Love and honor

My friend M. was looking for an an appropriate movie dialogue quote to describe a situation he found himself in recently at the college where he teaches. I found it for him in Chinatown (1974):

Lt. Escobar: "How'd you get past the guard?"
Jake Gittes: "Well, to tell you the truth, I lied a little."

Then I thought of other memorable movie quotes, and Casablanca (1942) popped up. By the way, Humphrey Bogart, playing saloon keeper Rick Blaine, never said "Play it again, Sam" in the film. The actual quotes were: "Play it Sam, for old times' sake, play 'As Time Goes By'." - Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman. And "You played it for her, you can play it for me. ... If she can stand it, I can! Play it!" - Rick Blaine. The line "Play it again,Sam" first occurred in the Marx Brothers' film A Night in Casablanca (1946), which is the possible source of the misquotation.

In any event, it then occurred to me that Casablanca's theme , among other themes, was a man's dilemma between honor and love, or between duty and love, if you prefer, (or whatever, but it was a dilemma), and one man's question of being able to look himself in the mirror.

Whereas J.J. Gittes in Chinatown, did not seem to face dilemmas. He followed his guts, his sense of right and wrong and he plunged into the plots without hesitation. Trying to do good, he ends up contributing to a disaster, as he had done sometime in the past, we learn from the dialogue. Where questions and dilemmas in Casablanca are in the open, in Chinatown they are implied and suggested, but one of its themes (again, among other themes) is to this viewer the mystery and impenetrability of human relationships.

At the end of Casablanca, Ilsa Lund and her underground fighter lover Victor Laszlo escape, Rick Blaine, stuck by himself in occupied Northern Africa, says to Captain Renault (Claude Rains): "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship". Rick Blaine's current dilemma resolved, all that is left, is a friendship between two men at a lonely outpost.

At the end of Chinatown, only dark, impenetrable enigmas remain. Evelyn Cross Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) dies, and J.J Gittes' partner Lawrence Walsh restrains him from further actions saying the line that in five words wraps up and sums up all the themes in the film: "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown".