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Belle: You won't throw me away for that dirty rag of a girl!
Stark: To hell with the girl! I'm talking of us ...
Belle (wildly): I gave you too much of my life for that. You've used me up ...
Stark: Belle, for Pete's sake ...!
Belle: And now you want to throw me off. But you're a man, not an animal -- you can't do that!
:(
Stark (quietly): Much more mine. I don't know what happened. I thought about these things a lot these past few months. You expect many things from marriage, but I can't give them. I feel a moral obligation but I don't know what to do. These scenes go on. We're always worried ... we're two machines counting up the petty cash. Something about me cheats you -- I'm not the man to help you be the best woman it's in you to be. So your attitude's justified. I know I owe you a lot, Belle --
Prince: Listen, a man in the fullness of his life speaks to you. I didn't come here to make you unhappy. I came here to make myself happy! You don't like it -- I can understand that. Circumstances insulted me enough in my life. But your insults I don't need! And I don't apologize to no man because I try to take happiness by the throat! Remember, Dr. Benny, I want what I want! There are seven fundamental words in life, and one of these is love, and I didn't have it! And another one is love, and I don't have it! And the third of these is love, and I shall have it! (Beating the furniture with his umbrella). De corpso you think! I'm dead and buried you think! I'll sit in the long winter night with a shawl on my shoulders? Now you see my face, Dr. Benny. Now you know your father-in-law, that damned smiling villain! I'll fight you to the last ditch -- you'll get mowed down like a train. I want that girl. I'll wait downstairs. [...]
Stark (after a pause): I feel so helpless ... no judgment left. I don't know what I'm doing or saying. I almost want to cry.
[...]
Stark: Try to understand my problems, darling.
ahhhh
Prince: What can he offer you? He loves you -- his memoirs are written on his face. But I see a big chapter heading: "No Divorce." Why not? Ten years they're married. She runs his life like a credit manager. They lost a child together ... they're attached underground by a hundred different roots. But if he left her -- as he knows -- could he leave his practice? Never! Then you'd be a credit manager ... But why go on? He won't leave her. That needs courage, strength, and he's not strong.
:( :(
Prince: Miss Cleo, believe me, life is lonely, life is empty. Love isn't everything. A dear true friend is more than love -- the serge outlasts the silk. Give me a chance. I know your needs. I love your needs ... What do you have to lose?
Cleo: (immobile): Everything that's me.
Cleo (to both men): Yes, if there's roads, I'll take them. I'll go up all those roads till I find what I want. I want a love that uses me, that needs me. Don't you think there's a world of joyful men and women? Must all men live afraid to laugh and sing? Can't we sing at work and love our work? It's getting late to play at life; I want to live it. Something has to feel real for me, more than both of you. You see? I don't ask for much ...
When we ‘see’ a landscape, we situate ourselves in it. If we ‘saw’ the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history. When we are prevented from seeing it, we are being deprived of the history which belongs to us. Who benefits from this deprivation? In the end, the art of the past is being mystified because a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes, and such a justification can no longer make sense in modern terms. And so, inevitably, it mystifies.
The art historian fears such direct judgement:
As in so many other pictures by Hals, the penetrating characterizations almost seduce us into believing that we know the personality traits and even the habits of the men and women portrayed.
What is this ‘seduction’ he writes of? It is nothing less than the paintings working upon us. They work upon us because we accept the way Hals saw his sitters. We do not accept this innocently. We accept it in so far as it corresponds to our own observation of people, gestures, faces, institutions. This is possible because we still live in a society of comparable social relations and moral values. And it is precisely this which gives the paintings their psychological and social urgency. It is this – not the painter’s skill as a ‘seducer’ – which convinces us that we can know the people portrayed.
Mystification has little to do with the vocabulary used. Mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident. Hals was the first portraitist to paint the new characters and expressions created by capitalism. He did in pictorial terms what Balzac did two centuries later in literature. Yet the author of the authoritative work on these paintings sums up the artist’s achievement by referring to
Hals’s unwavering commitment to his personal vision, which enriches our consciousness of our fellow men and heightens our awe for the ever-increasing power of the mighty impulses that enabled him to give us a close view of life’s vital forces.
That is mystification.