back to their flat) some socks and cough medicine ("swill" with mentholatum and aspirin) for
Ratso. He is jubilant about his success as a hustler: "We ain't gonna have to steal no more, that's
what I'm tryin' to tell ya. I've got eight bucks in my damn pockets, twenty more come Thursday,
boy. We're gonna be ridin' easy before very long, I'm gonna tell ya." He brags about his sexual
conquest: "She went crazy if you want to know the damn truth of it...She turned into a damn alley
cat."

Joe finds that Ratso is deathly ill with pneumonia and realizes that he must take care for his
pathetic, ailing, feverish, and permanently-crippled friend, who fears the end is near: "I don't
think I can walk anymore. I've been fallin' down a lot. I'm scared...You know what they do to ya
when, when they know you can't, when they find out that you can't walk-walk. Oh Christ."
Rejecting treatment by a doctor, Ratso begs for a bus trip to Florida where he can regain his
health:
 73

Ratso: You ain't gettin' me no doctor. Nope.

Joe: When you're sick, boy, you need a damn doctor.
Ratso: Hey, no doctors, no cops. Don't be so stupid.
Joe: Well, what the hell you want me to do?
Ratso: Florida. You get me to Florida.
Joe: Oh hell, I can't go to Florida now.
Ratso: Just put me on a bus. Just put me on a bus. I don't need you.
Joe: You got the damn fever, boy. How the hell you gonna get to Florida?
Ratso: Just get me on a bus. You ain't sendin' me to Bellevue...Boy, you're really dumb. I don't
need you...Dumb cowboy, boy.
Joe: Dammit. Shut up. Aw, just when things go right for me, you gotta pull a damn stunt like this.

Joe tries to get in touch with Shirley by phone, but she is unavailable. At an arcade where he
frustratingly fires a toy gun at a target, Joe accepts the advances of another homosexual - a
middle-aged Catholic man named Towny (Barnard Hughes), in town for a paper manufacturer's
convention. Back at the man's hotel room, in the last sordid act of his street-life existence, things
turn violent. Joe ends up in a rage, brutally attacking the self-loathing, mother-dominated,
despicable man after receiving a St. Christopher's medal and only ten dollars. He commits a
horrible crime - he robs the man of all his money - needed for taxi fare to the bus station and bus
fare to the paradise of Florida - and then brutalizes the customer. He jams the phone receiver into
the man's bloody, toothless mouth.

In the final sequence, Joe frantically drags Ratso to a bus to Florida [intercut within the previous
scene], using the last of their money to pay the bus fare and help realize Ratso's dream. To the
end, Ratso wants to maintain his dignity and insists on being called "En(Rico)" in Florida:

Ratso: I've been thinkin'. I hope we're not gonna have a lot of trouble about my name down there.
Because, I mean, like what's the whole point of this trip anyway, you know?
Joe: Keep your blankets on you.
Ratso: Can you see this guy runnin' around the beach all sun-tanned, and he's goin' in swimmin'
like, and somebody yells 'Hey, Ratso!' What's that sound like to you?
Joe: It sounds like I knew ya.
Ratso: It sounds like crap, admit it. I'm Rico all the time, OK? (Joe nods silently) We're gonna tell
all these new people my name's Rico. OK?
Joe: OK.

On the Florida-bound bus on the way to his dream, Ratso wets his pants and his body is wracked
with pain:

Ratso: Here I am goin' to Florida, my leg hurts, my butt hurts, my chest hurts, my face hurts, and
if that ain't enough, I gotta pee all over myself. (Joe chuckles) That's funny? I'm fallin' apart here.
Joe: (consoling him with a cheerful joke) ...You just took a little rest stop that wasn't on the
schedule.

During an extended rest stop in northern Florida, Joe buys new warm weather clothes for the two
of them, and symbolically discards his own 'midnight cowboy' costume/gear in a trash container.
As they approach the environs of Miami, he has dressed Ratso in a new, more comfortable flowery
shirt, telling him: "Yours was the only one left with a palm tree on it. The clothes are damn cheap
here too, you know that?" Joe ponders the way things will be once they get into Miami, thinking of
more mature, realistic and positive opportunities for work. His faith has been restored - the major
result of his deep friendship with Ratso - and for the first time in the film, he abandons the name
Ratso and calls his friend Rico:

Everything we got only set us back ten and some... Hey you know, Ratso. (Correcting himself)
Rico, I mean. I got this damn thing all figured out. When we get to Miami, what we'll do is get
 74

some sort of job, you know. Cause hell, I ain't no kind of hustler. I mean, there must be an easier
way of makin' a living than that. Some sort of outdoors work. What do ya think? Yeah, that's what
I'll do. OK Rico? Rico? Rico? Hey, Rico? Rico?

His rhetorical affirmations for his future fall on deaf ears. As palm trees and views of endless
beaches pass by the window, Joe realizes that his best buddy has passed away - Rico is finally at
peace without any more pain. [Both Joe's naive dream of life in New York and Rico's dream of
paradise in Miami are ultimately unrealized and unfulfilled.] When Joe informs the driver about
Rico, the bus driver (Al Stetson) pulls over, walks to the back of the bus, asks Joe to close Rico's
eyes, and reassures the other passengers:

Okay, folks, everything's all right. Nothing to worry about...Okay folks, nothin' to worry about.
Just a little illness. We'll be in Miami in just a few minutes.

Joe, with tears forming in his eyes, affectionately wraps his arm around Rico's shoulder and holds
him. He must now face life alone without the aid of his pal to guide him through, but he has
learned his limitations and true potential from his friend.

Schindler's List (1993) is Steven Spielberg's unexpected award-winning masterpiece - a

profoundly shocking, unsparing, fact-based, three-hour long epic of the nightmarish Holocaust.
[Italian-American catholic Martin Scorsese was originally slated to direct the film, but turned
down the chance - claiming the film needed a director of Jewish descent - before turning it over to
Spielberg.] Its documentary authenticity vividly re-creates a dark, frightening period during
World War II, when Jews in Nazi-occupied Krakow were first dispossessed of their businesses
and homes, then placed in ghettos and forced labor camps in Plaszow, and finally resettled in
concentration camps for execution. The violence and brutality of their treatment in a series of
matter-of-fact (and horrific) incidents is indelibly and brilliantly orchestrated.

Except for the bookends (its opening and closing scenes) and two other brief shots (the little girl
in a red coat and candles burning with orange flames), the entire film in-between is shot in crisp
black and white. The film is marvelous for the way in which it crafts its story without contrived,
manipulative Hollywood-ish flourishes (often typical of other Spielberg films) - it is also skillfully
rendered with overlapping dialogue, parallel editing, sharp and bold characterizations,
contrasting compositions of the two main characters (Schindler and Goeth), cinematographic
 75

beauty detailing shadows and light with film-noirish tones, jerky hand-held cameras (cinema
verite), a beautifully selected and composed musical score (including Itzhak Perlman's violin),
and gripping performances.

The screenplay by Steven Zaillian was adapted from Thomas Keneally's 1982 biographic novel
(Schindler's Ark), constructed by interviews with 50 Schindler survivors found in many nations,
and other wartime associates of the title character, as well as other written testimonies and
sources. Oskar Schindler was an enterprising, womanizing Nazi Sudeten-German
industrialist/opportunist and war profiteer, who first exploited the cheap labor of Jewish/Polish
workers in a successful enamelware factory (Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik or D.E.F.), and
eventually rescued more than one thousand of them from certain extinction in labor/death
camps.

Before the film was made, Spielberg had offered Holocaust survivor and director Roman Polanski
the job of making the film, but Polanski declined. Since then, ten years later, Polanski made his
own honored Holocaust film, the Best Director-winning The Pianist (2002).

The unanimously-praised film with a modest budget of $23 million deservedly won seven
Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (the first for Spielberg), Best
Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score (John
Williams), Best Editing (Michael Kahn), and Best Art Direction. It also won nominations for two
of its male leads: Best Actor (Liam Neeson) and Best Supporting Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best
Costume Design, Best Sound, and Best Makeup. Other organizations including the British
Academy Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Golden Globes, likewise honored the
film. It was the first black/white film since The Apartment (1960) to win the Best Picture
Academy Award, and the most commercially-successful B/W film in cinematic history.

The film opens, with one of its few color scenes, with a closeup of a hand lighting votive candles
with a match in a pre-war Polish Jewish family's home on a Friday night Sabbath. After the
singing of a prayer/incantation, the family vanishes from view. The two Shabbat candles burn
down as they sit in solitary on a table. In a closeup shot, a reddish-glowing flame extinguishes
itself, sending a small pillar of wispy smoke upward from the candle - the smoke in the color
scene dissolves into the grayish smoke (the film becomes monochrome here) that bellows from a
steam locomotive of a transport train pulling into a station in Krakow, Poland, just as the
juggernaut against the Jews begins in the fall of 1939. World War II has dawned in Europe:

September 1939, the German forces defeated the Polish Army in two weeks. Jews
were ordered to register all family members and relocate to major cities. More than
10,000 Jews from the countryside arrive in Krakow daily.

One folding table with a wooden top is set up in rural Poland on a small train platform with a
clipboard, paper lists-forms, an inkpad, blotter, stapler, stamp, and ink bottle to register a small
rural Jewish family. The first spoken word of dialogue in the film is "Name?" [Names and lists are
two of the film's major visual motifs.] The scene is repeated and multiplied with many more
tables, government officials, and bewildered refugees as more and more Jews arrive in the big city
of Krakow to be registered. Large, magnified typewritten letters rap out the Jewish names: Hudes
Isak, Feber, Bauman, Klein, Chaim, Neuman, Samuel, Salomon, Horn, Steiner.

Melancholy classical music from a radio plays before the scene switches to a Krakow hotel room.
[The piece is the Hungarian love song Gloomy Sunday, originally written around 1933 by Rezso
Seress, a Hungarian pianist.] A mysterious, unknown man pours himself a drink, lays out ties on
various silk suits on his bed, chooses a fancy cufflink, knots his tie, dresses himself in impeccable
fashion with a folded handkerchief in the pocket of his double-breasted suit, counts out lots of
 76

money from his bureau for the evening, and pins, in close-up, a gold, Nazi Party button (with
swastika or Hakenkreuz) on his lapel.

