Rather to follow the trend, Cliff sacrifices materialistic pleasures and fame, devoting his efforts on the more fundamental subjects such as modern philosophy. His violation of ethical standards is very minor compared to Judah’s serious crimes; everyone knew Cliff and his wife was on a straight way to divorce, and Cliff’s romantic passion was pure and true. Also, he believed in the power of true film that it can expose the hollow nature of hypocrites such as Lester. However, his Kantian idealistic views were totally conflicting with the world around him. Allen put this betrayal of the real world in a surprisingly subtle way. Before Halley engaged with Lester, she always wore her glasses, which is a symbol of her internal ideals and dreams; the glasses are gone at her final encounter with Cliff – a sophisticated evidence of a real world figure compromising her values to other pleasures. His rebellion through film was also cost him his job, giving another blow to his belief that film will ultimately become victorious. Cliff was finally once more bombarded by Halley due to her surprising engagement with Lester. In the end, Cliff, on the course of events, lost all he sought for to a superficial figure with no ability to contemplate on a complex concept such as ethics. However, even with his terrible luck (Professor Levy commits suicide) and the whole situation becoming haywire, Cliff still …show more content…
For Cliff, he was stubborn; as he believed that someday his views and powers of film shall be triumphant, there were no capitulation. Cliff is not as stubborn as Sol, whose view is that the Deus Ex Machina eventually covers up the whole subject with the ultimate judgement from God. However, this amount of adherence was enough for Cliff to clash with the harsh world around him, who mostly were in the real world. His wife eventually divorced him, Lester denied the ultimate power of film and just sacked Cliff, and even Halley, who seemed to be the perfect counterpart for Cliff, turned out to be not as strict as Cliff. For those who weren’t confined to absolute morality, beguile alterations were possible for the standards to be in favour of their own interests. Though this was contemptible in Cliff’s views, the alterations gave them the benefits which Cliff cannot access. As this practice continued, one who altered the standards substantially had an edge on real life, and the good and the moral did not triumph over evil and immoral. “There’s nobody to punish you, if you don’t punish yourself” (Bjorkman 212). Almost all of those who did not wear eyeglasses eventually escaped