The Sandpiper (1965)

Elizabeth Taylor: Laura Reynolds

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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.

• Judge Thompson : [referring to her son, Danny]  Why did you take that boy out of school?

  Laura Reynolds : His teacher was a fool. I've taught him more in two months than he learned at school in a full term.

  Judge Thompson : In the course of his studies, what have you taught him about respect for the law?

  Laura Reynolds : As he grows up, he'll learn that there are good laws, and bad ones. He'll respect the good ones.

  Judge Thompson : And disobey the bad ones!

  Laura Reynolds : At least I hope he does.

• 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 : 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.

• Judge Thompson : Is this the third time you and Danny have been brought up before me or the fourth?

  Laura Reynolds : Third.

  Judge Thompson : The first was...

  Laura Reynolds : The girl.

  Judge Thompson : Oh yes, of course. She was swinging, her skirts blew back, and Danny put his hand on her thigh.

  Laura Reynolds : Right.

  Judge Thompson : Well, the child was frightened.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, come on, she was delighted! It was a dirty minded mother who made the trouble.

• Laura Reynolds : I live there because I love it. I love every day I spend out there and every night. I love the sea and the mountains and the sky and the birds and I love all of it.

• Judge Thompson : What are you trying to raise? A noble savage?

  Laura Reynolds : What would you have me raise? A slick little specialist in weather cocksmanship?

  Judge Thompson : I beg your pardon?

  Laura Reynolds : You know, whirling around like a weather cock every time the wind changes.

• 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.

• Laura Reynolds : It's a baby sandpiper. I think his wing is broken.

• 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.

• Laura Reynolds : [Dr. Hewitt surprised to see Laura modeling in the nude]  Dr. Hewitt, meet Cos Erickson, boy beatnik.

• Laura Reynolds : Cos, can we quit work now? I'd like to get some clothes on.

  Cos Erickson : All right, sure. All right, since I'm not paying you.

• 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.

• Cos Erickson : Are you going to seduce him?

  Laura Reynolds : Maybe. I don't know. It would serve him right if I did.

  [laughs] 

  Laura Reynolds : No, Cos. I won't seduce him.

  Cos Erickson : You sure?

  Laura Reynolds : Positive. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of blaming me afterwards.

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

  Dr. Edward Hewitt : Grappa, please.

• Laura Reynolds : There's a difference between being in love and loving and liking.

• 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.

• Laura Reynolds : You did give me what I needed and - you never beat me or cheated me.

• Laura Reynolds : I don't want to go to bed with you. And I certainly wouldn't marry you.

• Laura Reynolds : Men have been - staring at me and rubbing up against me since I was 12 years old. They've always been sort of - waiting for me to stumble so they can close in. Sometimes I get the suffocating feeling that they will and I - I see myself, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next year, being handed from man to man as if I were an amusement from men who only have had me, never really - loved me.

• 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.

• Laura Reynolds : Am I as good for you as you are for me?

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

  Laura Reynolds : You have lots of competition.

• Laura Reynolds : He's making his own prison.

• Laura Reynolds : Life always flies back to life if it isn't pinned in.

• Laura Reynolds : Come on little sandpiper. Don't be afraid, baby. You *can* fly through it.

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

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

• Laura Reynolds : We all want to fly free, don't we.

• Laura Reynolds : Okay, Danny, I'll come.

  Danny Reynolds : You will! Man, will that be cool. I mean, when you walk in and all the guys see how pretty you are.