The camera follows from behind the slickly-dressed gentleman as he enters a swanky nightclub in
the Nazi-occupied city of Krakow and slips bank notes, the first of many bribes, to Martin, the
maitre d' (the film's co-producer Branko Lustig, an Auschwitz survivor) for placement at a fancy
table. The handsome, majestic, lavish-spending, slickly-dressed, man-about-town playboy with an
eye for the ladies is the authoritative, aristocratic-looking Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), not yet
identified by name. With sharp observational skills, he watches as SS Officers at another table are
photographed - he sizes up the power elite in his high-stakes gamble to cultivate their friendship.
He notices a conspicuously-empty table in the front of the club with a "RESERVE" card on it.
With a hand held up with a wad of bills, the bon-vivant buys a round of premium drinks for the
top brass (and their female companion) which soon occupy the front-and-center table, and
persuades them with intimidating charm to join him at his table for more drinks. The group of
people surrounding Schindler swells to include many more SS officers paired up with cabaret
entertainers/dancers - the gracious host purchases endless plates of food, caviar, and French
wines for the rowdy guests in his party. Schindler's self-promotion is successful - the separate
tables in the club merge into one. An SS officer stuffs his mouth and brags about 'weathering the
storm':

This storm is different. This is not the Romans. This storm is the SS.

Soon, the scheming and manipulative Schindler prominently insinuates himself and becomes the
center of the party - he rubs shoulders with everyone in the room to make a name for himself - the
first step in his pragmatic business scheme to become a war profiteer and capitalize on the
changing political environment. Even a top colonel, Scherner, who is later brought to the
RESERVED table, gravitates to him. The maitre d' authoritatively announces the name of the
flamboyant man: "That's Oskar Schindler!" Schindler has his pictures taken (with a big camera
with garish flashbulb) with all the top brass, the showgirls, and other women. [Later in the ghetto
massacre scene, other flashes of light in window frames are the firings of machine-guns.]

More and more Nazis march in the streets of Krakow and slowly erode the freedoms of Jews. One
Orthodox Jewish man stands amidst several soldiers while one of them intimidates him by cutting
off his payess (curly side locks of hair) with a slice of his bayonet. Schindler, identified by the
camera with only his Nazi button-holed pin, walks along the street's sidewalk as he passes a long
line of Jewish refugees, each wearing identifying armbands. They are part of the huge influx of
rural Jews who arrive every day on SS trains. A truck with a loud-speaker mounted on its cab
hood issues another alert or edict - a restrictive announcement during the occupation.

Schindler spirals his way up the staircase into the Judenrat, a virtually-powerless council of
Jewish administrators:

The Judenrat
The Jewish Council comprised of 24 elected Jews personally responsible for
carrying out the orders of the regime in Krakow, such as drawing up lists for work
details, food and housing. A place to lodge complaints.

In the crowded office of the Judenrat filled with desperate people, one dispossessed Jewish
woman complains about the intrusion of Nazis into their private lives and the confiscation of
property: "They come into our house and tell us we don't live there anymore. It now belongs to a
certain SS officer...Aren't you supposed to be able to help?" At the front of the line, Schindler's
voice distinctively addresses the administrators: "Itzhak Stern. I'm looking for Itzhak Stern." A
bespectacled, timid man in the back corner of the office finally manages to acknowledge his
identity as Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a gifted accountant.
 77

In another office with Stern, the suave enterpreneur Schindler [a relatively-poor Sudeten German
who failed as an entrepreneur before the war] discusses his capitalistic business arrangement and
plan to take over a former, confiscated pots and pans company to manufacture mess kits and
cookware for the troops at the front, and to make Stern his accountant. [Smooth and
opportunistic, Schindler is 'on the make' with Jews as well as with the Nazis.] Schindler describes
his strong suit in creating panache or "the presentation," while Stern's talent will be to recruit
Jewish investors for capital, to provide 'free' Jewish workers (as cheap labor) from the population,
and to manage the business and financial side of the operation:

Schindler: There's a company you did the books for on Lipowa Street, made what - pots and pans?
Stern: By law, I have to tell you, sir, I'm a Jew.
Schindler: Well, I'm a German, so there we are. (Schindler pours a shot of cognac into the cap of
his flask and offers it to Stern - who declines.) A good company you think?
Stern: Modestly successful.
Schindler: I know nothing about enamelware, do you?
Stern: I was just the accountant.
Schindler: Simple engineering, though, wouldn't you think? Change the machines around,
whatever you do, you could make other things, couldn't you? Field kits, mess kits, army contracts.
Once the war ends, forget it, but for now it's great. You could make a fortune, don't you think?
Stern: I think most people right now have other priorities.
Schindler: Like what?
Stern: I'm sure you'll do just fine once you get the contracts. In fact, the worse things get, the
better you will do.
Schindler: Oh, I can get the signatures I need - that's the easy part. Finding the money to buy the
company, that's hard.
Stern: You don't have any money?
Schindler: Not that kind of money. You know anybody? Jews, yeah. Investors. You must have
contacts in the Jewish business community working here.
Stern: What "community"? Jews can no longer own businesses. That's why this one's in
receivership.
Schindler: Ah, but they wouldn't own it. I'd own it. I'd pay them back in product. Pots and pans.
Stern: (non-plussed) Pots and pans.
Schindler: Something they can use. Something they can feel in their hands. They can trade it on
the black market, do whatever they want. Everybody's happy. If you want, you could run the
company for me.
Stern: Let me understand. They'd put up all the money. I'd do all the work. But what, if you don't
mind my asking, would you do?
Schindler: I'd make sure it's known the company's in business. I'd see that it had a certain
panache - that's what I'm good at, not the work, not the work. (He spreads his open palms out) -
the presentation. (A long pause)
Stern: I'm sure I don't know anybody who'd be interested in this.
Schindler: Well, they should be...Tell them they should be.

A young Polish Jew, Poldak Pfefferberg (Jonathan Sagalle) pauses in front of a shop window
display where there is a picture of a human skull with lines indicating the smaller circumference
(and lesser intelligence) of the Judaic brain. He discreetly removes his Jewish armband and
enters a Catholic cathedral where he genuflects himself with holy water. As a priest performs
Mass to parishioners scattered in the pews, a number of Jewish black marketeers use the
cathedral as a safe meeting place to cover up their whispered business about the latest
commercial deals: "Marks for Zloty at 2.45 to 1," "it's a nice coat - she'll trade it for ration
coupons." Suddenly, Schindler (with his prominent Nazi button on his coat) appears next to
them, asking: "That's a nice shirt. Nice shirt. Do you know where I can find a nice shirt like that?"
Most of the other nervous Jews scatter quickly, but Pfefferberg remains behind to pursue the
transaction.
 78

One of Pfefferberg's fellow hustlers, Marcel Goldberg (Mark Ivanir) gives a hollow excuse: "It's
illegal to buy or sell anything on the street. We don't do that. We're here to pray," and then leans
forward to feign praying. When the others won't chance it, Pfefferberg is left alone to bargain with
Schindler for his expensive tastes for black market luxury goods - so he can bribe German officers
and further encourage his own business ventures:

Pfefferberg: Do you have any idea how much a shirt like this costs?
Schindler: Nice things cost money.
Pfefferberg: How many?
Schindler: I'm going to need some other things too as things come up...
Pfefferberg: This won't be a problem.
Schindler: ...from time to time.
March 20, 1941
Deadline for Entering the Ghetto
Edict 44/91 establishes a closed Jewish district south of the Vistula River. Residency
in the walled ghetto is compulsory. All Jews from Krakow and surrounding areas
are forced from their homes and required to crowd into an area of only sixteen
square blocks.

With the creation of Jewish ghettos by the Nazis, thousands of families carry their belongings or
push them in barrows on the forced, mass exodus from rural homes. In the winter snow, they
trundle up to more makeshift folding tables to be added to lists, have their cards stamped, and to
be assigned to ghetto housing. In an elegant apartment as they are evicted under the watchful eye
of the SS, the wealthy Jewish inhabitants, the Nussbaums, gather together framed pictures,
silverware, and anything else of value that they can carry with them. They are herded out of the
fancy building into the street, to join the throngs of others pushing large carts piled high with
furniture toward the segregated ghetto. One Polish girl, one of many neighboring spectators,
screams out at the parade with frightening prejudice and revilement: "Goodbye Jews."

With parallel editing, a smug Oskar Schindler is chauffeured to the same fashionable apartment
and shown his new dwelling - the Nussbaums' lavish vacated apartment with its fine furnishings,
Persian rugs, French doors, and hardwood floors. The dispossessed family is led up a crowded
staircase inside a rundown ghetto tenement. They haul their belongings up to their assigned living
quarters - while Schindler inspects his new apartment and sprawls himself out on their bed,
commenting: "It couldn't be better." The Nussbaum family enters into one of the dingy, unheated,
empty apartments - children cry as they look at each other in dismay:

Mrs. Nussbaum: It could be worse.

Mr. Nussbaum: (disbelieving) How? Tell me. How on earth could it possibly be worse?

More families, orthodox Jews, shuffle in by them to find their places in the ghetto.

At the ghetto gate, where the Jews are forced to check in at the folding tables for their housing
assignments, Pfefferberg, with his attractive wife Mila (Adi Nitzan), is astonished to see that his
Jewish friend Goldberg has sold out - he has somehow made an agreement with the Nazi Gestapo
to be granted a position of authority as a ghetto policeman: "I'm a policeman now, could you
believe it? That's what's hard to believe...It's a good racket, Poldek. It's the only racket here. Look,
maybe I could put in a good word for you with my superiors...Come on, they're not as bad as
everyone says. Well, they're worse than everyone says, but it's a lot of money, a lot of money."

