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Another Argument With AI
21 July 2026
For a while now, we have been asking ourselves (and not rhetorically), "How ya doing?" Just every now and then, as a break after one thing just before beginning another.
The Sanatorium. This is around where the scene should be.
We always answer the same way. With the greatest movie line of all time. "I've been better."
You may not recognize it because it's from a 1973 Vittorio De Sica movie called A Brief Vacation.
To explain why it's the greatest movie line of all time, we generally fall into a half hour summation of the plot. But the short version is that a glamorous cabaret singer who has been sent to a clinic in the Alps for tests that reveal the fatal diagnosis, replies with just those words to that causal inquiry tossed toward her.
We repeat it to ourselves because she has been better. So have we.
But we didn't want to let it go at that. We have the DVD of the movie and wanted to watch her say the line again. She said it with a sneer, as we recall.
So we put the DVD on and watched assiduously for it.
Nothing. We searched for the likely scene on the DVD but couldn't retrieve it.
So we did an AI search on the Web to tell us when she says the line.
The exact moment unfolds when Clara (Florinda Bolkan) is exploring the luxurious alpine sanatorium. She walks outside onto the sun-drenched terrace where patients are sunning themselves on deck chairs in the snow. Gina is lying there, trying to maintain her elegant celebrity persona despite her failing lungs. When asked how she is doing, she weakly but gracefully replies, "I've been better" (or "I have seen better days"), masking her tragic diagnosis with a bit of dry, upper-class show-business wit.
The AI search further insisted the DVD with the full movie contained the scene (watch Gina from 46:03; it should appear after she sings in the next scene) before we told it that we had that version and that scene is missing.
It finally conceded we were right. It had been cut to save space on the DVD, it suggested.
We didn't feel any better.
When had we seen it? In the theater? Had we rememebered that scene all these years? From 1973? Fifty three years? Was it that good?
Were we still that good?
Suddenly we didn't feel so bad. But then, we've been better.