One more on Midnight Cowboy

So today we finished Midnight Cowboy and to my own surprise I quite enjoyed the film. It held a certain power that drags you to the screen and you want to know whats going on at all times. If you miss a part or don't understand the symbolism, you can easily get lost. I personally got lost a first with all of the flashbacks and random images with Ratso in a phone booth after he ripped off Joe Buck. [Does Ratso have a first name? I feel like in the first scene where Joe meets Ratso at the bar and the waitress calls him Ratso and he rebukes that its Rizzo, his name was mentioned fully but I don't recall.] to be continued...

Views on Kane and the like

As we are wrapping up Citizen Kane, I am unclear on certain aspects of the movie. I may be over-analyzing the insignificant, but I could not help but wonder about the light bulb that flashed momentarily after the scene directly following the multitude of newspapers that highlighted Susan Alexander's ironic singing "success". This rapid flutter of Inquirer titles from all over that country raved of her stunning performance was immediately brought to a halt by a momentary flash of a light bulb that dimmed to the point where all we can see are the stems of the bulb, or the wiring, and then....darkness. Does this serve as simply a transition or perhaps there is symbolism involved here. i would suspect that the dimming bulb foreshadows her dimming "career" and essentially her fate because what awaits her is misery and darkness.

Watching Citizen Kane, I have thought greatly of the idea: does money, fame, and your self-conceived image bring you happiness? In today's society many can argue that this is so. Movie directors have taken this to a whole new level nowadays. In National Treasure, Nicholas Cage is the hero who did not stop at anything to accomplish his pursuit of a far-fetched clearly fictitious plan to find a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. He ends up with fame, fortune, and of course the girl! Does this perceive the exemplar of society or was this just another so-called "popcorn flick" made to placate the masses into believing in "fairy tales", happy endings and secret treasure hunts. Same goes for all movies with predominantly cliche plots and happy endings? Is this what we expect? The classic good guy bad guy scenario....good guy always wins, bad guy always loses. Unfortunately in life, we can't often draw a parallel. There is no clear cut definition of good/bad people and there are inherently no happy endings. Rather... what brings happiness to you is another's demise.