Stern arranges to have several wealthy Jewish elders meet with profiteer Schindler in his car
parked outside the ghetto gates to discuss investment backing in Schindler's pan-manufacturing
factory. The Jewish investors are made to understand that conventional wealth and status no
longer have any meaning for them. Their only bargaining power is to accept his harsh terms - he
will supply them with some of the production goods - pots and pans - to sell on the black market:
 79

Schindler: For each thousand you invest, I will repay you with (Stern provides the number) two
hundred kilos of enamel ware a month, to begin in July and to continue for one year - after which
time we're even. That's it. It's very simple.
Investor: Not good enough...
Schindler: Not good enough? Look where you're living. Look where you've been put. 'Not good
enough.' A couple of months ago, you'd be right. Not anymore.
Investor: Money's still money.
Schindler: No it is not. That's why we're here. Trade goods, that's the only currency that'll be
worth anything in the ghetto. Things have changed, my friend. (slightly irritated) Did I call this
meeting? You told Mr. Stern you wanted to speak to me. I'm here. I've made you a fair offer.
Investor: Fair would be a percentage of the company.
Schindler: (laughs) Forget the whole thing. Get out.
Investor: How do we know that you will do what you say?
Schindler: Because I said I would. Do you want a contract? To be upheld by what court? I said
what I'll do, that's our contract. (While they think it over, Schindler offers a drink of cognac to
Stern - he stares at it and silently declines)

Valises filled with money are passed to Schindler for the purchase of the confiscated enamelware
factory. He peers down from behind a wall of windows in the upstairs office - a Jewish technician
pushes a button to start the machinery in the debris-strewn plant. Stern has been appointed the
factory's accountant and plant manager. To Schindler, it makes good economic sense that he
would make more money if Jews were hired as the unpaid work force, because they're obviously
cheaper than Poles:

Stern: The standard SS rate for Jewish skilled labor is seven marks a day, five for unskilled and
women. This is what you pay the Reich Economic Office, the Jews themselves receive nothing.
Poles you pay wages. Generally, they get a little more. Are you listening?...The Jewish worker's
salary - you pay it directly to the SS, not to the worker. He gets nothing.
Schindler: But it's less. It's less than what I would pay a Pole...That's the point I'm trying to make.
Poles cost more. Why should I hire Poles?

Acting as his middleman, Stern recruits Jews to work in Schindler's enamelware factory located
"outside the ghetto so you can barter for extra goods, for eggs, I don't know what you need. With
the Polish workers, you can't get a deal. Also, he's asking for ten healthy women for the..." The
names of 'non-essential' people (who can't contribute something valuable to the war effort), such
as musicians or teachers, are placed on a list and then herded onto trucks bound for unknown
destinations - undoubtedly concentration camps or extermination.

With humanistic intentions to save those who have no 'essential' skills, Stern forges documents
and provides work certificates to rescue from extermination those who would be considered 'not
essential'. In one case, he saves the doomed life of a teacher of history and literature,
transforming him into a metal polisher. The teacher's work documents are stamped by a satisfied
German clerk, placing him in the category of Blauschein - an 'essential' worker with a "blue
stamp" in a war-protected industry.

On Schindler's factory floor, the recruited Jewish workers, including the teacher, are given
instruction by a technician on how to use the heavy machinery to manufacture a soup bowl, and
dip the cooking utensils into vats of enamel. A sign painter brushes the words "DIREKTOR" on
the frosted glass of the door to Schindler's office, as he interviews many young female candidates
seated before him for secretarial positions: "Filing, billing, keeping track of my appointments.
Shorthand. Typing obviously. How is your typing?" The scene jump-cuts through a succession of
girls at the typewriter. Time passes, illustrated by the movement of the painters' ladders around
the wall of the room. For comic relief in the film, Schindler show flirtatious interest in the prettier
candidates who hunt and peck, but glumly sits back with utter disinterest when the fastest typist
(a dour, cigarette-smoking, plump matron) is being tested. One of the sultriest young ladies does
 80

a seductively-slow one-finger dance with the typewriter - and with Schindler. Because Schindler
can't decide, he hires eighteen of the prettiest, most 'qualified' young ladies as secretaries - and is
posed with them by a photographer outside the re-possessed plant in front of the imposing sign
for the factory:

D.E.F.
DEUTSCHE EMAILWARENFABRIK

In a scene with parallel editing and overlapping, voice-over dialogue, gadabout Schindler
entertains - and seduces - SS German officers with rich food, caviar and drink in his apartment.
As part of an elaborate confidence game, he provides some of his pretty secretaries to the men, as
he reads off a list of black market items (including perishables and cognac) to be acquired (with
invested Jewish money) from Poles by Pfefferberg:

Boxed teas are good, coffee, pate, uhm, kilbassa sausage, cheeses, caviar. And of course, who
could live without German cigarettes and as many as you can find. And some more fresh fruit -
they're real rarities, oranges, lemons, pineapples. I need several boxes of German cigars, the best.
And dark and sweetened chocolate, not in the shape of lady fingers...we're going to need lots of
cognac, the best - Hennessy. Dom Perignon champagne. Get L'Espadon sardines. And, oh, try to
find nylon stockings.

Under a bridge crossing the Vistula River, a man pulls aside a tarpaulin covering boxes of fresh
fruit in the bottom of his rowboat and is paid with cash. A bribed doctor opens a medicine cabinet
and pushes aside medicines, revealing a hidden compartment behind holding several bottles of
Hennessey cognac. Beneath the ties of train tracks, a metal case is pulled from beneath one of the
timbers, revealing a case of sardines.

(Schindler's voice-over) It is my distinct pleasure to announce the fully operational status of

Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik - manufacturers of superior enamelware crockery, expressly
designed and crafted for military use, utilizing only the most modern equipment. DEF's staff of
highly skilled and experienced artisans and journeymen deliver a product of unparalleled quality,
enabling me to proffer with absolute confidence and pride, a full line of field and kitchen ware
unsurpassable in all respects by my competitors. See attached list and available colors.
Anticipating the enclosed bids will meet with your approval. And looking forward to a long and
mutually prosperous association. I extend to you, in advance, my sincerest gratitude and very best
regards. Oskar Schindler.

Elaborate gift baskets (of liquor, cigarettes, coffee, tea, fresh fruit, and other rare luxury goods)
with the accompanying letter from above - are assembled and carried by Schindler's cadre of
pretty secretaries through the factory (where novice workers struggle to learn the new craft), and
strategically delivered to SS officers (the ones he had earlier been photographed with in the
nightclub) to irresistibly stimulate bids and purchase contracts. The ultimate con artist, Schindler
bribes and schemes his way toward wealth.

The Direktor strides through his factory, dictating to a parade of his secretaries about production
demands and delivery details. As expected, one of the many SS officers, Julian Scherner (Andrzej
Seweryn), signs and stamps his approval of a materials contract with D.E. F. To praise his
accountant's efforts for reaping profits and to treat him as an equal, Schindler calls the self-
effacing Stern to his office to share a drink from his decanter:

Schindler: My father was fond of saying you need three things in life. A good doctor, a forgiving
priest, and a clever accountant. The first two, I've never had much use for them. But the third -
(he raises his glass to recognize Stern, but the accountant doesn't respond) Just pretend, for
Christ's sake. (Stern mechanically raises his glass slightly)
Stern: Is that all?
 81

Schindler: I'm trying to thank you. I'm saying I couldn't have done this without you. The usual
thing would be to acknowledge my gratitude. It would also, by the way, be the courteous thing.
Stern: (in a hollow tone) You're welcome. (Schindler finishes both drinks)

Schindler's girlfriend, Victoria Klonowska (Malgoscha Gebel), wearing his silk robe covering her
slip, answers the door of his apartment early one morning. She feels embarrassed to see Emilie
Schindler (Caroline Goodall), Schindler's estranged wife from back home, standing there. The
humiliated mistress of the evening hurriedly leaves, thoroughly self-conscious. With self-
deprecating innocence and charm after being caught as an unfaithful adulterer, Schindler flatters
his wife: "You look wonderful." That night, they emerge from his apartment building in formal
clothes to go to a fancy restaurant. With his reputation for women, the doorman can't quite
believe that the woman on Schindler's arm is indeed "Mrs. Schindler." During dinner, Schindler
explains that his wealthy accoutrements (car, apartment) are "not a charade" - he has 350
workers on his factory payroll.

Schindler: Three hundred and fifty workers on the factory floor with one purpose...to make
money - for me!...They won't soon forget the name Schindler either. I can tell you that. Oskar
Schindler, they'll say. Everybody remembers him. He did something extraordinary. He did
something no one else did. He came here with nothing, a suitcase, and built a bankrupt company
into a major manufactory. And left with a steamer trunk, two steamer trunks, full of money. All
the riches of the world...There's no way I could have known this before, but there was always
something missing. In every business I tried, I can see now it wasn't me that had failed.
Something was missing. Even if I'd known what it was, there's nothing I could have done about it,
because you can't create this thing. And it makes all the difference in the world between success
and failure.
Emilie: Luck.
Schindler: War.

The next day, after being given no assurance of love or steadfast devotion, Emilie boards a
departing train, shakes his hand as it pulls away, and waves goodbye.

In his office above the factory, Schindler is presented with a financial report by Stern. The factory
is doing "better this month than last," but next month may be worse if the war ends. Stern asks
permission to bring in a grateful machinist, Mr. Lowenstein (Henryk Bista), to personally thank
Schindler for giving him a job. The elderly, one armed man with bruises on his face appears in the
doorway - Schindler appears long-suffering as he listens perfunctorily to the praise of the man:
"The SS beat me up. They would have killed me, but I'm essential to the war effort, thanks to
you...I work hard for you...I'll continue to work hard for you...God bless you sir...You're a good
man...(To Stern) He saved my life...God bless him...(To Schindler) God bless you." Later,
Schindler angrily tells Stern that the 'one-armed,' old, unskilled worker shouldn't have been
allowed to work: "What's his use?"

One snowy winter morning, Schindler's workers are marched out of the ghetto gate, under armed
guard, to the factory for their work day. A squad of SS troopers halts them and orders them to
shovel snow from the street. In flashback, Schindler's SS contact sits behind a desk rationalizing
the incident: "Jews shoveling snow. It's got a ritual significance." Lowenstein, proudly
proclaiming himself as "an essential worker for Oskar Schindler," is plucked from the group by a
few SS, declared "twice as useless" and inefficient, led a short distance away, and shot point-blank
in the head. Blood slowly flows from the corpse's head wound, darkening, drenching, and melting
the snow. Oskar is maddened by the senseless death and loss of a worker, but he knows that filing
a grievance with the Economic Office for compensation (for the "one-armed machinist") wouldn't
do any good.

