On two occasions in the film, the Doctor felt frightened after listening to the patient. The first time he didn't know what frightend him about the patient,the second time he knew exactly what it was. But this was not stated explicitly. I presume the patient showed that he was capable of manipulating people and getting his way, which could lead to his release while he was still deemed dangerous. Does anyone else have any insight on this?
shareI think the Doctor was frightened both at the Patient's ability to organize the tic tac toe game as well as at the Patient's pure sadism as he gleefully described the results. The Patient acted as if he felt the destruction of the bar and the humiliation of the hostess were hillarious.
shareI think that he was afraid of what the patient was saying because he knew that there was some truth to it, and that he could easily get caught up in the feeling as well. The patient was right about some of the things that he said about the Doctor and his role in society, and the Doctor was afraid of facing these truths.
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-Kung fu priest, "Dead Alive"
...........That's a good point. I think the patient reminds the doctor about the limitations in his own life. He's a professional,but, as a black man in the forties, he's limited in where he can live or work among other things. It is something he was in denial about.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.
Very nicely put. You are correct, sir. That's exactly what Poitier was afraid about. Even though he had a respectable job working in the Federal penal system and ostensibly had earned the respect and acceptance of his professional colleagues, he was still a black man in a society that denigrated and devalued him. He probably tried to con himself into thinking that he was doing pretty well for himself- an educated professional man in a suit and tie with a good job. And then Bobby Darin puts the lie to all of Poitier's conceptions and about how he was deluding himself. Darin stripped him naked and showed him the reality that he, Poitier, knew all too well but that he tried to sublimate within himself in order to go on each day without becoming a mental case himself.
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Kind of like the black guy in the movie Glory, who thought because he was educated and his best friends where white......that somehow he would get the same privileges as whites. And when he finally came to the realization that he has been living in a fantasy world, it broke him......it was a sad thing to see. Denzel's character wore him out!! Some fine acting in that movie!!!
shareI think that he was afraid of what the patient was saying because he knew that there was some truth to it
@starman2003, I agree that the Doctor saw clearly that the Patient knew exactly what he was doing, and had sharpened his manipulation skills at the meetings. The Doctor knew he would be released to wreak his havoc.
shareI think what frightens the doctor so much is that he sees that what happened in Germany was not an isolated, purely German phenomenon, but something that could happen in America, with the persecution inflicted on the Jews being augmented/replaced by persecution of Blacks (and now Muslims and Hispanics). He sees in his patient the prototype of an American Hitler, who is able to twist and stretch people's latent racism and bigotry into brazen acts of hate.
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