A Robert Donat Monologue For Every Wistful Occasion
Robert Donat is the monologue god. No one can touch him when it comes to staring plaintively off into the middle distance–the weight of eternity on his shoulders. The understanding of the fragility of human life fueling his insistence to go on–to keep on living.
Here I have compiled a few helpful Donat monologues to help us understand our own feelings and ultimately our own humanity and the purpose of our existence (not all of them are actual monologues strictly speaking please do not @ me).
For when you’re burnt out at work, and really in that surviving not thriving mode, listen to Robert Donat in the clip in the header via Vacation from Marriage (1945) tell you about the groove being comfortable, but yikes so is the grave:
For those times when you’re isolating because of a COVID scare, or just trying to make it through the darkest days of winter, check out Robert Donat having a literal freakout in Knight Without Armour (1937):
When the call of the void is calling you, nothing for it but Donat in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933):
When it is time to eat the idle rich, we channel Robert Donat’s impassioned impromptu campaign speech in The 39 Steps (1935). Richard Hannay is my first and truest love and inspiration:
For those times you must hold equal, yet seemingly opposing truths together in balanced tension, because life is not simple but it is always true that human beings do matter and war, violence, and empire is always senseless, Mr. Chips announcing the deaths of two people he held dear in Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939):
For when you watch a sublime film and are overcome by your sheer love for the very medium of cinema and all that it gives us each and every day, here comes Robert Donat in The Magic Box (1951) literally sobbing about it to an awestruck Laurence Olivier who will never understand like Donat does the power of film because Donat won the Best Actor Oscar in 1939 instead of Olivier and that’s because Donat feels and the world feels with him:
Robert Donat on film understood how to express loneliness and yearning in such formidable delicacy. Such a stunning presence, and such a beautiful voice to express the fears and hopes of humanity. I will never grow tire of his earnest efforts, and I will watch his films and cry thank you very much.
[Insert Donat Magic Box monologue but it is me weeping about Donat cinema monologues]
originally published on The Classic Film Collective on 03/02/2022.