On a train platform, soldiers and clerks with typed lists are supervising the boarding of hundreds
of Jews into cattle cars. They are promised: "Leave your luggage on the platform. Clearly label
 82

it...Do not bring your baggage with you. It will follow you later." Pfefferberg has summoned
Schindler from a love-making session to the station to search for Stern - who has been mistakenly
placed on one of the slatted livestock cars bound for liquidation. Boldly and brazenly, Schindler
asks for the Gestapo clerk's name who has identified Stern's name on the list and dutifully refuses
to release him: "I'm sorry. You can't have him. He's on the list. If he were an essential worker, he
would not be on the list."

In a tense scene, he cooly threatens both the clerk and a superior, an SS sergeant, who refuse to
release his plant manager, bluffing them into compliance: "I think I can guarantee you you'll both
be in Southern Russia before the end of the month. Good day." He walks along the cars - joined by
the intimidated clerk and sergeant, urgently calling out Stern's name, as the locomotive begins to
move and pick up speed. After Stern is located in one of the cars, Schindler orders that the train is
stopped. The brakeman responds, and the wheels screech to a grinding halt. The gate on the door
is opened and Stern climbs out in the last-instant rescue. Schindler is instructed by the clerk to
sign and initial his name next to Stern's name on the clipboard list: "It makes no difference to us,
you understand. This one, that one. It's the inconvenience to the list. It's the paperwork."

The camera tracks backward from the two of them as Stern hurries along to keep up with the long
stride of Schindler - he explains and apologizes for his grave error: "I somehow left my work card
at home. I tried to explain them it was a mistake, but...I'm sorry, it was stupid." Schindler replies
about the concern for his own fate: "What if I got here five minutes later? Then where would I
be?" They pass one of the handcarts with the carefully-labeled luggage. The camera leaves them
and follows the cart as it is wheeled into a warehouse/garage where the suitcases are piled up.
Under SS guard, the clothing is removed and thrown onto one pile. Other large piles hold shoes,
metal items, photographs, and wrist watches. Some of the more valuable possessions with gold
and silver content (candelabra, Passover platters) are tagged and sorted on shelves. Jewish
jewelers sift, sort, weigh, and grade the value of diamonds, pearls, pendants, brooches, and rings.
The jeweler reacts when a satchel of extracted human teeth with gold and silver fillings is dumped
on his desk.

"JEWISH TOWN"
KRAKOW GHETTO WINTER ' 42

In the backseat of an open, staff SS car, Untersturmfuhrer Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the
commandant for a new labor camp in Plaszow, is driven through the cold, wind-swept ghetto that
is divided into two halves. On one side (Ghetto A) are the cramped housing units for civil
employees and industrial workers. On the other side (Ghetto B) are where surplus laborers live,
including the elderly and infirm.

Plaszow Forced Labor Camp Under Construction

Outside Krakow, the pouring of foundations and renovations are occurring at the site of a labor
camp under construction. Teams of forced Jewish laborers are doing the work. A villa high on a
hillside is assigned to the new commandant as housing. From a line-up of young women, Goeth
selects a "very lucky girl" for a job "away from all this backbreaking work" in his villa. The ones
with domestic experience are ignored ("all those annoying habits I'll have to undo") - he chooses a
shy, trembling girl named Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz) as his villa's maid.

A female Jewish worker trained as an engineer at the University of Milan, Diana Reiter (Elina
Lowensohn), is the foreman who supervises the construction of a half-finished barracks at
Plaszow. When she complains loudly about the faulty, poorly-laid foundation, she tells the vicious
Goeth:

The entire foundation has to be torn down and repoured. If not, there will be at least a subsidence
at the southern end of the barracks. Subsidence and then collapse.
 83

Goeth mutters something to himself about her being an educated Jew, calmly turns to his inferior
officer, and commands: "Shoot her." All are stunned by the sudden order (and the outrageous
reasoning he has used), and the young female engineer pleads for sanity and reason: "Herr
Commandant, I'm only trying to do my job." He curtly replies: "Yeah, I'm doing mine...I'm not
going to have arguments with these people. Shoot her here, under my authority." As the officer
unholsters his pistol, her last words are: "It will take more than that." Goeth calmly replies: "I'm
sure you're right." Her body goes limp and crumples to the ground after she is shot in the head -
there is more blood-stained snow after the indiscriminate, random killing. Without pausing,
Goeth then orders the structure rebuilt: "Take it down, repour it, rebuild it, like she said." He
appears to take pleasure in torturing and terrorizing his Jewish workers.

To establish the similarity of the two male characters, both Schindler and Goeth - in two different
locations - are brushing shaving soap onto their fair faces and sliding a straight razor through the
lather on their Aryan cheeks. Prefaced with a short voice-over transition, the soon-to-be
Commandant Goeth stands before his assembled young Sonderkommandos in Krakow and
addresses them in the dawn light. He preaches the liquidation of the ghetto and of the Jews in
Krakow:

Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now, the young will ask with wonder
about this day. Today is history and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago, when elsewhere,
they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Kazimierz the Great, so called, told the Jews they
could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled, they
took hold, they prospered - in business, science, education, the arts. They came here with nothing.
Nothing! And they flourished. For six centuries, there has been a Jewish Krakow. Think about
that. By this evening, those six centuries are a rumor. They never happened. Today is history.

In a quick montage of scenes during the speech's delivery, a Jewish man sings a prayer
incantation, the Dresner family shares a meal in their ghetto apartment, Mila smiles up at her
husband Poldek, and Stern notices through his window that the clerks and listmakers are setting
up their folding tables and chairs and setting out their ink pads and stamps in the square.
Meanwhile, as Schindler gallops his horse across the countryside with mistress Ingrid (Beatrice
Macola), trucks of troops are moved into the ghetto to liquidate it.

LIQUIDATION OF THE GHETTO

MARCH 13, 1943

The terrifying Goeth commands that the stormtroopers, many of whom have leashes on muzzled
dogs, start with Ghetto B in his massive orchestration of the coordinated effort to raze the ghetto.
The riders stop on a hilltop clearing above the Krakow ghetto buildings - from a distance and on
horseback, they look down at the peaceful, early morning scene - soon they will watch the
extermination of the Jewish ghetto. Echoes of the noise of the growling dogs, trucks, and orders
shouted out are heard in the distance. The stormtroopers surround the buildings and roust the
Jews from their apartments. Fear registers on the faces of the children. In one of many vignettes,
some of the refugees roll their valuable jewels into wads of bread to be swallowed - like a
communion ritual - anticipating that they will survive. Any resistance or questioning is halted
with the report of a gun. Suitcases are dumped from upper balconies and abandoned as litter.
Pfefferberg tells Mila that he is planning to escape through the sewer tunnel, but she refuses to
join him. He pries off a manhole cover and descends into the steamy depths. Frightened Jews are
yelled at and herded into groups. One father is killed with machine gun fire for deflecting a
soldier's aim toward his son's back as he flees - the boy is also arbitrarily shot as he is dragged
back.

To prevent even crueler deaths, a doctor in the hospital calmly measures out doses of poisonous
(Thucizna) cocktails that are soon administered by nurses to threatened, helpless, terminally-ill
Jewish patients. The lifeless corpses are machine-gunned until the soldiers realize they're already
 84

dead. Without regard to family considerations, women are segregated from the men, splitting
husbands and wives. Young Danka Dresner (Anna Mucha) is dragged away from her family. As he
rounds the corner at one end of the sewer tunnel, Pfefferberg barely escapes being gunned down
by waiting troops. He turns back and comes up in a street littered by dead bodies and strewn
luggage, and is unable to locate Mila in their apartment.

As they are herded along, Danka and Mrs. Dresner duck into an open ghetto apartment. Danka
lowers herself into a sunken floor compartment to hide, but a stunned Mrs. Dresner is
intentionally left outside by another woman who claims: "There's not enough room for you...I can
fit the girl, but not you." Conspicuously caught in the middle of a suitcase-littered street, and with
nowhere to hide, Pfefferberg thinks fast - he begins to stack the suitcases against a wall when
Goeth and other soldiers appear - he faces them, clicks his heels and salutes, masquerading as a
recruit:

Pfefferberg: I respectfully report I've been given orders to clear the bundles from the road so there
will be no obstructions to the thoroughfare.
Goeth: (amused) Finish and join the lines, little Polish clicking soldier. (The troops move on)

As a terrified Mrs. Dresner hurries down the apartment building steps, a young Jewish boy (an
OD) who is assisting the Germans considers blowing his whistle on her to alert the soldiers, but
then he recognizes her - she is the mother of one of his friends. He encourages her to hide under
the stairs, and then tells approaching SS troops: "I've searched the building. There's no one here."
The young lad Adam Levy (Adam Siemion) saves both her and Danka, promising: "Come with me.
I will put you in the good line." Mrs. Dresner blesses the boy: "You are not a boy anymore. I'll say
a blessing for you."

From his vantage point, Schindler's attention is directed to a young girl in a drab red coat - a
small spot of color on the large black and white screen. Her lone image personalizes the slaughter.
The camera follows her - and Schindler tries to track her progress - as she invisibly makes her
way, aimless and alone, past the madness and chaos in the street - a woman is machine-gunned
behind her. He loses sight of the small figure as she walks behind a building, but then he glimpses
her again, walking by a file of Jews being herded down a sidewalk. During the roundup, a German
soldier fires at a single-file lineup of men, killing five with one bullet. Distressed and stricken by
the nightmare below and the plight of the little girl in red, Schindler sees her entering one of the
empty apartment buildings. There, she climbs the stairs and crawls under a bed for cover in a
ransacked room.

The final chapter of the Krakow ghetto liquidation scene occurs that evening, with a night-time
hunt by special squads of SS killers for Jews still in hiding in the ghetto apartments. They listen
with stethoscopes on ceilings and stealthily enter rooms with flashlights. Machine-gun fire
produces flickers of starbursts and flashes of light in the nightmarish darkness. When one of the
Jews hiding in a piano missteps on the keys, the sour notes are met with rattling gun fire. Bullets
pepper an attic floor and tear through kitchen cupboards and pantries, searching for
imperceptible targets. Contrapuntally, one of the soldiers plays the piano in one of the apartments
as his comrades roam from room to room. At the doorway to the room, two soldiers ask each
other if it is Bach or Mozart being played. [The answer: the piano piece is the Prelude to Bach's
English Suite #2 in A Minor.] The sounds of death are brought to those that are discovered.
Behind him, as the search continues - punctuated by dazzling gunbursts dancing in windows -
Goeth cools off his face: "I wish this f--king night were over." Schindler stands in his factory
office, staring silently down at the empty D.E.F. factory floor - realizing the implications of the
liquidation for his profitable, exploitative business enterprise.

