Guy talks about destroying spider's web - (spider keeps rebuilding it)

Tools    





freedom~empathy~peace
Somebody on Reddit is looking for a 90s or early 2000s film. This is what he/she can recall:

I distinctly remember a scene from a movie where someone had a monologue about spiders, their webs and how they will eventually give up if you destroy their webs enough times.

The monologue was roughly like as follows (this not exact quotation, far from it, it is only how I remember it roughly and how I can rephrase it):

"...I remember there was once a spider outside my window, which had built a web that I didn't like and soon there after I destroyed it. But by the next day, the spider had rebuilt it and I destroyed it that one too. Again the next day, the spider rebuild it and again I destroyed it. It kept on rebuilding its web each day and I kept on destroying it. Eventually, to my surprise, one day the spider didn't rebuilt it, and never did afterwards. It gave up. So, with enough failures, even spiders get it and eventually give up".



A Man Called Intrepid. A 1979 TV mini series. The German captor tells this to Barbara Hershey who is a captured spy.



freedom~empathy~peace
Ah, great! I've just had a look to see if there's a clip of this particular scene out there, but no luck so far. However, you sound very confident about it, so I've passed the info over to the person on Reddit who's been struggling so hard to remember where they saw it. They've been searching for over seven months now



freedom~empathy~peace
Thank you MovieChas, you are absolutely correct -- it is a scene from 'A Man Called Intrepid' and I've found a clip of it. Unfortunately it has a distracting translation (Russian?) over the top of it, BUT...you can still hear the english dialogue in the background. The part about the spider happens at 27:30:00s.





I looked for a good copy of this a few years ago. Like you, I only found some crappy YouTube version.



freedom~empathy~peace
UPDATE:
I've changed this thread back to UNANSWERED. The person trying to identify a film that has a monologue about a 'stubborn spider' rebuilding its web has checked out the scene from 'A Man Called Intrepid' and has told me that -- although it's incredibly similar to what they saw -- it is not the same scene! They are adamant that the story in the version they saw had the spider just give up the struggle and stop trying to rebuild.



Hmm. I hate to say this, but is it possible they're simply mistaken about that last bit? I know they are "adamant," but we've had lots of people start threads like this and be absolutely sure of some detail that turns out not to be true. Just the way our minds work sometimes. Particularly likely if every other detail is correct, and if it's hard to imagine a second film with all the same details...



freedom~empathy~peace
Yes, I'm inclined to agree with you Yoda. However, that 'Man Called Intrepid' thing was a six hour mini series! It surprises me that it seems to ring no bells with him/her -- my experience is that 'marathon' shows like that tend to stick with you once you've watched one.



Registered User
Another problem with miniseries is that sometimes someone only catches one or two episodes, not the whole thing.



Registered User
Okay, I am thinking about the medieval Scottish king Robert the Bruce, who according to legend when he was hiding from his enemies saw a spider trying to make a web, the spider failed twice but succeeded on the third attempt.
Or the story about how the prophet Muhammad and his followers were hiding in a cave from their enemies, and a spider came and created a huge web over the entrance, so the enemies passed by the cave because it looked like nobody had been in there for a long time.