| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Playwright: Edmond Rostand | Cyrano de Bergerac |
Life can be exciting. Life can be grand, literally. There is also some great sadness about consummated love, since it is portrayed as unreachable. |
The importance of independence and independent thought. Compromise is deadly to one's soul. Sub-themes: a) Doubt of one's goodness because of an incidental fact (physical feature) is terribly damaging and tragic. b) Helping someone by faking reality is damaging and can come to no good. |
| Screenwriter: Noel Coward | Brief Encounter |
Passionate love. Tragic choices. |
High romance is possible. Such love is unlikely to survive. This film manages to embrace two contradictory themes, leading to a major bittersweet outcome. |
| Sculptor: Pio Fedi | Rape of Polyxena, The |
Strength and complex beauty are central. Vitality, passion and action are hallmarks of this work. |
Life is complex strife, entwined with strong god-like characters. |
| Architect: Louis Sullivan | National Farmers' Bank |
Being able to breath freely -- expansively, and feeling that there are no limits to what man can do. |
The world is expansively, infinitely rich. |
| Director: Raymond De Felitta | Two Family House |
Feelings of benevolence and optimism about life. Happiness comes from making choices for your own good. |
Going after what you want in life; Don't be stopped by conventional standards of the people around you. It takes courage to be selfish. |
| Director: Baz Luhrmann | Romeo + Juliet |
Tragedy is central to life. |
Romantic Love is doomed and we don't control our own lives. |
| Author: Nevil Shute | Trustee from the Toolroom |
A feeling of gentleness, kindness and generosity towards good people in the world. |
The importance of pursuing one's personal values. |
| Shute, Nevil: | Landfall |
Heroes and Heroines are self-made, by anyone at any level of intelligence who seriously pursues what is important in their lives. |
Truth will triumph -- with perseverance. |
| Myron?: | Riace Bronze A |
Man is strong and indomitable |
Intelligence, Pride, Strength = Man |
| Painter: William Hosner | Her Face to the Wind |
One gets the feeling that the young woman is able to stand strong in the world, with panache and beauty all at once. |
Facing life in a fresh, strong, vivacious way. |
| Director: Hugh Hudson | Chariots of Fire |
A complete feeling of openness of the world to greatness of your own choosing. |
Life is achievement. |
| Domenichino: | Head of a Bearded Man |
Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity |
Worry is the way of the world. |
| Composer: Lou Handman | Are You Lonesome Tonight? |
Sensuality and bitterness |
The remembrance of past love. |
| Author: John Steinbeck | East of Eden |
Life is filled with great and important choices. |
The battle between good and evil, guilt and innocence. Takes the position that we are influenced by many things, but ultimately we have free will. |
| De Felitta, Raymond: | City Island |
Anxiety and pain from all the lies and mistaken motives. Catharsis from the climax, leading to feelings of wanting to be truthful in life! |
Lying is not the way to live. |
| Director: Akira Kurosawa | Rashomon |
The world is terrible and full of disasters and mankind is awful and pathetic. |
Objectivity is a myth -- everyone sees a different reality, a different "story". |
| Rodin, Auguste: | Shade, The |
Life is a gruesome trial. There is no hope. |
The world destroys man. (Some unknown evil force is destroying this young strong man.) Given that the sculpture is titled as a "Shade" and is related to the Group sculpture "Gates of Hell", one can presume the evil is some unnamed condition that can overpower life and cause destruction of the good. |
| Director: Fredi Murer | Vitus |
If you have the will, you can find the way to live the way you want. |
Living your life your own way is the only right way. |
| Painter: John White Alexander | Repose |
Life is extravagant and lush and sensual. |
Feminine Sensuality is a main theme, though one can argue that a related (equal theme or sub-theme) is: The Lushness of the Material World. The dramatic draped womanly figure pressing against a divan, whose figure is clearly oulined, shares the visual dominance of the painting along with the magnificent sweeps of her dress and the giant pillows, the massive backrest, and even the strong elements of the floor material and the golden back wall. All together a remarkable composition. |
| Composer: Franz Lehar | Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) |
Love brings gaiety and joy to life. |
Love can be gay and tender, solemn and lighthearted, painful and joyous. |
| Sculptor: Jean Baptiste (1630-1700) Tuby | Chariot of Apollo |
The world has thrilling powerful men of action. There are no limits to what can be achieved. |
Elegant, physical power. The fantasy ability to fly through water and air with grace and ease. |
| Author: Henry Kitchell Webster | King in Khaki, A |
Honesty is a noble and practical way of life. |
Business acumen produces both material wealth and moral right. The success of the entrepreneur in this story, along with his relation to all his staff and secondary and tertiary folks on the island who work for him -- makes him into a "king" based on important human relations and the rightness of his decisions that result in a successful business enterprise. A subsidiary theme might be termed the power of morality over physical power or economic "power". |
| Director: Stephane Gauger | Owl and the Sparrow |
A child shows sweetness and strength and determination. |
Searching for family, for soulmates. |
| Dancers: Torvill and Dean | Bolero |
Harmony, grace exist. |
Two people as one. |
| Landscape Designer: Fletcher Steele | Blue Steps of Naumkeag |
elegance and grace |
The man-made enhances nature -- it is what makes nature beautiful |