From the perch of his villa's balcony, the young, monstrous, unpredictable commandant Goeth,
stripped to the waist, stands with his gut hanging out, surveying from his detached vantage point
an open area in the Plaszow work camp (rock quarry) - his kingdom. Relocated to the labor camp
 85

outside of Krakow, Jews who survived the liquidation stand in long rows. Goldberg, the turncoat
Jew, and other listmakers call out names on lists.

In one of the film's most wrenching scenes, the psychotic, sadistic madman picks up his gun for
target practice and aims the high-powered, long-range rifle inscrutably from one unsuspecting
figure to the next. He viciously fires and kills a slow-moving woman working in the distance,
disturbing his half-naked girlfriend in his own bedroom. She groans, cries out: "Oh, Amon," and
buries her head in a pillow, as Goeth sits down and picks up his burning cigarette from the ledge
with his mouth, and resumes his aim and fires toward another of his prisoner-victims. He turns
back toward his lover with his scope rifle aimed at her in bed - annoyed, she chides him as "a
damn f--kin' child." The barbaric, evil killer of Plaszow pisses into the toilet.

Schindler's shiny Mercedes, a symbol of his wealth, drives through the camp on a road made
entirely of broken tombstones scavenged from nearby Jewish cemeteries. Many of the camp's
workers are former enamel factory workers of Schindler's who have been moved from their ghetto
to the work camp. One man kneels with his hands in the air with a sign around his neck (for an
offense he committed) as a reminder to the others.

Schindler is chauffeured to Goeth's villa for a fancy meal with high-ranking German officers and
other industrialists:

The SS will manage certain industries itself inside Plaszow. Metalworks, a brush factory, another
for re-possessing Jewish clothing from the ghettos to use by burned-out families back home. But
it's private industry like yours that stands to benefit most by moving inside the wire of
commandant Amon Goeth's...

After Schindler meets Goeth - his evil counterpart, one of the SS officers explains the benefits of
moving factories into Plaszow. "Since your labor is housed onsite, it's available to you at all times.
You can work them all night if you want. Your factory policies, whatever they've been in the past,
they'll continue to be, they'll be respected." Later, in a one-on-one encounter in Goeth's study
while they share a drink of cognac, the self-indulgent Schindler describes his economic
predicament - and asks for a favor. He hopes to bribe the Nazi officials to let some of the labor
camp inhabitants go back to work for him in his factory in Krakow, so that he can continue to
profit from them:

Schindler: I go to work the other day. Nobody's there. Nobody tells me about this. I have to find
out, I have to go in. Everybody's gone.
Goeth: They're not gone. They're here.
Schindler: They're mine! Every day that goes by, I'm losing money. Every worker that is shot costs
me money. I have to find somebody else. I have to train them.
Goeth: We're going to be making so much money, none of this is going to matter.
Schindler: It's bad business. (Goeth's Jewish maid-girlfriend Helen serves them)...
Goeth: Scherner told me something else about you.
Schindler: Yeah, what's that?
Goeth: That you know the meaning of the word 'gratitude.' That it's not some vague thing with
you like it is with others. You want to stay where you are. You've got things going on the side,
things are good. You don't want anybody telling you what to do. I can understand all that. You
know, I know you. What you want is your own sub-camp. Do you have any idea what's involved?
The paperwork alone? Forget you got to build the f--king thing, getting the f--king permits is
enough to drive you crazy. Then the engineers show up. They stand around, they argue about
drainage, foundations, codes, exact specifications, parallel fences four kilometers long, twelve
hundred kilograms of barbed wire, six thousand kilograms of electrified fences...I'm telling you,
you'll want to shoot somebody. I've been through it, you know, I know.
Schindler: Well, you know, you've been through it. You could make things easier for me. (Goeth
shrugs) I'd be grateful.
 86

Schindler's opportunism and sense of timing pay off, but at a price. Five hundred Plaszow
worker/prisoners are marched back into the factory gates of the D.E.F. to re-establish his
workforce, under Schindler's stoic gaze. The Jews are flanked by armed guards, barking dogs, and
barbed wire. When the last of them passes by, Schindler asks concernedly about the whereabouts
of his competent, disciplined accountant: "Where's Stern?"

Schindler learns that Stern has been set up in a separate office in the work camp at Plaszow, to
deal directly with Goeth:

Make sure I see my cut from the factory owners in this camp. I'm leaving you to take care of my
main accounts - the Schindler account. He wants his independence. I gave it to him. But
independence costs money. This you understand? (Stern nods)...Don't forget who you are
working for now.

During another hedonistic party at Goeth's villa attended by Schindler, he has been able to
summon Stern from his barracks and speak to his accountant outside Plaszow's work camp gates.
Stern prompts his incompetent ex-employer - now without his useful financial, organizational, or
middleman skills - to remember the birthdays of their SS friends' wives and children, and the
proper method of payoffs (without paperwork, invoices, or receipts) to the main administration
and economics office and the armaments board, the governor general's division of the interior,
the chief of police's fees and black market contacts. Exasperated by the bureaucracy (as Goeth had
predicted), Schindler gives up: "It gives me a headache," he complains. Stern is concerned: "Herr
Direktor, don't let the things fall apart. I worked too hard." Schindler shares food scavenged from
the party with Stern.

Metalworks factory inside Plaszow forced labor camp.

Goeth inspects the busy metalworks factory inside Plaszow, reaching a particular worker (a
former Rabbi) who is making hinges. He mentions that workers coming in the next day from
Yugoslavia will cause problems - "I've got to make room." The commandant begins timing the
making of a hinge with his pocket watch - Rabbi Lewartow (Ezra Dagan) feverishly cuts and
crimps the piece and presents the finished product in about forty seconds. Although impressed,
Goeth questions the worker's output: "What I don't understand is that you've been working since
I think what, about six this morning, yet such a small pile of hinges." After providing his own
death sentence, the self-condemned Lewartow is led out by the neck to be shot in an open
courtyard. Goeth's malfunctioning gun repeatedly clicks without discharging, as Lewartow drops
to his knees and explains: "Herr Commandant, I beg to report that my heap of hinges was so
unsatisfactory because the machines were being re-calibrated this morning. I was put onto
shoveling coal." Frustrated and mindlessly brutal, Goeth slams the weapon across Lewartow's
head, sending the man slumped and dazed to the ground.

Pulling more strings to keep his Jewish workers from being sent away, Schindler hoists an
elaborately-oiled saddle from his car's trunk and delivers it and other gifts to Goeth's villa. Stern
approaches Schindler with a serious problem and describes the hinge controversy - he is given
Schindler's gold cigarette lighter. In the next scene, the lighter has been transferred into the
hands of Goldberg - the bribe has been rewarded with a protective job transfer for the rabbi from
the work camp. Goldberg jots Lewartow's name down on a personnel list of workers for the D.E.F.

Goeth paces before a work detail of about twenty men holding their heads down, while dangling a
dead chicken in his hand. He demands a confession about the stolen bird. When no one responds,
he indiscriminately shoots one of the workers at random with a rifle. After waiting a few more
moments, a fourteen-year old, orphaned lad (Adam, the same one who saved Danka and Mrs.
Dresner in an earlier scene) steps forward, weeping and shuddering - he points at the dead man,
accusing him of the theft. Goeth believes the boy, to everyone's astonishment. A second gift to
Stern - a cigarette case - likewise appears with Goldberg. The honored young lad is subsequently
 87

assigned to work in the enamelware company. Schindler begins to take risks to keep some of the
Jews from being executed or sent away to concentration camps.

A nervous, plain-looking young woman, Elsa Krause/Regina Perlman (Bettina Kupfer), summons
up her courage to cross the street in front of the D.E.F. and contact the director of the company
through the security guard. Schindler glances with disapproval from a second floor landing down
a long stairway at her - he turns away from allowing her entry. She returns to her Krakow room,
applies lipstick and dresses more provocatively to gain entrance into his office, where she
audaciously, yet tentatively, pleads for the transfer of her elderly, unskilled parents from the work
camp. Schindler is infuriated, fearing that his own reputation for providing sanctuary and a haven
for Jews lacking skills will endanger his financial well-being - he sees himself not as a savior but
as a money-maker:

Schindler: So, what can I do for you?

Krause: They say that no one dies here. They say your factory is a haven. They say you are good.
Schindler: Who says that?
Krause: Everyone. (He turns and walks away) My name is Regina Perlman, not Elsa Krause. I've
been living in Krakow on false papers since the ghetto massacre. My parents are in Plaszow. Their
names are Chana and Jakob Perlman. They are older people. They're killing older people now in
Plaszow. They bury them up in the forest. Look, I don't have any money. I-I borrowed these
clothes, I'm begging you - please, please bring them here.
Schindler: I don't do that. You've been misled. I ask one thing: whether or not a worker has
certain skills. That's what I ask and that's what I care about...Such activities are illegal. You will
not entrap me, Miss Krause. Cry and I'll have you arrested, I swear to God.

Slamming and opening doors provide the transition to the next scene in Stern's office in Plaszow.
Schindler aggressively admonishes his crafty accountant, because he is frustrated about the
jeopardized predicament he has been thrust into by the acceptance of rabbis, orphans, and
unskilled workers [evidenced by the three previous film sequences]. However, he relents and
allows Stern to bring more favored, selected few - the Perlmans - to his factory 'haven':

Schindler: People die, it's a fact of life. He wants to kill everybody? Great, what am I supposed to
do about it? Bring everybody over? Is that what you think? Send them over to Schindler, send
them all. His place is a 'haven,' didn't you know? It's not a factory, it's not an enterprise of any
kind, it's a haven for rabbis and orphans and people with no skills whatsoever. You think I don't
know what you're doing? You're so quiet all the time. I know. I know.
Stern: Are you losing money?
Schindler: No, I'm not losing money, that's not the point.
Stern: What other point is -
Schindler: (interrupting) It's dangerous! It's dangerous to me. You have to understand, Goeth is
under enormous pressure. You have to think of it in his situation. He's got this whole place to run,
he's responsible for everything that goes on here, all these people - he's got a lot of things to worry
about. And he's got the war. Which brings out the worst in people. Never the good, always the
bad. Always the bad. But in normal circumstances, he wouldn't be like this. He'd be all right.
There'd just be the good aspects of him - which - he's a wonderful crook. A man who loves good
food, good wine, the ladies, making money -
Stern: - killing -
Schindler: He can't enjoy it....What do you want me to do about it?
Stern: Nothing, nothing. We're just talking.
Schindler: (He pulls out a slip of paper and reads a name) - Perlman.

