The Sandpiper (1965)

Richard Burton: Dr. Edward Hewitt

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Quotes 

• Laura Reynolds : [they're on the beach, along the Big Sur]  I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe. Even with the footprints of a man beside me.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : You should always have a man's footprints beside you, Laura.

  Laura Reynolds : How do you know I haven't always?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Because you're afraid of them...

  Laura Reynolds : But I'm not as afraid as you think.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Do you think that one of these days Danny's going to feel somehow that you robbed him of a father?

  Laura Reynolds : Well, that's a chance I'm gonna' have to take. Do you know something? If I were a devoted widow, and Danny's father were a dead war hero, would you be pitching me this bit about finding a second father to replace the dead one?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Touché.

• Laura Reynolds : [Edward is looking at Laura's watercolor ideas for the future chapel's stained glass windows]  You don't like them.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : On the contrary, I like them very much. All the charm and wonder of a child's vision of creation. But there's one thing missing.

  Laura Reynolds : God?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : No, man.

  Laura Reynolds : I left him out.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Why?

  Laura Reynolds : Well, I... I wanted the world to be innocent and it can't be with man in it. You see, this is the universe before man came along.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : It won't do. Man is essential to any concept of the universe. Without him the universe would be here, but it wouldn't be conceived. That is the miracle of man. That he can imagine the awe and terror of an infinite universe and still not be frightened by it. But facing the mystery of time and the implacability of death, he can still laugh, work, create... And love.

  Laura Reynolds : [saucily]  Well, good for him. Then he'll have to be in somebody else's sketches.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I've learned that total adjustment to society is quite as bad as total maladjustment, that principled disobedience of unjust law is more Christian, more truly law abiding than unprincipled respect.

• Cos Erickson : [they're gathered at Club Nepenthe]  Oh, say there, Reverend, I got a friend and he claims he gets a mystical kick from H.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : "H"?

  Cos Erickson : Yeah, H. So, what do you say, Reverend? You think you can find God at the end of a hypodermic needle?

  Laura Reynolds : Cos, cut it out.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Oh, well, I served in the Medical Corps during the war, and I can't tell you how many dying and wounded men found something of God's mercy at the end of just such a needle as you described.

  Larry Brant : [tauntingly]  Cos, you've just been dropped.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I just want to find out what you want from life, that's all.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, aside from raising Danny, most of all I want to know myself, to be myself. I won't have a chance to do that if I spend my life playing the matrimony game, which was rigged before I was even born.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : "Rigged"?

  Laura Reynolds : Of course it's rigged. It always has been. First 20 years of a girl's life, she gets so used to going to the same schools as the boys, taking the same classes, living in the same world with him. She can't get it through that square little head of hers that she isn't his absolute equal.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Which, of course, she is.

  Laura Reynolds : Just wait until they get married, and then see what happens. The man enters into a professional life. The woman becomes an unpaid domestic servant. So there goes your equality. What good does all that education do except make her unhappy?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Well, perhaps it's something to fall back on when her beauty fades and her husband turns to a younger woman.

  Laura Reynolds : I wasn't talking about you or any individual man. I was talking about men as a group.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : I know, but most women who become homemakers are not necessarily miserable.

  Laura Reynolds : I didn't say miserable. I say they're unfulfilled. Look, a man is always a husband, and a father, and something else, like a doctor. A woman is a wife, and a mother, and what else? A nothing. The "nothing" is the thing that kills her. And you don't care. You want her to stay just the way she is. Fertile and unfulfilled, then in her place.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : *Who* wants this?

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, creatures like you, judges like Thompson. All the doctors, the President. The whole male establishment. Every last one of you.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : You make it sound like one enormous conspiracy.

  Laura Reynolds : Well, of course, it is. Ever since Adam stool-pigeoned on Eve.

• Laura Reynolds : You mean you told her about me?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Yes.

  Laura Reynolds : That we made love?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Yes.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh! How could you? How could you bring yourself to tell anyone about me? It's too private! It's too private to tell!

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : I felt she had to know.

  Laura Reynolds : Isn't the relationship between a man and a woman in love as privileged as between a lawyer and a client, a doctor and a patient, a priest and a confessant? Isn't it just as holy?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Laura, it is holy. I swear to you it is.

  Laura Reynolds : Not with you! Not when it's with me!

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Laura!

  Laura Reynolds : Don't touch me! Go away! Go back to your wife!

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : [lecturing two students who've been brought to his office]  Our English tongue has a long history and I'm pleased with your interest in its oldest and most, uh, ardent words. I think it's sad, however, that these ancient expressions should be degraded to a position on lavatory walls. You will scrub the walls down, of course, then you will learn the equivalent words in German, French, and Latin, after which you will decline each noun and conjugate each verb in all tenses, including the subjunctive. Thank you for your attention, and, uh, good day.

• Claire Hewitt : Jack Rogers is willing to make a substantial donation to the building fund - *if* his boy stays in school. So, quite naturally, Ward wants your answer.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Mm hmm. What would you do in my shoes?

  Claire Hewitt : Wear them?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Very well... if, um, Jack Rogers' contribution falls within the range of $2,000, that quality of mercy which runs through my blood like a fever whenever money is mentioned will be strained yet once more to give the Rogers boy another chance. His, uh, third, I believe.

  Claire Hewitt : I'll tell him.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : May I ask, what are your religious affiliations?

  Laura Reynolds : Of course. I'm a naturalist.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : A what?

  Laura Reynolds : We believe that man is doomed by his myths... that there can be no peace on earth until man rids himself of *all* belief in the supernatural.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : I see, yes. Very interesting. Go on.

