| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director/Writer: Elliott, Stephan | Easy Virtue | Love isn't easy, but it is glorious. |
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| Biviel Design | Biviel Shoe BV2773 | Feeling: texture and line create a sense of elegance and beauty. | |
| Alexander Mackendrick, Director | The Ladykillers | All is right with the world because virtuous people prevail over evil people. Evil people simply destroy themselves, and innocence strengthens you. |
Evil is impotent. Secondary theme: you can’t cheat an honest lady.
|
| Sculptor: unknown | Niobe | Human action is beautiful. | Life is movement. |
| Designer: Esherick, Wharton | Fireplace and Door | Very orderly exuberance, via "explosive" geometry | |
| Director: Reiner, Rob | American President | Romance is fun, funny and important. | |
| Creator: Nix, Matt | Burn Notice | Anything can be done if you are smart and motivated enough. | |
| Composer: Coward, Noel | I'll See You Again | Life is bittersweet | Sweet memories of love last forever |
| Director: Canet, Guillaume | Tell No One (aka Ne le dis à personne) | Life is sad, and controlled by mysterious corruption. | |
| Architect: Wright, Frank Lloyd | Johnson Wax Building | Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable. |
To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy.<br> |
| Director: McTiernan, John | Die Hard | The way to beat evil is to give no quarter, no compromise. Life is hard, but fighting for the right is rewarded. | Giving up in life is not an option. |
| Loysel, Jacques | La Grande Nevrose | The dynamic female body is beautiful and exciting. Although it may not explicitly suggest it, the nude and its tense position could be felt as erotic. | An animated female body is a vessel of perfection. |
| Designer: Fortuny, Mariano | Green fabric | Still produced by the Fortuny fabric company. | |
| Henrik Ibsen | The Lady from the Sea | the glow of happiness that follows from realizing that your life is your own to create, and that only you can do that; and the realization of how much you have to gain or lose from taking that self-responsibility. |
Theme: all of life’s values come from – and can only come from – one’s free choice. Free – of any outside coercion, or any outside attempt to make the choices for you, and free of any self-imposed motives not grounded in your own complete freedom to choose. Without that total freedom to choose, life is empty. |
| Author: Lazarus, Emma | The New Colossus | Benevolent celebration of liberty as a beacon to a troubled world. | A marvelous land of liberty offers welcome to the oppressed of the world. |
| 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. |
| Schaefer, Taf Lebel | Octopus | Playful. | |
| Director: Tran, Anh Hung | The Taste of Things | test test test test |
tentative: the ideal world of physical creation of food shared by soulmates. |
| Director: Gauger, Stephane | Owl and the Sparrow | A child shows sweetness and strength and determination. | Searching for family, for soulmates. |
| Villeroy & Boch | Chocolate Pitcher and Butter Dish | Friendly warmth (arising from the simple graceful lines, and the unadorned simplicity of the colors without ornament) | |
| Painter: Leyendecker, J.C. | Day at the Beach | Fun and cuteness. | |
| Sculptor: Tuby, Jean Baptiste (1630-1700) | 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.<br> |
| Architect: Guarini, Guarino | Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo (Royal Church of St. Lawrence) | The world is perfected. The joy of seeing complexity that is simplicity, i.e., that the rich complex vision arises from simple elements which because of their arrangement provide layers of visual thrills. | Complex, soaring geometric order. |
| 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: Hudson, Hugh | Greystoke | Life is Loss -- life is grim and culture is grim and the jungle is grim. All is grim. The other important feature of the film emotionally is that Tarzan has been crippled by his circumstances of being brought up in the jungle -- he cannot live as a man, so the great tragedy of the story is that he has to return to the jungle, which is below primitive -- it is an isolated hell in which death is at every corner, and at best the companionship of apes. Given that the story partly portrays civilized men as brutes who relish killing animals, perhaps the emotional intent is to make the choice to return to the jungle as positive, but for this reviewer it is unutterably tragic and ugly. |
Loss, Loss, Loss. Man as metaphysically alien from human culture. |