In a line-up and roll-call, Goldberg (wearing Schindler's wristwatch) shouts out "Perlman" - the
elderly couple are pulled from the line - in a flashcut, parallel scene, Schindler unstraps his
expensive wristwatch and instructs Stern: "Have Goldberg bring them over." Outside the D.E.F., a
relieved, grateful Regina is rewarded by seeing her aging parents escorted into the factory.
 88

During one of Goeth's villa parties, Schindler goes to the basement/wine cellar for a bottle of
wine. Housekeeper Helen's living quarters are in the tomb-like room. Realizing how downtrodden
and depressed she is as Goeth's arbitrary, reluctant object of affection, he shows his odd liking for
her. [Goeth confronts Helen in a similar sequence later in the film.] Schindler encourages her to
speak about the agonizingly tortured existence she faces every day. She describes how there is no
sure strategy or formula for actions or behaviors to reliably increase one's chances of survival:

Schindler: Why don't you build yourself up?

Helen: My first day here, he beat me because I threw out the bones from dinner. He came down to
the basement at midnight and he asked me where they were - for his dogs...I said to him, 'Why are
you beating me?' He said, 'The reason I beat you now is because you ask why I beat you.'
Schindler: I know your sufferings.
Helen: It doesn't matter. I have accepted them...One day, he will shoot me.
Schindler: No, he won't shoot you.
Helen: I know. I see things. We were on the roof on Monday, young Lisiek and I, and we saw the
Herr Commandant come out of the front door and down the steps by the patio right there below
us. And there on the steps, he drew his gun - he shot a woman who was passing by. A woman
carrying a bundle, through the throat. Just-just a woman on her way somewhere. You know, she-
she was no fatter or thinner or slower or faster than anyone else and I couldn't guess what had she
done. The more you see of Herr Commandant, the more you see there is no set rules that you can
live by. You can say to yourself, 'if I follow these rules, I will be safe.'
Schindler: He won't shoot you because he enjoys you too much. He enjoys you so much, he won't
even let you wear the star. He doesn't want anyone else to know it's a Jew he's enjoying. He shot
the woman from the steps because she meant nothing to him. She was one of a series - neither
offending or pleasing him. But you, Helen. It's all right. It's not that kind of a kiss. (He tenderly
kisses her on the forehead)

On the balcony with Schindler after the villa party, Goeth is so drunk he can barely stand up.
Appealing to Goeth's ego-maniacal streak and vanity, Schindler delivers a monologue preaching
power with restraint, and convinces Goeth to offer pardons instead of deadly justice:

Goeth: You know, I look at you. I watch you. You're not a drunk. That's, that's real control.
Control is power. That's power.
Schindler: Is that why they fear us?
Goeth: We have the f--king power to kill, that's why they fear us.
Schindler: They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man commits a crime, he
should know better. We have him killed and we feel pretty good about it. Or we kill him ourselves
and we feel even better. That's not power, though, that's justice. That's different than power.
Power is when we have every justification to kill - and we don't.
Goeth: You think that's power.
Schindler: That's what the emperors had. A man stole something, he's brought in before the
emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy, he knows he's going to die.
And the emperor pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power. (Schindler gestures toward Goeth as a merciful
emperor) Amon, the Good.
Goeth: (He smiles and laughs) I pardon you.

In his stables, Goeth berates the stable boy Lisiek (Wojciech Klata) for carelessly leaving his
expensive saddle on the ground - but he pardons him instead of punishing him. He rides
majestically through the camp high on his white horse, surveying his great domain. He notices a
woman prisoner who was smoking on the job being dragged by the hair by a guard. Goeth
deliberates a judgment and then pronounces an uncharacteristic sentence to spare her: "Tell her
not to do it again." In his villa's bathroom, Goeth is told by Lisiek that the boy is unable to remove
the stains from his bathtub. Incredulous that the boy is using soap and not lye, he takes a deep
breath, calmly gestures with a tap on the shoulder, and forgives him: "Go ahead, go on leave. I
 89

pardon you." He stands at the mirror fascinated with his papal-like power, imagining himself with
the restrained might of emperors, but the new image doesn't fit. At a distance, two gunshots from
the villa miss the young lad on either side. A third shot causes Stern, who is walking by, to flinch -
he passes by the fresh corpse of Lisiek. Goeth has callously killed with lethal accuracy - a pardon
wasn't as powerful or pleasing as sporting target practice.

Three scenes are intercut together: the marriage of a Jewish couple (Rebecca Tannenbaum and
Josef Bau) in the women's barracks in Plaszow camp; a smoke-filled nightclub in Krakow where
Schindler watches a floor show with other SS officers - the cabaret singer slides into his lap and
kisses him during the entertainment; and a disturbing confrontation between the lusting Goeth
and Helen in the villa's basement.

In one of the film's most brilliant, powerful scenes, Goeth descends the cellar steps and speaks to
a glisteningly-sweaty, nubile Helen in a flimsy, clinging chemise that is semi-transparent (she
dares not answer and remains speechless with downcast eyes throughout). As he circles around
her in the tomblike room, he delivers a sinister monologue, alternating between threats and
seduction. Taught to disregard the humanity of the Jews, he nonetheless wants to sexually force
himself on her and taste the forbidden fruit (a sexual liaison between a pure Aryan and a Jew is a
punishable, capital crime). But then he remembers that she is supposed to be detested like a rat.
Pathologically filled with deep self-loathing, he beats the tempting young Jewess for seducing
him:

I came to tell you that you really are a wonderful cook and a well-trained servant. I mean it. If you
need a reference after the war, I'd be happy to give you one. It's kind of lonely down here, it
seems, with everyone upstairs having such a good time. Does it? You can answer. 'What was the
right answer?' That's-that's what you're thinking. 'What does he want to hear?' The truth, Helen,
is always the right answer. Yes, you're right. Sometimes we're both lonely. Yes, I mean, I would
like, so much, to reach out and touch you in your loneliness. What would that be like, I wonder? I
mean, what would be wrong with that? I realize that you're not a person in the strictest sense of
the word. Maybe you're right about that too. You know, maybe what's wrong isn't - it's not us - it's
this. I mean, when they compare you to vermin and to rodents and to lice, I just, uh...You make a
good point, a very good point. (He strokes her hair) Is this the face of a rat? Are these the eyes of a
rat? That's not a Jew's eyes. (He brings his hand over her breast) I feel for you, Helen. (He decides
not to kiss her) No, I don't think so. You're a Jewish bitch. You nearly talked me into it, didn't
you?

The bridegroom's shoe breaks a lightbulb under a handkerchief at the instant that Goeth savagely
strikes Helen across the face. He pitches a shelf over - it crashes on top of her.

The scene instantly becomes a drunken celebration in the upstairs offices of the D.E.F. where a
party is held to honor Schindler's birthday. The factory owner is surrounded by friends, Stern,
Goeth, and other SS men. He embraces some of his female lovers - Klonowska and Ingrid. A
Jewess from the shop floor is admitted - she timidly approaches and haltingly thanks him,
bringing along an even younger girl carrying a homemade cake:

On behalf of the workers, sir, I wish for you a happy birthday.

In everyone's company (including the top German military), Schindler kisses the younger girl on
both cheeks, and then gives the stunned factory girl a sustained kiss on the mouth, followed by
heartfelt thanks: "Tell them thank you from me."

Empty cattle cars are brought to the train depot in Plaszow. In the muddy open space between the
barracks, the clerks set up their folding tables. Goldberg distributes clipboards with lists. White-
gowned doctors with stethoscopes are assembled. On his villa balcony during the semi-annual
physical - with the entire population of the camp within view behind him, Goeth announces that a
 90

shipment of Hungarians to his camp means he must reduce the size of the Plaszow work force:
"We've got to separate the sick from the healthy to make room." A health action is required.

A needle is placed on an old phonograph record. As the scratchy tune plays during the sorting
process of the healthy from the unhealthy, the men on one side (and women on the other) are
stripped of their clothing and forced to run through the muddy compound in front of doctors to
prove that they are fit in a harrowing endurance test. Instant medical exams quickly make fateful
selections. In the barracks, some of the women prick their fingers and rub their own blood on
their cheeks to redden them and add a little healthy color. Goeth saves his mechanic, Pfefferberg,
from suffering through the indignities of being stripped and evaluated.

A new record, a sing-along children's song, is designed to draw out the innocently-happy children
from the barracks - they are placed in large transport trucks. The women who are declared fit and
healthy are ordered to pull their clothes back on and return to their barracks. They are overjoyed
with their luck in being saved - until they notice their children being guided and transported away
like lemmings. A mass riot breaks out as wailing women protest and surge forward toward the
departing children. Young Olek Rosner slips away and desperately tries to find a place to hide for
refuge - he slips down a toilet hole inside an outhouse latrine, sinking in waist-deep into the fecal
cesspool of waste matter where Danka Dresner and other children are already submerged and
hiding.

The 'unfit,' now wearing striped uniforms, are marched like 'human cattle' toward the gates of
cattle cars for transport elsewhere. As the heat rises within the confines of the long string of train
cars during the hot day, turning the cars into ovens, the tightly-packed Jews begin to bake,
suffocate, and die of thirst as they wait for the last cars to be filled. Schindler, who joins the Nazis
on the platform as they sip cold drinks, mercifully suggests that Goeth allow him to hose down the
cars filled with desperate, pleading Jews: "What do you say we get your fire hoses out here and
hose down the cars? Indulge me." The hoses spray cold water into the cars to cool down the
doomed people inside. Amused, Goeth believes the gesture is futile: "This is really cruel, Oskar,
you're giving them hope. You shouldn't do that. That's cruel." Longer fire hoses are retrieved from
the D.E.F. to reach down the full length of the cars.