  Laura Reynolds : That's about it... It's a very small sect.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : With a membership of approximately... one?

  Laura Reynolds : Exactly one... with Danny as an officiate, of course.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Hmm, well, I have no objection to your lack of religion, nor to your son's.

  Laura Reynolds : But you do have compulsory religious training here, don't you?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Well, Chapel is compulsory, yes, but I've never yet forced a boy to pray, it, uh, it can't be done, you know.

  Laura Reynolds : Well, it could be *tried*.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : San Simeon is not a jail, Mrs. Reynolds. Students don't come here to be punished, they come here to be educated.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I was talking to our architect about you. That is to say, I was talking about you and our new chapel. The one we're going to build. It calls for two stained-glass windows and it occurred to me we might try for something indigenous to this particular area. I mean, the mountains, the sea, whatever it is that makes this part of the world unique. That would seem to call for a local artist and I was... I was thinking of you.

  Laura Reynolds : Well, but I am an atheist. How could I design something that glorifies a creed I don't believe in?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Do you think Orozco believed in Christianity? Or Rivera, or Portinari, or Chagall? Some of their best work is found in churches. It's not at all rare to find the religious vision more purely apprehended by the non-believer than by the saint.

  Laura Reynolds : Why... Why do you say that?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Well, saints tend to be myopic, whereas the atheist is almost always innocent. And innocence is what we want in this chapel.

• Laura Reynolds : How much is this crazy chapel going to cost?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : About a hundred thousand dollars.

  Laura Reynolds : [looking slightly incredulous]  For just a place to pray?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Well, a place to pray is not as trivial as you think.

  Laura Reynolds : But you can pray anywhere. If man is so important, why... Why don't you spend the money on him? How many poor children could you educate for $100,000?

• Laura Reynolds : You ask the questions, you're a Minister, you wouldn't want me to lie to you, would you?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : [testily]  Neither would I want you to lie to me if I were a truck driver or a disk jockey. I question you because it's my job to do so. You send us a deeply disturbed boy...

  Laura Reynolds : [jumps up out of her chair, indignant]  My son is NOT disturbed! He's not disturbed at all! He's a healthy, normal boy because he hasn't been brainwashed *yet*! And I aim to see that he stays that way!

  [grabs her purse and storms out of the room] 

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : We don't have many boys from broken homes.

  Laura Reynolds : My son is not from a broken home.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Oh, forgive me. I was under the impression that you'd been divorced.

  Laura Reynolds : I've never been married.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Oh, I see. That puts an entirely different light on the matter. Abandonment by the father...

  Laura Reynolds : I was not abandoned - by the father, Dr. Hewitt. The father was abandoned by me.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : Apparently she thought I was behaving like a pompous idiot.

  Claire Hewitt : Were you?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Probably.

• Laura Reynolds : I don't want him to adjust to society!

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Well, if you want Danny to be a nonconformist, San Simeon is the best place it could happen to him. We give him a set of values there that he can rebel against later; otherwise, he my rebel against yours.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : We're not going to devour him, Miss Reynolds. You've got quite the wrong idea. We're not the - lions at San Simeon. We're the Christians.

• Claire Hewitt : It will be like taming a bird. Two birds really.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Why two?

  Claire Hewitt : The mother will need as much help as the boy.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : You need a cage until he heals.

  Laura Reynolds : That would spoil everything.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : He's wild.

  Laura Reynolds : That's why he shouldn't have a cage. The only way you can tame a bird is to let him fly free... The only way you can tame anything. There, little sandpiper.

• Claire Hewitt : He was reciting the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Old English.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : You're not serious.

  Claire Hewitt : I'm completely so - so was he. So, apparently was his mother when she taught him. It sounded perfect.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Now, you see the problem.

  Walter Robinson : It's rather pleasantly different.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I don't want to start something that will make people think we're turning radical around here.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : Reverend is not a title. It's an adjective that qualifies - a title. You may more properly address me as Doctor or Mister.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I talked to a friend of yours this afternoon - a Mr. Ward Hendricks.

  Laura Reynolds : He isn't exactly a friend anymore.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : He gave me the impression he knew you rather well.

  Laura Reynolds : In a biblical sense, he did. That is he - had carnal knowledge of me.

• Laura Reynolds : Can I get you some tea? Would you like some grappa?

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Grappa, please.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. I apologize. I didn't mean to...

  Laura Reynolds : Pry into my sex life? Of course you did. You've been dying to pry into it. Now that you've seen me modeling for Cos Erickson, you're dying to know about him too.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : What would you expect me to feel at this minute?

  Laura Reynolds : It depends on how you expected to feel about me. Whether you wanted me as a woman or just a *whore*.

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : My God, I...

  Laura Reynolds : Because if you wanted me as a woman, you would feel as I do now. At peace with myself. Clean. And content. And without any sense of guilt.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : In the text itself, St. Matthew makes the matter very clear. Quote: Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness - to be tempted.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I've become one of the world's most accomplished liars.

  Laura Reynolds : You have lots of competition.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I've lost all of my since of sin.

  Laura Reynolds : That's about the nicest thing a person could lose.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : Clergy have always been known for their guile.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : In the full blaze of God's cleansing sunlight, men and women are purely innocent and, therefore, most purely - beautiful.

• Dr. Edward Hewitt : I've learned that total adjustment to society is quite as bad as total maladjustment. That principal disobedience of unjust law is more Christian, more truly law abiding than unprincipled respect. That only freedom can tame the wild, rebellious - palpitating heart of man. Encagement, never. That life, unfettered, moves towards life - and love - to love.