Abstract
In an August 2004 entry in his philosophical memoir Little Did I Know, Stanley Cavell cites a complaint, by someone who had valued his earlier work, that in his just-published book Cities of Words he was “just going over the same old films.” Cavell felt provoked to write, “I never take up a film again that I care about unless I feel that I have something new to convey in considering it, which is part of my claim that the films I have studied are inexhaustible.” Focusing primarily on The Philadelphia Story, this paper will identify and assess what Cities of Words does convey about “the same old films” that goes beyond Pursuits of Happiness and reflect on its implications for thinking philosophically about film’s ways of thinking philosophically.