German staff car with Gestapo men pulls up in front of the D.E.F. and arrests Schindler in his
factory office. He warns them of the risk: "I'm not saying you'll regret it, but you might. You
should be aware of that." Klonowska moves to make the necessary phone calls to help release him
from a short stay in the Krakow prison. In his cell, he tells his imprisoned cellmate the reason for
his arrest:

I violated the Race and Resettlement Act. Though I doubt anyone can point out the actual
provision to me. I kissed a Jewish girl.

In an office of the prison, Goeth defends the racial improprieties of Schindler's action to a stiff-
faced SS colonel behind the desk, vacillating between joking, serious rationalization, and bribery
tactics:

He likes women. He likes good-looking women. He sees a beautiful woman - he doesn't think. He
has so many women. They love him, yeah, they love him. I mean, he's married, yeah, but... All
right, she was Jewish, he shouldn't have done it, but you didn't see this girl. I saw this girl. This
girl was, wuff, very good-looking. They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews. When you work
closely with them like I do, you see this. They have this power, it's like a virus. Some of my men
are infected with this virus. They should be pitied, not punished. They should receive treatment,
because this is as real as typhus. I see this all the time. It's a matter of money, hmm?

Schindler is eventually released due to SS Colonel Scherner's intercession, and then told about
future extermination policies for all Jews: "God forbid you ever get a real taste for Jewish skirt -
 91

there's no future in it. No future. They don't have a future. And that's not just good old-fashioned
Jew-hating talk. It's policy now."

In Krakow, what appears to be falling and raining from the sky is not snow, but macabre flakes of
ash (cinders of flesh and bone) from the burning pyres of bodies.

CHUJOWA GORKA,
APRIL, 1944
Department D orders Goeth to exhume and incinerate the bodies of more than
10,000 Jews killed at Plaszow and the Krakow Ghetto massacre.

Billowing smoke and flames roar from the apocalyptic inferno consuming the thousands of
victims of the Ghetto massacre and the Plaszow camp. [The Nazis are covering up the evidence of
the slaughter of Jews in the Krakow ghetto by digging up all the corpses and incinerating them in
pits.] Their decomposed bodies are exhumed from the mass graves in the earth and placed on
conveyor belts to be dumped onto enormous, raging pyres. Wheelbarrows of corpses are trundled
along by workers who mask themselves to prevent gagging. One of the SS officers, with eyes
ablaze, fires madly at the burning corpses on a massive pyramid of bodies. Feeling overworked
and unfairly burdened, Goeth whines piteously, fearing his days are numbered due to a scheduled
evacuation: "The party's over, Oskar. They're closing us down, sending everybody to
Auschwitz...As soon as I can arrange the shipments, maybe 30, 40 days. That ought to be fun."
Schindler glimpses one of the wheelbarrows which holds the red-coated corpse of the little girl
seen running between buildings during the Ghetto massacre.

In Stern's office in Plaszow, both he and Schindler feel resigned to their fates. Schindler reassures
his beloved accountant that he will make sure that he receives "special treatment." Stern demurs,
mentioning that "special treatment" is the euphemistic term, being used more frequently in
directives from Berlin, to send Jews to death camps. Schindler changes the wording to
"preferential treatment...we have to invent a whole new language?" Defeated and weary, Schindler
knows he will lose his Jewish workers, and he has lost the desire to revive the business with Polish
workers:

Schindler: I'm going home. I've done what I came here for. I've got more money than any man can
spend in a lifetime. Someday this is all going to end, you know. I was going to say we'll have a
drink then.
Stern: I think I'd better have it now.

Unlike so many other times, Stern now accepts a glass of cognac, raises it slightly to acknowledge
Schindler, and then drinks.

Schindler is on the brink of leaving with suitcases packed solid with his fortune, when his moral
conscience speaks to him. Acting like a guardian angel in the major turning point in his evolution
toward self-discovery, he decides to attempt to save as many people as he can with his war
profiteer's fortune. Possibly due to his growing bond with Stern, Schindler is gradually
transformed from a profiteer to a savior of the Jews from slaughter.

On the balcony of the villa, Schindler bargains and negotiates with Goeth to buy back his
workforce, transport the workers to Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia (his safer home town on the Polish-
Czechoslovakan border), and create a military weapons factory. Cinematically, the two men are
distinctly separated in two window frames. Appearing to be acting in his own economic self-
interest, Schindler hides his ulterior, compassionate motives. Within his business proposition, he
includes his characteristic wheeler-dealer phrase: "Everybody's happy":
 92

Goeth: (puzzled) You want these people?

Schindler: These people, my people, I want my people.
Goeth: Who are you, Moses? Come on, what is this? Where's the money in this, where's the scam?
Schindler: It's good business.
Goeth: Yeah, it's 'good business' in your opinion. Look, you've got to move them, the equipment,
everything to Czechoslovakia, pay for all that and build another camp. It doesn't make any
sense...You're not telling me something.
Schindler: It's good for me. I know them, I'm familiar with them, I don't have to train them. It's
good for you. I'll compensate you...It's good for the Army. You know what I'm going to
make?...Artillery shells...tank shells. They need that, everybody's happy.
Goeth: Everyone's happy except me. You're probably scamming me somehow. If I'm making a
hundred, you've got to be making three. And if you admit to making three, then it's four, actually.
But how?
Schindler: I just told you.
Goeth: Yeah, you did, but you didn't. Yeah, all right, don't tell me, I'll go along with it. It's just
irritating I can't work it out.
Schindler: Look, all you have to do is tell me what it's worth to you. What's a person worth to you?
Goeth: No, no, no, no. What's one worth to you?

The keys of Stern's typewriter crisply rap out names to create a list of the individuals (and
investors) who will be saved/employed - it is Schindler's List: Dresner, Wein, Rosner, Poldek
Pfefferberg, Mila Pfefferberg, Stagel, Scharf, "all the children," Lewartow, and more. The list
grows from four hundred, to six hundred, to eight hundred, to almost 1,100 individuals.
Schindler's Mercedes pulls up outside the villa where he takes a small valise - payments to Goeth.
He is unable to convince fellow industrialist Madritsch to join together with him with his Jewish
workers: "I've done all I can. No Oskar, I can't do anymore." When the list nears completion,
Schindler instructs Stern:

Schindler: That's it. You can finish that page.

Stern: What did Goeth say about this? You just told him how many people you needed, and -
you're not buying them. You're buying them? You're paying him for each of these names?
Schindler: If you were still working for me, I'd expect you to talk me out of it. It's costing me a
fortune. Finish the page and leave one space at the bottom.
Stern: The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.

With Goeth, Schindler gambles with a deck of cards in a game of Twenty-One for his maid - he
proposes to put Helen's name in the last line left on the final page: "I'll never find a maid as well-
trained as her in Brinnlitz. They're all country girls." Goeth's twisted affection for the girl, and his
distrust of Schindler's consummate deal-making, sleight-of-hand talents, make it difficult for him
to agree to a card game to decide Helen's fate:

Schindler: She's just going to Auschwitz # 2 anyway. What difference does this make?
Goeth: She's not going to Auschwitz. I'd never do that to her. No, I want her to come back to
Vienna with me. I want her to come work for me there. I want to grow old with her.
Schindler: Are you mad? Amon, you can't take her to Vienna with you.
Goeth: No, of course I can't. That's what I'd like to do. What I can do, if I'm any sort of a man, is
the next most merciful thing. I should take her into the woods and shoot her painlessly in the back
of the head. (Goeth reconsiders the wager) What is it you said for a natural twenty-one? Fourteen
thousand, eight hundred?

On the train platform at Plaszow, the workers on Schindler's List pronounce their names to clerks
at folding tables. The results of Oskar's card game are implied when the final one to give her name
is Helen Hirsch. The prisoners are segregated by sex into different transport trains. The men's
train crosses the snowy landscape, arriving at its rural destination:
 93

ZWITTAU-BRINNLITZ, CZECHOSLOVAKIA
OSKAR SCHINDLER'S HOMETOWN

A grinning Schindler stands on the platform, wearing a Tyrolean hat. Ignoring an SS officer, he
climbs up a few steps and assures his workers: "The train with the women has already left Plaszow
and will be arriving here very shortly. I know you've had a long journey, but it's only a short walk
further to the factory where hot soup and bread is waiting for you. (With arms outstretched)
Welcome to Brinnlitz."

However, the train with the women in cattle cars has been misdirected (due to a paperwork
mistake) and is headed for Auschwitz. As they pass by the countryside, a young Polish boy smiles
and gestures with a grisly, lateral swipe of his forefinger across his throat as if it were being slit - a
portent of what awaits them. As their train thunders into the infamous Auschwitz camp, the
stunned, confused women climb down from the railcars. Trembling from the intense cold and
from fear, they are lined up. Mrs. Dresner rhetorically asks: "Where are the listmakers?" Ashes
and cinders rain down from Auschwitz's crematoriums.

The hair of Schindler's women is shorn, and they are stripped naked of their clothing - and
identity. In one of the film's most haunting, harrowing scenes, they tensely clutch each other in
fear and shiver from the cold as they are herded into a room with shower nozzles. Expecting that
they are going to be lethally gassed rather than cleansed, they hyperventilate and cringe -
hysterical as they stare up at the ominous, menacing shower heads. When the lights go out, they
collectively scream and huddle together, but then water comes out of one shower fixture, and then
others, and they weep with relief when they realize they are in the delousing plant of Auschwitz
and not the gas chamber. After being dressed, they are brought through the camp, past other lines
of Jews destined for death after descending into another building with gas chambers - next to the
crematorium with a belching chimney stack.

A doctor representing the notorious Josef Mengele (Daniel Del Ponte) moves along the rows of
women the next day, pausing to ask an ironically-endearing question of the elderly ones: "How
old are you, Mother?" Mrs. Dresner daringly informs him of the mistake in their routing:

Mrs. Dresner: Sir, a mistake has been made. We're not supposed to be here. We work for Oskar
Schindler. We're Schindler Jews.
Mengele: Who is Oskar Schindler?
Guard: He had a factory in Krakow. Enamelware.
Mengele: A potmaker.

