The sentence is life

The sentence is life is a short film from 1961 released on 16mm. It is held in the IUL Moving Image Archive collection.

Using a play-within-a-play format, this program probes the question of whether or not philosophy is of any use to most of us. A promising young executive, who values money above all else, is taken on a strange journey when he enters the office elevat...

The sentence is life
Release date	1961
Running time	0:33:00

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More Details

internal id

71089

Summary

Using a play-within-a-play format, this program probes the question of whether or not philosophy is of any use to most of us. A promising young executive, who values money above all else, is taken on a strange journey when he enters the office elevator at the end of a day’s work. Instead of going down, he is taken to the top of the building where he is led to the “the Philosophical Court of Last Resort.” He witnesses several cases, including a professional philosopher who is found guilty of believing that philosophy has no relation to life and is sentenced to a vocabulary of five words, a woman who believes only in the idea of “live and let live” and is sentenced to solitary freedom. A poet serves as the young executive’s counsel and together they seek advice from an artist. In the end the executive trusts his own common sense but is found guilty of having no philosophy at all and is sentenced to “life.”

Physical Format

1 Film (0:33:00)

16mm

IUL Genres

IUL Subject

Freedom

Philosophy.

Full Original Title

The sentence is life