Schindler intervenes at Auschwitz in the office of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Hoss (Hans
Michael Rehberg), bringing his list and authorizations for his female workers - and a sachel of
loose diamonds - "portable wealth." He is forced to purchase them twice, in order to liberate
them. The ox-faced German whose visage is horizontally split between light and dark shadows
covering his eyes, is tempted by the offer:

Hoss: I have a shipment coming in tomorrow. I'll cut you three hundred units from it. New ones.
These are fresh. The train comes, we turn it around. It's yours.
Schindler: Yes, I understand. I want these.
Hoss: You shouldn't get stuck on names. That's right. It creates a lot of paperwork.

The next day, the names from Schindler's List are called out - as each woman or girl steps
forward, she is brushed/slashed with a swath of paint across her front by a guard. They are
directed toward cattle cars in the train yard of Auschwitz. Guards try to seize the young daughters
of the women, including Danka Dresner, and prevent them from leaving. Witnessing what has
happened, Schindler audaciously approaches and ingeniously cons a guard to let the kids rejoin
their mothers on the departing train:
 94

What are you doing? These are mine. These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're
skilled munitions workers. They're essential. Essential girls. Their fingers polish the insides of
shell metal casings. How else am I to polish the inside of a 45 millimeter shell casing? You tell me.
You tell me!

Outside the Brinnlitz camp, Schindler joins the procession of women, girls, and guards as they
approach. The men spot their wives and daughters from a nearby building.

Schindler addresses the camp's guards, warning them of interference or unlawful brutality toward
his workers:

Under Department W provisions, it is unlawful to kill a worker without just cause. Under the
Businesses Compensation Fund, I am entitled to file damage claims for such deaths. If you shoot
without thinking, you go to prison, I get paid, that's how it works. So, there will be no summary
executions here. There will be no interference of any kind with production. In hopes of ensuring
that, guards will no longer be allowed on the factory floor without my authorization. (To the
Commanding Officer, Josef Liepold (Ludger Pistor)) For your cooperation, you have my
gratitude.

With his usual panache and bribes to grease the way, he has cases of schnapps opened and set out
on tables for the guards.

In a cathedral in his hometown, he slips behind Emilie, his estranged wife, and promises loyalty:
"No doorman or maitre d' will ever mistake you again. I promise." She is brought to the Brinnlitz
factory to meet Stern - she has also volunteered to work in the clinic. In private, Stern brings
sobering, disquieting news about quality-control failures, but it doesn't bother Schindler - he has
decided to manufacture only defective munitions and sabotage the German war effort:

Stern: We've received an angry complaint from the Armaments Board. The artillery shells, tank
shells, rocket casings, apparently all of them have failed quality-control tests.
Schindler: Well, that's to be expected - start-up problems. This isn't pots and pans. This is a
precise business. I'll write them a letter.
Stern: They're withholding payment.
Schindler: Sure. So would I. So would you. I wouldn't worry about it. We'll get it right one of these
days.
Stern: There's a rumor you've been going around miscalibrating the machines. They could shut us
down, send us back to Auschwitz.
Schindler: I'll call around, find out where we can buy shells, pass them off as ours.
Stern: I don't see the difference. Whether they're made here or somewhere else.
Schindler: You don't see a difference? I see a difference.
Stern: You'll lose a lot of money, that's the difference.
Schindler: Fewer shells will be made. Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually
be fired, I'll be very unhappy.

Rabbi Lewartow is buffing a shell casing at a machine when Schindler stuns him by reminding
him that he should perform long-forgotten and forbidden Sabbath rites: "Sun's going down...It is
Friday, isn't it?...What's the matter with you? You should be preparing for the Sabbath, shouldn't
you? I've got some wine in my office. Come." In one corner of the factory, Lewartow sings in
Yiddish and lights candles during a Shabbat service - the candles glow a warm, reddish-yellow
color - a symbol of the rebirth of hope, life and humanity for the Jewish people - a perfect
counterpart to the candles which burn out in the film's opening scene. Guards in their bunks, and
Commandant Liepold in his quarters listen in silent bewilderment to the strange, distant singing.

FOR THE SEVEN MONTHS IT WAS FULLY OPERATIONAL, SCHINDLER'S

BRINNLITZ MUNITIONS FACTORY WAS A MODEL OF NON-PRODUCTION.
 95

DURING THIS SAME PERIOD, HE SPENT MILLIONS OF REICHMARKS TO

SUSTAIN HIS WORKERS AND BRIBE REICH OFFICIALS.

Stern brings the penniless and bankrupted Schindler more reports of financial hardship - he has
spent all his fortune to save his Jews, and to provide them with safety and sanctuary, while also
producing defective munitions for the war effort. His factory is a sham producer of unusable
bullet casings:

Stern: Do you have any money hidden away someplace that I don't know about?
Schindler: No. Why, am I broke?
Stern: Uh, well...

In the workers' barracks (and the guards' barracks) - a pan switches from one to the other, a radio
broadcast is attentively listened to - in the scratchy static is the distinctive voice of British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill announcing the surrender of Germany - and the end of the war:

Yesterday morning, at two forty-one am, at General Eisenhower's headquarters, General Jodl
signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea, and air forces in Europe to the
Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command. The German war is
therefore at an end. But let us not forget for a moment...

Schindler, seen in dark silhouette, knocks on the door of Commander Liepold's quarters: "I think
it's time the guards came into the factory." In the ominous, uncertain, and tense atmosphere, he
addresses all twelve hundred workers and guards gathered together for the first time - the guards
are on an upper balcony and the workers are on the factory floor below. No one cheers the news of
the defeat of Nazi Germany:

The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war
is over. Tomorrow, you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases
you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the
world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves.
Thank your fearless Stern and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every
moment.

Realizing the inevitable reality of his own threatened German status, Schindler confesses simple
statements about himself - he admits that he is now destitute and a fugitive:

I'm a member of the Nazi Party.

I'm a munitions manufacturer.
I'm a profiteer of slave labor.
I am a criminal.
At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted.
I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight. After which time, and I hope you'll
forgive me, I have to flee.

He then turns toward the guards and convinces them to go home without killing the Jews under
their jurisdiction:

I know you've received orders from our Commandant - which he has received from his superiors -
to dispose of the population of this camp. Now would be the time to do it. Here they are. They're
all here. This is your opportunity. Or...you could leave. And return to your families as men instead
of murderers.
 96

One young soldier breaks ranks and walks out - many of the guards follow suit until Liepold is the
only one left to decide - after wavering a bit, he also disappears. The ultimate showman and
conman, Schindler winks at Stern. In memory "of the countless victims" among the Jewish
people, he asks for an observance of three minutes of silence.

In the metalworks section of the factory, a man volunteers to have a tooth (with a gold filling)
pulled. The flame of a hot welding torch melts down the extracted filling - the liquid is cast into a
small gold band. Schindler and Emilie pack their suitcases for their flight. All eleven hundred
workers respectfully remove their hats as the Schindlers leave the factory and walk toward their
car in the courtyard. In the background, some of the workers take off their striped concentration
camp uniforms.

Lewartow presents Schindler with several pages containing a list of the signatures of all the
workers vouching for him - a new list with their names supporting his:

We've written a letter trying to explain things in case you are captured. Every worker has signed
it.

Stern hands Schindler the finished gold ring, with an inscription of a Talmudic adage:

It's Hebrew from the Talmud. It says, 'Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.'

He drops the ring, then slips it on his finger, thanks Stern and shakes hands with him as an equal
for the first time in the film. Then, with self-loathing in a melodramatic, histrionic parting speech,
Schindler berates himself for not having saved more lives as tears flow down his cheeks: [This is
the film's most controversial, unnecessary, and sentimental scene.] He looks at the eyes of the
workers, seeking their apology for not doing more:

Schindler: I could've got more...I could've got more, if I'd just...I could've got more...
Stern: Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.
Schindler: If I'd made more money...I threw away so much money, you have no idea. If I'd just...
Stern: There will be generations because of what you did.
Schindler: I didn't do enough.
Stern: You did so much.
Schindler: This car. Goeth would've bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people, right
there. Ten people, ten more people...(He rips the swastika pin from his lapel) This pin, two
people. This is gold. Two more people. He would've given me two for it. At least one. He would've
given me one. One more. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. I could've gotten one more
person and I didn't.

He breaks down in Stern's arms, convulsing in remorse and guilt - some of the workers step
forward and comfort him in their arms. Mrs. Dresner picks up one of the striped uniforms from
the ground. Emilie, Schindler, and their driver wear the easily-identifiable uniforms of prisoners
as they are driven out of the compound - Schindler's tortured, yet heroic face is reflected on the
car window as they slowly pull out, superimposed over the faces of the workers passing by.

The next morning, a lone, tattered-looking Russian officer rides up on horseback to the gates of
the Brinnlitz camp - the workers have slept on the ground where they left the Schindlers hours
earlier:

Russian: You have been liberated by the Soviet Army.

Stern: Have you been in Poland?
Russian: I just came from Poland.
Stern: Are there any Jews left?
 97

Worker: Where should we go?

Russian: Don't go east, that's for sure. They hate you there. I wouldn't go west either, if I were
you.
Worker: We could use some food.
Russian: (pointing toward the town of Brinnlitz) Isn't that a town over there?

The moving crowd of hundreds of Jews come over a hillside, crossing the land, walking free,
marching to the tune of the Hebrew song "Jerusalem the Golden."

Amon Goeth was arrested while a patient in a sanatorium at Bad Tolz. He was
hanged in Krakow for crimes against humanity.
Oskar Schindler failed at his marriage and several businesses after the war.
In 1958, he was declared a righteous person by the council of the Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem, and invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous. It grows there
still.
The Schindler Jews today.
The black and white scene of the workers crossing the open countryside on the horizon dissolves
into color, and the actors/actresses are transmuted into "The Schindler Jews today." Over one
hundred of the real-life survivors of the Holocaust, the Schindlerjuden, are in a long line,
accompanied by their counterpart actors who portrayed them in the film. In tribute, each of the
present-day survivors places a fragment of stone, following Jewish tradition, on the Jerusalem
gravestone of Oskar Schindler (who died in 1974). One rock is laid there for every life saved - the
small stones become a massive pile. (The last mourner, who lays flowers on the gravestone and
stands with head bowed in reverence, is actor Liam Neeson, not Spielberg - as commonly
suspected.)
There are fewer than four thousand Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more
than six thousand descendants of the Schindler Jews.
In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered.